Hike #920; Reinholds to Allegheneyville

Hike #920; Reinholds to Allegheneyville

3/5/16 Reinholds to Allegheneyville with Justin Gurbisz, James De Lotto, and Neil Washington

Our next hike would be another point to point, this time returning to the Horse-Shoe Trail near it’s middle section. We had had such a great time with the recent Mason-Dixon Trail System hike, I wanted to do something similar with regards to trail, but in a different type of area.

Game lands

It was kind of disappointing as the week went by, because there were initially a lot of people signed up, but very few when the day came to actually hike.
Regardless, it ended up being a really fantastic hike anyway. Only Delotto, Neil, and Justin came out for this one, but we really had a great time. There was a lot of laughing and carrying on. It might have been a better day than it’d have been with a big group anyway.
Justin met me in Washington in the morning and we carpooled out into Lancaster County area. I was hungry from the get go, and we stopped at a Burger King because now Burger Kings are offering regular burgers at breakfast. Unfortunately, this is not something that has made it’s way to Pennsylvania yet. I was terribly disappointed not to get my burger. We ended up then stopping at Sheetz where I tried one of their burgers. It ended up being almost too annoying to enjoy, because I got the one that had three mozzarella sticks and marinara sauce on it. It was a sloppy mess; tasty, but just difficult to eat without making a mess.
Our meeting point was the Brecknock Township Municipal Building, where there is one parking space set aside for Horse-Shoe Trail. I had done almost the entire trail from this point. All of it from here to it’s eastern terminus at Valley Forge, and actually beyond to Philadelphia, and all of it into Saint Anthony’s Wilderness with maybe four miles missing to the Appalachian Trail.
The Horse-Shoe Trail was first laid out by Henry Woolman who hiked ridden the Great Smokey Mountain portion of the Appalachian Trail on horseback. He deemed southeastern Pennsylvania to be equally as beautiful and deserving of it’s own trail. In 1935 he started the Horse-Shoe Trail club with the idea of connecting Philadelphia with the Appalachian Trail. He and Charles Hazlehurst, who was the seventh person to ever hike the Appalachian Trail, planned out the Horse-Shoe Trail, representing horseback riders and hikers, respectively. Citizens of all counties through which the trail passed organized and created the trail, which was first plotted on USGS maps in the 1940s.
Today, the trail is marked from Valley Forge to Saint Anthony’s Wilderness. The original trail ended in Manada Gap, but had to be extended when the AT was moved further north. At the east end, the Schuykill River Trail, unblazed, can be followed to connect to Philadelphia.
I started hiking the trail in 2008, and have since finished all but the western terminus and this particular section. There is also one rerouted section near Hershey I plan to cover before the final one.

Swamp Christians!

I love the Horse-Shoe Trail because it’s just so strange, passing through private lands and odd places. It never gets boring. And on this trip, we didn’t let it get boring.
I planned for the hike to start north of Denver PA, at a village called Reinholds, in State Game Lands 220. This was not part of the trail, but another property necessary to get my fifteen miles in. It was also an isolated public land I might not be able to include in anything any other way. We parked at a parking area on North Blainsport Road, near Swamp Church Road. We had a lot of laughs about the Swamp Church, and what it was to be a “Swamp Christian”. We made jokes about them believing Jesus was born on the bayou. There were a lot of signs reading “Swamp Christian Fellowship”. It just seemed really strange.

Farm

We headed back a farm lane into the game lands from some fields. There was obviously a house or something at this spot until pretty recently. Aerial images reveal that it was some kind of barn. It had recently been torn down, and the ground was covered in straw and grass seed.
We continued through an opening to wider fields cut in patterns. Quite a lovely area to walk through. We weaved back and forth through the fields, eventually making our way out to Swamp Church Road and another game lands parking area. We turned left at that point and followed the road shortly to the south.

