Hike #1151; Leinbachs to Bernville

Hike #1151; Leinbachs to Bernville

8/18/18 Leinbachs to Bernville with Jennifer Berndt, James Quinn, Jason Itell, and Megan Itell

This next hike would be the twenty ninth in my 911memorialtrail series. At this point, it’s not at all what is on the website, as we make our way on the hiker friendly route to the west.

In Leinbachs

The route that is designated on the website does not allow pedestrians, and the website favors more cycling, so I was able to speak with a planner, Robert Thomas, who was able to tell me some of his plans. I was delighted to hear that it would be focused more on Union Canal, and so this brought us to Blue Marsh Lake.
On the previous trips out, we had covered the co aligned Schuykill River Trail sections to the south. We had covered the Union Canal to the point of Blue Marsh Lake, and then we walked the perimeter trail on the south.

Old house in the park

There are always unexpected something or anothers that come up when we do these things. I had been following a map that I understood to be the route of the Schuykill River Trail from the village of Leinbachs out to Blue Marsh Lake, but it turned out that it had been rerouted. For this hike, in order to be actually on the designated route, I decided to start the hike in Leinbachs, and then we would get to Blue Marsh Lake and do the north side, where the previous time we had done the south side. We shuttled from Bernville.

Unnecessary creek crossings are necessary

Bernville was just a bit north of where the Union Canal turned at the west side of Blue Marsh Lake, and it turned out to be about the correct distance I wanted to do.
We parked at a large parking area on James Street in Leinbachs to start off the hike.
I almost immediately took the wrong turn and we ended up having to walk through a portion of the ball field parks on the south side of County Road for a bit, which I incorporated into the previous hike we did passing through Leinbachs.

County Road

We walked through the park, made use of the restrooms, and headed out across County Road. It was really a hot day, but better than a lot of them had recently been. Some overcast made it feel a bit less humid this time.
County Road had a really nice wide edge on it. It was easy to walk along, but heavy rains as of late made it saturated so our feet were pretty much wet from the get go. We followed the road to the west, and passed by some nice estate types of houses. Where we left the park was an historic stone house, just standing abandoned along the entrance road.

Nice house

Some maps are now calling it County Road, but the older ones say “County Welfare Road”. I suppose they’re trying to get away from that somewhat.
There was a prison on the right side of the road as we moved along, and the county fairgrounds off to the left. I think a big white house we saw was on the prison rounds. It had a very pretty dam in the Plum Creek within view of the road as we walked on bay.

Dam view

We headed up hill and soon reached Palisades Drive, with some nice countryside views. We turned left here for just a short distance, and then turned to the right to enter the property of Blue Marsh Lake. Straight ahead, we reached the start of the Union Canal Trail on the left, the way we had accessed the park the previous time. This time, we turned to the right to follow the trail into more open fields. Jason reminded us the previous time that the north side would have less shade than the south. He was right!

Dam on Plum Creek

We headed gradually up hill a bit on a nice mowed path. It took us across an access road to a parking area, then down hill to hit an abandoned paved roadway.

View at Blue Marsh Lake

The trail then followed the abandoned road for a while, and passed a lovely old white barn. We passed through some more open fields and soon crossed the entrance to another public access road, which leads to Dry Brooks Boat Launch.
I wanted to stop and go swimming, but figured we could do a bit more distance before that.
Blue Marsh Lake was created as a result of the Flood Protection Act of 1962.

Old barn

After really looking into it, I found that there was a great amount of opposition to the project because it displaced many families. Many historic structures were also destroyed.
There were pre-Revolutionary War mills, unique houses, and an old lock tender’s house on the Union Canal all destroyed for the reservoir. It became a functioning reservoir in 1979, and is apparently run by the Army Corps of Engineers. Even though it’s pretty popular, and so close to Reading, it amazingly doesn’t seem to have a lot of problems.

Bales

We crossed a levee section, and then headed up hill a bit, where we had a good view at the next tree line out beyond the hill we’d just climbed. We then entered a section of woods and leveled off a bit. We soon crossed over the access road to the Dry Brooks picnic area.
We entered a swath of woods, then turned left along a field edge heading to the west. The trail led us slightly down hill for a little bit.

Abandoned road

There was an opening to the left to a cul de sac coming off of the main access road, and so we went over to take a break in the shade. It was here that Jason and Megan joined up with us. They had already done more in the morning. I think Jason said he had already done thirteen miles prior to meeting up with us!
We all continued along the trail which followed some field edges for a bit. It wasn’t long and we were on a field edge very close to the edge of the water, and a little side path led down to it to the left.

It was in plain view of the Dry Brooks Day Use area, and we didn’t want to get in any trouble for swimming, so we moved on and decided we’d swim at the next opportunity instead.

We walked on, and it didn’t take long before we got to a good spot. It was in a bit more of a cove, so no one would bother us there. We got cooled off, and then were good to move on.

The Lake Border Trail took us through some really nice woods up ahead, with lightly up and down terrain. There was a really cool outcropping of land and deep water directly below us at one point. I wanted to get in and swim there, but Jason pointed out that there really wasn’t a good way up if we tried to go in there. The reservoir was so narrow in this area, the canal must have been directly beneath us. Somewhere we had passed just earlier would have been the site of Lock #42. Locks 46 through 36 are apparently all now part of the reservoir.

The trail left the woods after a bit and started passing through wide open fields. This was a really hot section. We passed a young couple walking it along the way that seemed to be into what we were doing. I told them briefly about the group, but we ended up not seeing them again. I think they passed us while we were next swimming.

