Hike #872; Phillipsburg to South Bethlehem

Hike #872; Phillipsburg to South Bethlehem

8/13/15 Phillipsburg to South Bethlehem with Lowell Perkins, Sarah Jones, Jim DeLotto, and Stef Statler

Group shot

Our next hike would be a point to point repeat of yet another classic, the lower Lehigh Canal, in the section between Easton and Bethlehem, but starting on the Phillipsburg side. This was something I'd done as a night  hike many many times, and one of the hikes I'd repeated the most times, but this time we would still manage to slap some stuff in there that we'd never done in the past.

This time, rather than meeting at Martin Tower or Broadhead Lot like we had in the past, we met at the Sands Casino. By some miracle, there was parking despite the fact that Musikfest was going on. It gave us a late start because Rt 412 had crap traffic.

We headed from there to Phillipsburg, Sarah, Lowell, and I started out, to meet DeLotto and Stef a little further down the canal.

View of Morris Canal Arch, Phillipsburg, and rail bridges

We had some nice views of the forks of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers. I went over some of the history of the canals and railroads all visible from the vantage point after crossing the Northampton Street Free Bridge. We could see where Morris Canal met with Delaware Canal and Lehigh Canal, and then how the Bel Del Railroad met with the Lehigh and Hudson River, Lehigh Valley, Central Railroad of NJ, and Easton and Northern all in the same general area.

Dam view at forks of the Delaware and Lehigh

Lowell was all dressed up in his tie dyed Musikfest attire, and he had a hoodie sweatshirt which he wore only the hood to, with the rest of it flowing behind him. With his beard, he looked sort of Moses like, and so we joked that he had that "Let my people go" look, and that he was going to part the Lehigh River for us.

We continued along the waterfront parallel with Larry Holmes Drive, out to the bridge that carries Rt 611 across the Lehigh. Once on the other side, we had to walk 611 south only a little ways to get on the D&L Trail on the Lehigh Canal towpath. The first section is only slack water along the river, provided by the dam. Not an historic dam, the original was replaced, but this was the original towpath site.

I had neglected to change into my sneakers before leaving work, and was wearing my uncomfortable steel toe work boots. I decided to just take them off and go barefoot for as much as I could handle. After all, I had done almost this entire hike barefoot back in 2009. I could handle it.

We continued on the towpath out to the first lock site, and I explained how miter gate locks worked. We then headed along the trail to the west, away from the canal a bit and to see the ruins of the Glendon Iron Works. I didn't bother walking in because there's tons of broken glass and I was barefoot.

We had no problem getting to the old Glendon Bridge, and DeLotto and Stef were waiting there, but on the other side from us. We didn't realize how close together we were until I finally called him up.

Once we were met up, I posed the question to the group: would they like to follow the regular trail all the way through, or would they like to do something maybe a little more crazy. Fortunately, they called for the craziness, so off we went, still remaining on the proper towpath rather than following the D&L Trail across the old Glendon Bridge.

Lehigh Canal in Hugh Moore Park

The canal towpath had a more natural surface to it at this point, the paved one had moved off. It was a really pleasant spot to walk on through. We continued along the towpath to where the canal boat, The Josiah White II was moored in the canal. This is one of the few places where one can take a ride on an authentic style canal boat driven by mules.

Lehigh Canal towpath at slack water

My first real introduction to canals was at this point, when my grandfather first brought me for a hike on the Lehigh Canal when I was five here. Of course, I grew up on the Morris Canal, I had the canal book, and I knew of it, but I didn't understand how it worked until experiencing the Lehigh Canal.

Historic view of the mule bridge

There were a lot of people around, walking and such. Then, an entire group of kids on bicycles wearing matching bright yellowish green shirts went by us. We waited out of the way for them all to pass, but then had to walk by them all again as we passed the old lock tender's house. From here, we passed one of the best preserved/restored locks on the Lehigh Canal, and headed on to beyond Chain Dam, where the canal once again used slack water of the Lehigh River rather than it's own separate trench.

Present view of the former mule bridge

We continued on the well mowed towpath trail along the water above the chain dam to the former mule bridge site. At first, mules were ferried across the river to a towpath on the other side, but when an amusement park opened at Island Park, just across from here, the towpath was moved along with the canal to that point.

Historic view of the mule bridge

The interesting looking swinging cable bridge is gone save for one of the cables that once carried it over the main flow of the Lehigh. Up until very recently, both cables were still in place, but this time I noticed that only one of the cables remained across the river. It may actually be the oldest bridge remnant still spanning the Lehigh, but I am not totally sure.

Walkin the tracks

We hiked on past the old mule bridge site onto the railroad tracks. Some cyclists that were trying to go by us stopped when they got to this point because they didn't know what to do to continue on.

The tracks were originally those of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, now still active as Norfolk Southern. Trains regularly go by on them, and some already had while we were walking parallel. Fortunately, none went by the entire time we were walking the section ahead. I had walked the section once before, on Father's Day in 2002.

The section of tracks started to drag on for what seemed like a while. I had to put my shoes back on when we got to them, because it'd be getting darker and I wouldn't see the obstacles like broken glass and such, and because it was heavy ballast rock that is hard to walk on with shoes let alone bare foot.

Eventually, we got to the Rt 33 bridge. Here, we climbed a wash out area to the left, steeply up to the under side of the bridge. From there, we were able to climb onto the walkway underneath. It's amazing that there are no signs saying "no trespassing" or anything on this. On the way up, there was remnant of an older road and bridge underpass.

Heading up, DeLotto got a problem going up, so I went down to help him. Once we were all together, we slowly made our way over the bridge.