Reinholds PA

We turned right at the intersection on Galen Hall Road and soon reached the active railroad tracks. This was originally the Reading Columbia Railroad, built in the 1860s.
We had walked some of this line from the town of Denver to the Horse-Shoe Trail on one of the previous trips, where we followed the trail west from Denver. I had also crossed the old right of way and traced some of it where it is abandoned, further west in Akron PA when backpacking Conestoga Trail with Jillane.
We turned right to follow the tracks, and there was a handsome railroad station on the left side.
Just after the station was the historic Reinholds Inn, a former station and hotel from before the more typical looking station.

Reinholds Inn

The book “History of Lancaster County Pennsylvania” by Ellis and Evans, 1883, states as follows:

Reinholds Inn was originally named "Reinholds Station" after its founder Colonel Jesse Reinhold who built a large and commodious hotel in 1864 (dated disputed in history books as 1863), soon after the Reading Columbia Railroad Company had opened its road for business. This house was for a time occupied as a hotel, ticket-, post- and telegraph-office, with Mr. Reinhold as postmaster and station agent. During the summer Mr. Reinhold had his house open as a resort for recreation, it being generally patronized by wealthy Philadelphians. In 1875, Mr. Reinhold died. After his death the railroad company built a depot, when the telegraph-office, etc., was removed from the hotel.

Old tower thing or something

We walked by the station and Inn, across a road, and found the base of an old water tower or something to the right. It was masonry construction, so probably quite old. It had some junk inside of it. Not sure what it was for.
We continued on the rail line to the south. It rather closely paralleled the Little Cocalico Creek. I had hiked along much of this creek where it’s bigger, along the Conestoga Trail to the south. It was cool to see it so much smaller upstream. We crossed the stream on a bridge, then crossed South Ridge Road at grade. We continued on the tracks, which were very pleasant, as far as Miller Road, which is the route of the Horse-Shoe Trail, where I had picked it up on one of the last hikes in the area. We turned onto Miller to continue on the southeast bound trail.

Little Cocalico Creek

Miller Road took us across the Little Cocalico Creek. There were signs apologizing for dust, because they were in the process of some remediation. The trail turned right ahead on Reinholds Road for a bit, and started going up hill slightly, but then went left on someone’s driveway.

Horse Shoe Trail leaving Reinholds Rd

It was immediately obvious how weird the trail could be. It seemed just wrong to be going up the driveway. The entire trail is full of “no trespassing” signs, but the trail has permission to be there. It’s quite odd.
The blazes on this section were larger than anywhere else I had seen on the trail. I suppose they had had problems with people making wrong turns or something. They even had arrows painted in some areas. The trail turned left past a vacant cabin, with lots of horses and stuff drawn onto the out buildings. It went in back of the place, then into the woods on a footpath. We gradually began to ascend.

Area of worship

We weaved around through the woods a bit, at first on footpath, but then switching to old woods roads along the way. This I believe is all part of the Adamstown Ridge formation. Not a very high hill, but there were often seasonal views around the entire time on it.
We next came across a nice cross and little area of worship, directly on the trail, deep in the woods. Kind of a neat thing to come across back there. We continued ahead through more woods, switching between more woods roads and footpaths. Some areas were pretty washed out. It was obvious not many people other than the locals use the trail.

View!

Soon, we reached a power line crossing. This afforded us a nice view of the valley to the north, and to the village of Reinholds where we started off.

Weird ass deer stand

We continued through woods, now much on old woods roads, or roads kept open through ATV use. We started coming across a lot of deer stands back there next. I was glad we were hiking this area NOT during hunting season, because that could have been very dangerous.| The deer stands were so close together it was unbelievable. Unless one person is using all of those stands, it seems like they’d be firing on each other. We could see one stand from the next easily.
We also came across one of the weirdest deer stands I have ever seen. It was a giant piece of plastic piping, cut at the top for a door and window through which one could shoot. They must bring a ladder or climbing up to it, because it was impossible to climb up it. Justin, Neil and I could not even get two or so feet off the ground because the plastic was too slippery. Quite an impressive idea! As we moved on from here, we passed several more deer stands. It seemed like we’d get nowhere. Justin climbed the first one, then Neil the second, and Delotto the third.

Passage!

