Hike #1017; Washington's Crossing to Lambertville

Hike #1017; Lambertville to Washington’s Crossing

3/2/17 Lambertville to Washington's Crossing with Neil George, Sue Bennett, Shayna Michaels, and Dan Asnis

This next hike would be a point to point between Lambertville and Washington’s Crossing, this time utilizing a route that I’d done to some extent before, but also some stuff that I’d never incorporated into the hikes before.
After a stressful near meltdown, I’d been sent for a week to Washington’s Crossing again with no further instructions beyond Monday. I then got the news that I was to go back to Spruce Run with several changes. The most negative changes would be that I’d need to figure out something around rotating weekends. I didn’t foresee a problem with one a month, but with only three others at the park, that would mean every other weekend, and I’m not willing to do that.

View on Lambertville Nature Trail

Still, I tried to focus on the positive. I thought the hike at Bordentown a couple of weeks back would be my last night hike to the south, but this one would end up being it. I had to come up with something that would be good again.
I’d decided that more footpath trails would be good for this one, and we could do some Baldpate Mountain, Lambertville Nature Trail, and most of all Goat Hill Overlook. Somehow, I had never incorporated that into the hikes yet, and had been wanting to do it.

Lambertville Nature Trail

It really seemed like an appropriate last hoorah for my time to the south. We met at the Dominick’s Pizza one more time in Washington’s Crossing PA, where I’d enjoyed many pizza lunches for my months at the park across the river. We then shuttled to the north, to the CVS in Lambertville to start off, which we used for a start time several times before. Shane was supposed to meet us there, but then he backed out at the last minute. So we started on our own, crossed Rt 29 and went up the steps that led to Heath Court in a development to the east on the slopes.
This time, the steps were shut down due to ice, but we walked up the slope parallel with them. We turned right Holcombe Way, then right on McDowell Drive, and then left on Alexander Drive. The Lambertville Nature Trail broke off to the right and paralleled the road from here. It has some nice foot bridges and some good seasonal views of the Lambertville area along the way.
The trail gradually made it’s way down on likely former quarry roads, then emerged onto York Street where some contractors equipment was parked. We turned to the right and headed down York Street to a left on Franklin Street. We followed that to 29, then turned on Swan Street to the south part of Franklin Street continuing to the south ourselves.

Lambertville Cemetery view

We turned left after a short bit into the Lambertville Cemetery. I had been wanting to incorporate this into a hike for quite some time and was just now getting to it. We headed up hill through the very odd cemetery.
It looks rather normal from a distance, but what was strange to me was the fact that the oldest tomb stones do not seem to be situated strictly in one spot. They were very interspersed. We passed some nineteenth century stones, continued up hill through newer stones, and then were back to some older stones. This continued for the entire southeast bound length of the cemetery.
Near the top, we had a very nice view of the Delaware River valley over the roof tops of the town. We continued out of the southeast corner onto Liberty View Ct, a closed off road that leads into a development. We turned left in the development onto Wood Crest Drive and followed it to Goat Hill Road, where we turned to the right.

Chimney Hill Inn

Soon, we passed the historic Chimney Hilll Inn, a nice looking bed and breakfast. It was an historic farm house originally built in 1820, and then expanded upon substantially in 1927.
We continued south just a bit more and soon reached Kyle’s Trail, a trail on non profit land of Hunterdon Land Trust to the right.
The trail is named after someone named Kyle Donnelly who died in 2006 on Goat Hill Road just before he was to be deployed to Iraq. The memorial gives no further information about him. We turned right to follow this trail into the woods.

Kyle's Trail map

Like so many other short trails around the area, I never got around to finding a way of connecting this one to everything else I’ve done. Like the cemetery, this was just another interesting little tidbit I could add to the hike.

Cool vines on Kyle's Trail

The trail went gradually down hill, and we passed some really interesting vines. Somewhere in the area George Washington was said to have surveyed the property with Cornelius Coryell.
The trail continued down hill to a sort of lollipop loop. It just looped around and we would have to walk back the same way we came in to Goat Hill Road.
Rather than do this, I wanted to try to use this as a through route. I saw green on the map to the south, which led me to believe that the non profit probably has land reaching all the way to George Washington Road. As per the aerial images, I figured we could do it. With a small group, it was worth the try.

Old Beech graffiti from '58

No one had walked this route in many many years. We passed an old Beech tree with the name “Bob Colema” and “1958” on one of the trees, with the words very spread out from years of growth on the tree.
There was a house well off to the left of us, and one a bit closer to the right, but we were still well into the woods from it. It got kind of wet back there, but we rock hopped through the stony woods until we reached George Washington Drive. We did also pass some sort of old well area.
We followed the road to the left a bit, and soon reached the intersection with the road to the Goat Hill parking area. We turned right and soon reached the parking area. From there, we continued up the trail, which was a wide woods road with a gate. It weaved us around, and two paths came in from the left. We continued ahead though, past a trail I knew would lead to another overlook (because I knew we’d come back to it), and then on to the north just for a bit. We soon reached the main overlook area.

Goat Hill Overlook

We paused for a bit to enjoy the view. It really is outstanding, and I felt very glad that I’d included this spot into the hike. The area is state park land and administered by Washington’s Crossing State Park, but I never visited there for work during my entire time there. Someone destroyed the sign for it, which sat in the shop the entire time I worked there, but it was never replaced. I think the town of Lambertville maintains it.
We made our way from here onto a footpath which follows along the top of the slope, the bluffs above the river. This led us to another rock outcropping with a great view of the rapids and wing dams south of Lambertville.

