Hike #885; Forked River to Collinstown/Barnegat

Hike #885; Forked River to Collinstown/Barnegat

10/11/15 Forked River to Collinstown/Barnegat with Lyz Hagenbuch, Ric Giantisco, Gregg Hudis, James Quinn, Dan Asnis, Michael Darmody, Michael Jay, Mike Heaney, Karen Lee, Tamara Sapilak, Ron Stevenson, Serious Sean Dougherty, German M, Yie Chen, and Raine ?.

Our next hike would be another point to point, and perhaps the last in the Jersey Perimeter series.

When I planned all of these out, I looked at every turn we could make and judged where we could walk out closer to the waterfront, which roads would take us closer, and so on. There may be one more spot where I can get a little bit closer, which I will try to go back to, but this was the second to last serious hike remaining in the entire perimeter.

I had already done most of the perimeter in this entire area, but years ago, and not as close to the perimeter as I could get. At the time, I was not as serious about it, and it was just about connecting from one beach section to the next, and so the hike series through this area simply followed the old Barnegat Branch railroad. I didn’t think much about heading further to the “perimeter”. With the end nearing, I had been going back to fill in those blanks, and this was just one thorn in the side section that I was not so much looking forward to, but knew had to be done. Like so many of those, I was pleasantly surprised with it, but also very very tired. It went very far over what we had anticipated we would be doing.
We met in the morning south of Waretown, near Barnegat at Collinstown, at a small ball field park we had started one of the Barnegat Branch hikes, then shuttled to the north, to the Wal Mart in Forked River near where we’d left off on the last hike in this area.
We started by walking across the street to Haines Street. We had somehow come out on this before, and we didn’t try walking through the Good Luck Cemetery. There were signs saying only residents or something, but we ignored it. We weren’t there to damage anything. I just wanted to try to get into the wildlife refuge from there. Unfortunately, huge fences and no sign of paths was all we found, so we ended up just walking the perimeter of the thing and heading back to Haines. We turned left and followed that back out toward Rt 9, but cut into the woods earlier than that. We bushwhacked through a bit of woods, and came across what looked like a sort of booby trap set up, with tarps that’d have had pine needles on them, with two big holes in the middle and framework to keep the stuff on top. We kept going from here to the south, some light bushwhacking to reach the Murray Grove Retreat and Renewal Center parking area.
We headed out the exit of this place, then turned left along Rt 9 to some sort of spa place. I found a path in back, but it only went back to the private religious retreat center. We kept along the back of it, but then came to a dead end and had to walk around the front. We continued along the store fronts of the strip mall along Rt 9 and stopped at the 711 at the end.
I was in need of further sustenance, and they have two slices of pizza for $2, so that’s what I got. I also had some beers with me I was drinking. I’d accumulated some Weyerbacher and somehow ended up with an interesting strong stout of which I forget the name, and casually sipped them while walking along with the pizza.
From here, we turned left on 1st Street, then left again on Constitution Drive. I was feeling pretty good, even though this was just sort of boring back road walking, it was nice that so many people came out on the nice day. We turned right on Bayside East Parkway, which took us over a lovely waterway, where someone had taken a street sign that read “Curb Your Dog” and made it say “Bun Your Hot Dog”. It was getting warmer, so I just walked right out into the “spoo”, the name we’ve affectionately given the estuary muck and wetlands. We soon turned left on Nautilus Blvd, then on Capstain Drive to Sunrise Blvd. There was an opening in the development into the woods of Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge, and so in we went.
We went off trail for quite some time. Most of the woods was dry, and not too tough to navigate. We reached a pretty good woods road and followed it pretty much to the end to the left. We ended up having to turn back because it got too wet out there. When it was dry enough, we continued off trail to the south.

I Can Hear Music...

We zig zagged a lot, trying to stay on dry ground to the south. To the east of us was land too wet to walk, and to the west there was once some sort of a game farm that is now closed. We continued through the woods to the south until we got to yet another woods road.
This next road was clearer than the other one we had followed, so we opted to follow this one to the east more. I pretty much knew that this one would mean an out and back, but it’d be nice. Serious Sean entertained us with his lovely guitar playing while we walked along. I don’t remember what it was, but we sang some song in this section here. I do recall “I Can Hear Music” by The Beach Boys.
We continued until the old road opened up from the forest, and it was just on a fill heading out onto the Barnegat Bay estuary. It got much grassier, but not hard to follow along.