We went over a high point and then started gradually descending. We came to a house on the left, followed by more private land, and followed a woods road briefly. We then were on a footpath out to a private driveway. From here, we followed the driveway to the rear entrance to Dutch Cousin Campsite.

Wrong way? Not for hikers!

The trail descended slightly past many campers. They mostly seemed to be permanent residents at this campground. One was really pimped out on the left side as we walked. At the intersection, the trail turned to the right and went slightly up hill. On the way up, near a “wrong way” sign there was a restroom and lodge type of building. We went in.
The restroom was pretty nice, and there was a shower! I couldn’t resist. I’d worked up a bit of a sweat going up the hills, so I took a shower. There was a warning sign not to put too much paper in the toilet because it clogs easily, and Justin managed to clog it.

View on Horse Shoe Trail

We then hung out for a while in the rec hall. Delotto put the TV on and we laughed at our comfort station we had found. We didn’t hang out for too long before making our way back out to the trail eastbound.
The trail went past the office with a sign reading “Wooded” camp sites, with the word “wooded” in quotations, hinting that what they might consider wooded might not be in line with people’s expectations.
We followed the trail out of the camp ground and along the side of White Oak Road briefly. Just after a new house, the trail turned right between houses in a swath of woods. It continued with a bit of a view to the north.

Swing!

The trail then crossed a drive to a farm. We continued across a fame lane and through another swath of woods with a large modern home to the right. In this swath, there was a giant rope swing right in the middle of the trail. I figure they must expect people to use this thing, because it’s right in the middle of the trail!

Justin of course had to try it out right away. I didn’t want to hang out for too long, just in case we had an issue.
The trail went down the driveway, and reached Muddy Creek Road via the driveway. We turned left here briefly, then right across more private land parallel with a fence. It was a nice little section along a farmland. This took us out to Smokestown Road where we turned right. There were a lot of new homes on this stretch, and a paved walkway alongside the road right where the trail emerged. Within the houses, there was one older one, a house that probably used to be a mill of sorts. We passed that and continued to the intersection with Swartzville Road.
We turned right briefly, then left up a step and directly along the edge of someone’s yard, to climb the Adamstown Ridge. This led us up to Adamstown Road. From here, we took a detour from the Horse-Shoe Trail.

Old car in Stoudt's

We turned right and headed down hill on the road to the Stoudt’s Brew Pub, a nice upscale restaurant and micro brewery close to the trail.
We headed down hill, and there was a paved path in back of a store in an older looking building. The area was a village, a new development constructed to emulate that of an old German village. It had the look of exposed weight bearing lumber on the outside, though we could tell it was only for show. We made our way past the village and to a closed outlet mall in another lower building. We couldn’t quite figure out where the brewery was at first, so we walked all the way around the outside. We eventually spotted it.
I am by no means a beer aficionado, but I know what tastes good. I also have learned to trust what other people come up with. Neil ordered some kind of IPA, and I tend to like those, so I had what he had. It was quite delicious. We sat down for some food and beer. All but Justin got one of their burgers, which we’d heard were great. Even the people on the Horse Shoe Trail group on Facebook have mentioned it.
I didn’t bother having too much to drink, because we had hard stuff we put into the new Turkey Hill “Haymakers” variety, which has tea, cider, and more. We got the cider for this time.
The place was adorned with lots of old photos, an awesome chandelier, a grandfather clock, and an antique car right at the entrance. A very nice ambiance. The only problem was that the guy serving us was rather scatterbrained and screwed up the check. We also saw him mess up with the table behind us too. He had long hair worn in a bun. Justin and I had both at one time had very long hair, but we commented that neither of us ever wore it in a man-bun, because obviously it tugs at your brain.
The guy messed up the first time, didn’t charge me enough, and super charged Justin, when all he had was a salad. We had him fix it, but then Justin’s card was still charged like three times or something. He had to contest it later on. Other than that, everyone was really friendly and the food and beer were great.
We headed from here around the building we were in the opposite way. There was a giant vat for beer making on a trailer in the sticks behind the place, with the name “Vatmobile” on it, which we thought was pretty funny. Neil walked across the tops of the rocks in front of an historic barn as we made our way back past the German style village to Adamstown Road.
I was none too excited about walking back up the hill to the trail, but it went by pretty quickly.
The trail turned right down a long gravel driveway. There was a guy out doing lawn work, who waved happily and joked about putting us to work for him. It’s nice to see people happy about the trail being there, rather than annoyed. The trail went into the woods beyond the house, and continued on a foot path gradually up hill, then hit an old woods road. We generally stayed on old woods or logging roads from here for a bit.