WIng Dams in the Delaware from Goat Hill

There were several little spots with views, and we checked them all out. At the end of the viewpoints, the trail turned inland a bit. We continued on all but one of the trails that looped out and around. They looked formalized but had no marking whatsoever. I’m not sure if there would have been another way out of the preserve in that way or not, but I couldn’t take the chance when we still had so far to go.We followed the more obvious route, which soon joined with where we turned right on the main path, and followed it to the parking area and back to George Washington Drive.
We followed it out to Goat Hill Road once more, then turned to the right. The roads in this area are lightly traveled, which made them really nice for this hike. We continued south to Hewitt Road and turned to the left.

Giant spider on someone's lawn

We followed Hewitt Road all the way to the intersection of Woodens Road and Rt 518. We checked out someone’s giant fake spider in their yard along the way.
I got a little screwed up at this intersection. I’d assumed we were walking away from the town of Lambertville and nearing Dry Run Creek Trail, but this was not the case. We ended up walking to the west rather than the east, which put us a bit out of the way. When I looked at my phone and realized my error, we opted to walk back by way of Old Rt 518.
The road took us back out to Rt 518, which we continued to follow to the east. We passed Woodens Lane, and I knew the Dry Run Creek Trail went into wood to the right in a narrow swath. We walked a good long while and didn’t see it. I began to think we might have missed it until we finally found it.
We turned right on the trail down hill gradually through the woods. It was pretty dark by this point and the trail was not level. We crossed several nice foot bridges along the way, but we had to be careful where we placed our feet. We regrouped when we got to an old mill pond dam, then continued along the trail along a slope before emerging on Woodens Lane.
We continued south on Woodens Lane to the entrance of Howell Living Historical Farm. There, we cut in barely, and followed the interior of a fence row and tree line. This skipped the intersection of Woodens Lane and paralleled Valley Road to the south. We had to head back out to Valley Road near the end of the property, and follow it down across Moores Creek to Pleasant Valley Road. A brief jog to the left, then right onto the power line clearing brought us into the Ted Stiles Preserve at Baldpate Mountain. We followed the power line to where it intersected with Pleasant Valley Trail. That trail follows the power line for a time, then makes it’s way up hill into the rest of the preserve.

Ted Stiles Preserve Map

We headed up hill to a former roadway route, and passed the foundation of the former Hunt Farm on the left. No one could see up there like I could. I actually had an easy time of it and powered ahead up hill, while the others got a bit more behind.
Pleasant Valley Trail should have come out to the Ridge Trail near the Welling-Burd Farmstead, an existing abandoned house, but I don’t recall seeing it. I am thinking there may be a new trail up there which bypasses it and leads to the Ridge Trail. That must be the case, because I don’t know how we’d have gotten there any other way without passing the house, or at least a clearing where it once was.
Ridge Trail was rather inaccessible to vehicles from this point, so we had a comfortable and worry free walk over the crest of Baldpate to the intersection with the Copper Hill Trail heading south. We turned right and followed it gradually down hill. This was another trail I had never followed before, so it was nice to explore a bit of that.
We came to the intersection with the Creek Spur Trail, and continued slightly up hill again to a connector trail to the right. We turned, and soon reached the Kuser Trail. This is apparently state land according to the maps, but not ackntowledged by the state park.
The Kuser Trail took us near a creek along it’s route, and crossed before climbing back up the other side toward Church Road. It was really a very nice area I’d like to come back and see more of.
We crossed Church Road directly to Brickyard Road in Washington’s Crossing SP. We then followed that road straight. The road is gated and closed to traffic, so it’s a nice walking route.
We turned right when we got to the road to the Nature Center, continued to the ninety degree bend, and turned left into the Red Dot Trail. We followed this to a connecting path to the left, which took us to Blue Dot Trail. We followed Blue Dot Trail from there to Knox Grove.
Everyone but Neil and I went the wrong way on Blue Dot, so we went back and found them fortunately. We all continued through the grove and then out past the Open Air Theater. We then came out into Greene Grove, and continued to Continental Lane. This we followed diretly through the park.

The group

Continental Lane was the route that George Washington and the Continental Army marched on Christmas Day 1776 for the famous crossing. It’s a narrow swath between two park access roads for one way traffic.
At the end of the trail, we turned left and headed through the Washington Arboretum to reach the footbridge over Rt 29. This took us out toward the Washington’s Crossing Bridge.

Washington's Crossing Bridge

The terrain had been much more difficult on this one than a lot of the previous night hikes, and so even I was getting pretty tired. The temperature had cooled off quite a bit, and I had to be to work the next day.

Washington's Crossing Bridge

I certainly couldn’t call out sick on my very last day at the park there. I didn’t want to. It was overall a very positive experience being there, and reminded me what it was really like to work in a park, not the abusive custodial staff mess back at Spruce Run.
It would be the last peaceful work day I would have for a long time, though I didn’t know it at the time.
We continued onto the road to the bridge, and crossed the beautifully lit walkway over the Delaware River to the Pennsylvania side. The cars were waiting for us when we got to the pizza place, a bit later than anticipated, and Sue brought me back to my car as I recall.
There was so much planning to do. March had started, and it marks twenty years I’d been organizing these hikes. I wanted it to be something extraordinary, but the circumstances of my situation left too much in question to make the kind of plans I wanted. I needed to get in the spirit somehow.