When we reached the end, where the lane jutted to the north a bit, there was an absolutely lovely view of the bay area. We could see the natural lands to the left, and to the right we had a good view of the more developed port areas we’d be visiting soon.

We turned back the way we came on the woods road and followed it back through the woods till we had more firm ground to bushwhack to the south on.

Enos Pond Park boardwalk

We eventually came to Bridge Creek, a small but difficult obstacle. I had gone over the maps using google aerial images and found official trails on the south side, as well as a bridge spanning the creek. I had thought that this would be among the easiest parts of the hike to get through. Such was not the case.
It turned out there was a bridge, but it appeared to be on private property. What the map showed as public trails were not all public. We had to start walking up stream to find a better way over.
I found a spot that looked good enough to wade, and I started to try to head over. I immediately ended up in very deep water. There were a lot of dead leaves in the base of it, which masked just how deep it was. Everyone in the group seemed to watch in horror regarding the thought of crossing in this way. I realized that not everyone could handle this. I got out and decided that we’d just cross the bridge and carefully make our way along the creek and hopefully find some sort of public trail like was shown on the map.
After quietly crossing, we headed down stream on some sort of path. We had to swing around a fence blocking private property, then were on more of a foot path. It didn’t take long before we stepped up onto a very good boardwalk. We had entered Enos Pond Park.

A left turn on the boardwalk too us out to an observation platform. Michael Darmody lives in the area and was able to give us some insight into where we were going for a lot of this hike, which was a good help. We took a break at a good observation platform where we could look over Eno’s Pond.

After our break, we continued on the boardwalk heading east. That ended, and the wider trail went to the right. Straight, not seen on google maps, there is a good blazed trail that continues further out than I’d anticipated we’d be able to go.
Ocean County Parks Department manages Enos Pond Park, and I was also very happy to see that the trails were actually standard blazed. When the red blazed trail we had been following turned left, there was a left turn blaze. I can’t stand how poorly marked Monmouth County has their extensive trails. There are so many rogue paths there you can never tell the right way to go. Aside from the good blazing, this seemed to be a pretty quality parks department.
We followed the trail out to a good viewing area, then to the south for a bit. We reached the main trail that came off of the board walk again, and continued ahead. I missed a turn off to the left, which would have been more perimeter. I ended up having everyone wait up, and at the very next left turn I dragged everyone to the left. This looped us right back to the turn off that those in front of me had missed, and we continued to the exit of the park from there. I’m not sure if anyone in the group realized we did more of a loop there or not.

Forked River Marina

From this point we had some more road walking again, this time on Lacey Road, and then a left on Bay Ave. We were starting to talk about food as we passed a couple of eateries. We decided to hold off anyway though. We turned left at the end on Rt 9 again, then reached the Forked River State Marina. This is one of those state park properties I’d never visited before, and probably never would if not for this hike. There was a good facility there, and a state park employee working it. In fact, he came out and told us where there were more restrooms, as if hinting to us not to use the one in the building, though he couldn’t tell us not to. We hung out on the boardwalk along the marina for a bit, and Ron played Sean’s guitar a little bit.

When I went in to use the restroom, I noticed it had a shower! I of course had to take advantage of this, and took a shower. It felt great.

We continued from here along the edge of the marina, and headed to the east. We got to where there was a fence blocking the end to Marine Road, and it looked like we’d have to turn back. There was a lady up on her porch who said something, and her lot bordered that road as well as the marina. She gave us permission to pass through her yard, and so I thanked her and motioned for everyone to follow me.

We went back and forth on a series of public streets from Lakeside Blvd to Parkers Point Blvd in order to trace the Jersey Perimeter. We seemed to be walking the back streets forever.
Soon, we reached Rt 9 again and headed south. We would turn left again when we got to Clearwater Drive. That took us out to more waterfront areas, on Middle Branch Road and around a block to reach Beach Blvd. This road took us across South Branch of the Forked River, which is also used as the channel to reach the Oyster Creek Nuclear facility. We wandered the streets for what felt like an eternity, and we were getting hungry.

BROWNIES!!!