Under

It's rather unnerving looking through open grates straight to the ground, or even the river. Sometimes we just had to look straight on ahead as not to get dizzy. It's sort of against instinct to just keep on walking over something with the illusion that you'll just fall on through it. The tracks in particular, below me, put that into perspective. Still, we continued moving on.

Lookin down

It was getting later than I'd anticipated it being at this point. The sun was going down, but there is really no better place to see such a thing than under this bridge. I moved on across probably the fastest, and Sarah and Lowell were both pretty quick too. Stef and DeLotto were back a bit more, but actually didn't take very long. Sarah pointed out that there were people on the other side of the bridge she could see. I figured (and hoped) it was just kids moving off because they were scared of us maybe being workers.

Lehigh view

We continued on and everything was fine. The kids were climbing down still when we got to the other side. I said hello as not to scare them off. They were already on their way out though. We carefully climbed on down on the girders. Lowell's tee shirt ironically matched all of the graffiti on this particular side of the bridge.

Lowell wore his under bridge camouflage.

Once we got down, we headed down the informal path which led to the former Central Railroad of NJ connector to the Easton and Northern line. Now a paved trail, we steeply headed down to it and then headed to the east once more, to the first good path down to the former CNJ main line. We emerged into an area of giant bike jumps, then to the rail bed which now serves as the local boat launch access road. We went left, then right down to regain the Lehigh Canal towpath.

We turned right onto the canal, and soon reached the slack water section with good depth and rip rap rock. Lowell and I went in for a swim here, but I don't recall if anyone else opted to go in. I think Sarah did a bit.

We continued from here out to a boat club access. It was now dark, and when we got to the road, there were lots of vehicles with headlights coming through. I'm not used to seeing anyone come down that road at all. There were also cyclists passing through, so I didn't feel as bad. Even they use this trail at night. There was once a change bridge, where the towpath switched sides, at this point, as well as a lock. We switched to the other side of the canal, which was just the dry prism at this point, and continued west.

It was dark, but easy to follow. We made our way through to the next lock site, and the masonry ruins of the tender's house were in worse shape than even my last couple times out. I wonder how much longer these ruins will last before they completely crumble to nothing.

We continued on, and I stopped for another swim spot at a rope swing area before getting to Freemansburg. It was dark, and no one else really felt like going in. I think Lowell might have, but I don't recall for certain. No one else really seemed into it at this point. We continued on along the trail from here to Freemansburg, where there is a lovely restored lock house, and the former lock is kept clear and now with walkways for interpretation.

The canal still had water in it from this area on. We continued walking through the town vicinity, and underneath the road that crosses the Lehigh. It was really pleasant passing through. Since we did extra stuff, we opted to cross the Lehigh at the Minsi Trail Bridge, and head directly to Sands Casino and walk around there. I had never been inside since it was built, and had only used it for parking for this same night hike once in 2009. At that time, we did not go inside although it was open.

View

When we got to Minsi Trail Bridge, we got on the walkway climbing up to the deck of the bridge on stairs and headed over. I had also crossed this bridge with my brother and friend Skyler in 2002. Looking off to the right, I did not even recognize any of this as being where I had been at that time.

View taken on my hike in 2002

Bethlehem Steel at the time was just a closed, old industrial waste land with skeletal remains of what were once the busy industrial buildings, rail lines, bridges, etc. I remember taking the picture here in 2002 and thinking to myself that one day I would be thankful for getting this.

View

I was more thankful than I thought I would be. For one, it was dark and it would be hard to match it up to what I had taken then, but further it looks completely different than it did back then.

We walked on across the rest of the Minsi Trail Bridge, then turned right along the road on the other side. Cars were moving around like crazy from the Sands Casino, around a lit circle out of the parking garage. I looked forward to seeing the inside of the place. I had wanted to for six years now, but just never got around to going inside. I wondered if I would be disappointed or amazed. I had Atlantic City and Las Vegas experiences to compare it to.

We followed a black fence which headed down hill on a steep slope. It wasn't really easy in the dark, but we managed to get down to the road, then onto the sidewalk leading into the casino.

Escelator!

More than anything else, this was like a mall. Exactly like a mall. Escalators, store fronts, benches. There was literally no difference. We walked down a long corridor after going up the main escalator in the middle There were a lot of people around, but the stores didn't look very busy. I wondered how busy they'd be if it wasn't almost midnight. I suppose it must do well enough.

We soon reached the floor where the gambling occurs. There were security guards to check our drivers licenses, and Lowell is not 21 yet. We had to stand around and wait for another guard to walk him through the area to the other side, so we didn't get to really walk through the casino area much. I at least got to see what it looked like.

Casino

The light scheme inside was quite nice, a very good ambiance, but at the same time the whole thing was rather depressing to me. There were a lot of old folks just putting coins into machines with hopes ending in disappointments. I thought about Trump and his failing casino, and all of them that failed in Atlantic City, and all of the ones failing in Vegas.

Group

It's so strange that something so bright can be so depressing. We headed out the other side of the casino area and said goodbye to the friendly guard who walked us through, and then made our way to an elevator. We didn't need it, but figured it would just be fun to go down. We were in pretty high spirits because it was such a nice night hike.

Garage!

More than usual, the night hikes lately have become a great reminiscence but also maybe too much evidence of the passage of time for me personally.

Something as hard as metal rusts away, wood rots and deteriorates, tiny grasses grow into plants and trees so much taller than me. I wonder how I can feel as strong as ever and yet something seemingly stronger, like the stone walls of the collapsing lock house we passed earlier could be crumbling to rubble. It makes me wonder when I'll start to crumble.

Nothing last forever I know, but life is so good, I just don't want it to end.