Swim spot

The trail took us down around a cove, and then along another narrow spot on the reservoir where there was a rope swing and some cool rock outcroppings. We absolutely had to stop for a swim there, and it ended up being one of the longest breaks. The water was perfect.
From this point, we continued to the north on the trail, which picked up sections of old roadways and took us out on Route 183. The trail turned left to follow the road for a short distance, and then on the other side it cut back into the woods to get closer to the perimeter again.
We headed south around the waterfront area, near where Lock #41 would have been. We continued along the shore around another cove, and then more closely at the edge of some more fields. We turned a bit more to the north, and after the field section there was an opening and an old road to the left. Jason went down first, and there was a foundation at the water’s edge there. Historic maps of the area show a David Himmelberger who lived at about this location early on.

Old house site

This spot was really cool because the foundation and steps to the house led right down into the water directly to where it got to over our heads. It was a really convenient space to get in. I wondered if this might have been a lock tender’s house, but the location ended up not being right. Lock #40 was a bit south of Old Church Road.
We arrived at Old Church Road and turned left for a bit, and instead of continuing on the trail on the other side, we walked down to the picnic area to take a good break.
The water was cooler at this point than it was at the previous spots, but still nice. The canal used to pass through close to land here, where it might be under part of the bridge abutment.

After we’d had a good break, we headed back up and got on the trail on the other side, heading to the northwest. I saw some ruins along the way, and ate some sweet corn we found. We followed the trail out to the road again at a cove, turned left, and then headed down to the Blue Marsh North Boat Launch. This could have been where the settlement of Blue Marsh was. There was apparently a road that crossed the Tulpehocken at about this point before the dam was built. In the early days, it was known as “Conrad’s Bridge”.
I didn’t know where the trail was supposed to go at this point, and so we walked all the way down to the end where there was a party boat pulling in and people getting off. We went over the map briefly, and realized it must have been back further near the road. We backtracked, and of course found it.
The trail next took us to the west and then across a nice wooden pedestrian bridge over a cove, the inlet of a creek. We continued ahead from here, and the trail left the old roadway and got closer to the waterfront again.

On the towpath

We came to what looked like a really great spot to swim, and there were some people moored or swimming on the other shore. There was mist coming off the water, and we soon found that to be because the air was so hot, but the water was so freezing cold. There must be a lot of springs coming in at this point because the temperature was amazingly colder than anything else we had encountered.
I swam out first from this point. It dropped to over my head after being a bit mucky a the approach. After a bit of swimming, I all of a sudden hit my knees against rocks. It randomly got shallow well out into the water. I wondered: could this be the old canal towpath? It seemed like it was in about the right spot.
I started walking to my left, back to the east, and this shallow spot out there just continued on. When I looked into it later, there was no question about it. This was the Union Canal.
There was an island with a little opening to the east, and it appears as though the canal would have passed through there. It’s hard to see today, but somewhere in this area were Locks 37 and 38. There’s probably very little left of them now, but the canal is very pronounced. When water levels go down, it becomes very obvious.
I decided to get my group shot with everyone standing on the old canal towpath before we moved on.
We continued on the trail, which took us onto a talus berm a bit to the west as the reservoir was getting narrower. I think that section is built right over the canal. After that, the towpath does come out of the water during low water months in the Winter.

Beautiful scene along the reservoir

The mist rolling over the water was amazing. Cumulonimbus clouds were moving in in the distance, which really added to the ambiance. When I looked off over the water, I couldn’t help but think that it looked like an Eric Sloan painting.
We continued along the trail back through a swath of woods and arrived at the west end on Heidelberg Road. We turned to the left onto the bridge to look off ahead at the Tulpehocken Creek letting in to the reservoir.

Tulpehocken Confluence

The Union Canal remained on the east side through here. I didn’t know the route well yet at the time.
The Northkill Creek flows to the north, while the Tulpehocken goes to the west. The canal went just barely up the Northkill Creek, passed through Lock #36, and crossed apparently on an aqueduct. Old aerial images seem to support that there was something in that area. We turned right on Heideberg Road, and then turned to the left on Rt 183, Bernville Road for a bit. We soon reached where we could cut left on a flood prevention berm and head north into Bernville.

Flood berm

This was a nice walk. We didn’t see any canal remnants, but I feel the aqueduct would have been roughly where there’s today a riffle in the stream, apparently created for the flood control project.
As we walked this, it finally started raining. We’d had good weather all day, and we had just about reached our destination when it started. We only had to walk a short bit on the berm until we turned to the right to reach the Redner’s Quick Stop, which was our meeting point earlier in the day.
The cars were just on street a little past this point around the corner, and we hung out at the Redner’s for a bit and had chocolate milk while we waited for the rain to let up a bit. I laughed at a sign that read that the place was looking for a night anchor. I thought it sounded like a news thing. I asked the girl behind the counter at the front if the night anchor they wanted to cover would have to do the weather as well. I also complained that I didn’t want to report on any sports if I had been hired. The people at first didn’t get it and then a guy said “ohhh, anchor...yeah...I don’t know why they use that term”.
The hike had gone really well, and I had a lot more to look into in terms of the Union Canal. It was really the right hike to do on the right day, which was great. Just enough swimming to keep us cool in the humid weather, and just enough cloud cover that we weren’t too wrecked from the sun when it was out. I love how things seem to continue working out so well.

Historic map of Heidelberg: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3823bm.gla00029/?sp=35&r=0.691,0.324,0.29,0.132,0