After a bunch more street walking through these crazy peninsula development streets, we reached Vincent Clune Park.
There was some sort of a little league game going on when we arrived, but they were just finishing up. At the far left of the field, there was a concession stand and other moms selling goodies with their kids. I walked up to buy something, as this was a convenience, and ended up with a better bargain than I could have imagined.
Since they were closing up for the day, the mother selling the stuff asked what I wanted and said we could have pretty much any of it! I asked how much for a brownie. She said I could take the entire tray! I asked how much she wanted for the tray, and she said a dollar. James had a dollar he donated to this cause, and I proceeded to pig out on the moist, delicious things. Someone else ended up purchasing pretty much all of the cookies, and Dan bought all of these weird rice crispie footballs. I traded a brownie for some cookies, and at the regular concession area I bought a hot dog so I wouldn’t be having just chocolate stuff.
The group dispersed to use the restrooms while those of us left sat around and ate junk food.
I shared the brownies with the group, but ate more than a half of an entire tray by myself. Only two brownies that were individually wrapped for sale when I got there were left, and so I put them in my pack to bring home to Jillane.
We continued along he outside of the ball fields, and Michael D helped lead us to the trail that would lead to old woods roads to the south. We first tried to go through a rough area, but had to turn back. When we found a good trail, we followed it through to a sand road. Google maps showed that this made a loop. Michael told us that this property was originally that of Oyster Creek, then was sold to Verizon, then to some other guy. We followed the path to the left, and headed a long way with wetlands bordering.
We came to one spot where the woods road had collapsed a bit, and was back filled with junk wood so ATVs could get across. We passed only one utility ATV while out there, and it was no one that cared we were there.

End of Oyster Creek

The old road ended right at the confluence of the Oyster Creek with the Barnegat Bay. There was a very pleasant beach at the very end. I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to get through or not, but we’d try.
We turned right to follow the beach to the mouth of Oyster Creek. We were able to follow the creek only for a little bit before having to turn back. Ric and I made it a ways out, but it was no good. We headed back to the woods road, and had to follow it the way we came. Maps showed that there was another road that would go in a loop and provide a different way around, but we couldn’t find it. We did take the very next ATV trail to the left, but it led to an open sandy area where they do donuts, and it had no access to anywhere else. We again had to backtrack to the same old sand road and continue back to the west. We got well behind where we’d first accessed before we found more dirt trails heading off. We went slightly south, and soon we ended up on an abandoned highway.

We turned left on the abandoned road, which had stuff growing through it and had obviously not been used in some time. It did however have some spray paint on it for when someone recently was using it for a 5K run. We turned hard to the right and the road led us right back to Rt 9 near Oyster Creek nuclear facility. Just before reaching Rt 9, we turned left and followed a parallel gravel road to Oyster Creek, then got on Rt 9 to cross the bridge over the same.

Once on the other side, we continued to a sandy pull off parking area near the intersection with Bay Parkway. We had already done over 18 miles, three miles beyond the planned ending point, and we still had so much more to do. Such is the nature of the perimeter hikes, we discover more and more places we have to reach. Fortunately, more than half the group arranged for early outs rather than try to muscle on through for the rest.
Gregg, Lyz, Ric, Michael D, Michael J, German, and Yie were the only ones ready to do the entire distance, whatever that might end up being. I was impressed.
We had quite a lot of road walking remaining; Bay Parkway to Dock Avenue, Poplar, Tiller, Lighthouse, the roads just never ended.
We headed down Main Street into Waretown, then turned left on Pennsylvania Avenue to Vessel Drive. We were back close to the bay again, and there wasn’t a lot of daylight left.
We turned left on Bryant Road which led to a really nice, rather recently refurbished dock. Here, we were looking directly across at the Barnegat Lighthouse, and to the south end of Island Beach. It was cool looking at this and knowing that I’d been to the tips of both, and now I was filling in that gap in between that I’d had to walk to connect them as closely as possible.

Dock in Waretown

We walked to the end of the dock and back, then headed a little further to the south. We had to cut past the dock on what looked like it used to be a through road or walkway, but was now closed.

Survivor shot

Sheridan Street continued to the south, as close as we could get to the waterfront. We walked that south to Oregon Avenue and headed inland. It was getting pretty tiring. There were still so many more roads to walk to keep on the perimeter. I couldn’t believe the group held it together so well and for so long.
We followed more back streets through this shore area and eventually headed south on Homestead Avenue/7th Street. There was a nice wooded section on this road before ti got into more of Barnegat. We pretty much followed 7th Street.
When we began walking into more of the residential area, we passed beneath a good apple tree. Some of the group seemed to be shocked that I just picked an apple off of the tree and began eating it. It may have been a crab apple, but as far as those go, these were somewhat bigger than the ones I’m used to seeing. I munched on that until we had to turn.
I wanted to continue to cover the perimeter stuff as best I could; after all, I don’t down to that part of Jersey so often.
11th Street would be the next good route through to the south. We took this route, then went left on Bayshore Ave toward the shore itself.

Along Bayshore, while walking ahead and talking with Ric, I spotted something. There was a small parking area on the south side of the road, but it seemed only to be a couple of concrete pads for parking.
I had to have a closer look to ee what it was about, and sure enough there was a long boardwalk out onto it. We all walked over and onto the boardwalk.
This catwalk led a ways out onto the marsh, and offered among the best views of the stars in the area. The stars were so bright, it was just amazing. I called everyone out to join me and we took a break at this amazing little spot. The viewing area is known as Double Creek.
We’ve seen so many estuaries; I don’t know that this one would have been as enjoyable if we hadn’t experienced it in the dark as we did. We continued from here east along Bayshore Drive which sort of heads south east to the bay side. It wasn’t long before we were in the residential areas up close to the waterfront.

It wasn’t long before we reached where we could see out across the water, toward the lighted barrier islands, and up and down the piers and residences along the bay. There was a walkway in some areas, and public beach. We walked along a lot of this, and continued south easily with light of the buildings along the way. We got off of the road for a little bit and walked closer to the buildings and their waterfronts.

I believe the road changed names to Plank Road, and when we reached the Barnegat Municipal Pier, there was a good boardwalk along the waterfront. We opted to go up and walk that, and it took us to a really cool two story observation tower.

Bay view

We walked to the tower and climbed to the top of it to take a good break. At this point, we were only a couple of miles from the cars. It seemed like we’d been going forever.
We came down from the tower and continued along the walkway toward apartment buildings. There were some guys out there fishing when we walked by, but otherwise almost no one was around.

Bay walkway

At the end of the walkway, we cut across the parking lot and back to Plank Road.
We walked for a bit, and then my heart sunk when I saw detour signs: “Bridge Closed”. If we couldn’t walk across this bridge, we’d probably be adding another five miles onto an already too long hike! And here we were less than two miles from the cars.
Fortunately, after walking past the detour sign, we found that we could easily walk across the bridge. The decking was all in place just fine.
We continued on the road for a bit more, heading away from the bay and back inland. We soon turned left on Powell Lane, which made a ninety degree turn to the right and reached Lower Shore Road. We were now in the dark woods nearing our end.
While on this section of road, Serious Sean showed up in his car holding a half gallon of iced tea out the window asking if any of us needed it! He had driven the entire remainder of the perimeter that he’d missed, reached the closed bridge, and had to turn around. He was out looking for us, and he found us just before the end!
When Sean took off, I asked the others if they wanted to jog the very last leg back to the cars. Surprisingly, much of the group was totally up for it. I took off running as fast as I could, made the left turn on Old Lower Shore Road and soon reached the cars at Lower Shore Road Park. The others showed up pretty quickly. Despite being offered rides, no one wanted to quit. Everyone made it back to the cars by foot.
It was very late and we’d hiked over 28 miles in the end, probably closer to 29. Gregg and I must have looked like hell when we stopped in a pizza place on the way back for a little sustenance.

In some ways this hike seemed fitting. One last “death march” with unpredictable twists and turns to reign in the end of the Perimeter Series. In other ways, at least to me, it doesn’t seem any different than any other hike. I wasn’t thinking of it that way. It felt obligatory, but also what I wanted to do. Probably the strangest part for me is that I didn’t think of it as any ceremonious achievement like I perhaps should have. This is almost it -- the END. I should be excited more, I should be elated. Instead, I feel hungry for more. My heart is headlong after what is beyond the completion of the perimeter, whether it’s the 911 Memorial Trail, reaching the Connecticut border, Adirondacks, Endless Mountains, the Laurel Highlands. The end of the perimeter is not an end for me at all. It’s an open door of opportunity for even greater things. Serious Sean expressed to me recently what a great year it’s been. I told him with great certainty, “Wait till next year...it’s going to be even better!”