Near half way point of the trail

The trail picked up a gravel driveway route soon, followed it a short time, then went straight on an abandoned road where the driveway made a hard turn. This is around the half way point of the trail, minus five or so miles. It was probably once closer to it before the trail had to be extended to the west. There was a nice sign denoting 73.5 miles to Stoney Mountain on the Appalachian Trail, and 59.6 miles to Valley Forge.

Farm on Adamstown Ridge

We continued along the trail heading east, and after another wooded section came out to a far. The trail followed the fence, then turned left at one of the barns to head directly into the woods. It never ceases to surprise me how strange this trail can be.
We entered the woods again on the other side, and weaved around through more obvious hunting areas. The woods were again full of all sorts of deer stands everywhere. People definitely take their hunting seriously in this area, because they all have personalized and sometimes outlandish hunting stands. Truly the nicest ones I’d ever seen. We immediately came upon one with an octagonal cut wooden shape with lovely windows and swinging door.
We came upon a gate sort of structure pretty soon that was wide enough for a hiker or horse to pass through, but just barely narrow enough that a quad could not get through. There were a lot of “no trespassing” signs, but the Horse-Shoe Trail blazes continued on through.

The land owner obviously had added some interesting personalized security for his property ahead. I was kind of impressed by it all. As we moved on into this property, he had been doing a little bit of logging, but nothing to clear cut. Good forestry management. The trail was wider, and had a sort of grassy surface so utility vehicles could get through. It was overall a very pleasant section to walk through.
We could see once we went through similar gates on the other side why the land owner had put them up. The area had been heavily used by ATVs there. We continued following the trail, which doubled as an ATV path, and came out on a driveway road or something. The trail crossed it and went into a tiny swath of woods on the other side, then crossed it again oddly enough, and began to descend the ridge to the north.

We continued along parallel with more private land, and crossed another road known as Adamstown Road. Across from here, the trail followed a driveway directly to the east. There were actually two driveways, a gravel and a paved as I recall, side by side with one another, only a few feet apart. We started by following the one on the right, and when we reached the last house we switched to the one on the left, and passed a little pond on the left.

Pond

After the pond, the trail continued to meander a bit with the road, which ceased being so straight. When the last house was on the right of us, the trail continued straight into the woods ahead. We descended a bit through these woods for a while, mostly on old woods roads again, until we came to a power line clearing.
The trail turned to the right here, following the power line clearing. It was pretty well marked, and not nearly as boring as other power line walks because there was a pretty good view most of the way. We followed the power line for a while, partway down the slope. I thought I saw an older blaze down below the slope, probably from a past route of the trail. There were new vertically oriented posts with yellow blazes to show us where the proper trail was.

We continued on the power line for a bit, until we got to a paved road access to a house above the line to the right. We took a break here for a bit.
There was a big fire pit below us to the left of the driveway. In Pennsylvania there are far less strict regulations for these things. Justin commented that if we had been in NJ, they would have had forest fire service, local companies, state police, National Guard, and I forget who else. There was some paper and stuff in the thing, and I turned the embers a bit to see if I could get it to ignite. It started steaming again pretty good, but couldn’t manage to get anything to burn at that moment.

Power line break

The trail continued on the paved pathway from here, and the power line continued straight. There was however a smaller power line heading to the west. The guide book I’ve been using for all of the Horse-Shoe Trail hikes did not describe any of this. It had to be a more recent reroute. We followed the line along a driveway to a split, and the trail continued along a swath of grass and evergreen trees. There was a house with a fake plastic Saguaro Cactus, as well as a moose silhouette.
The trail continued along the power line, cut through the trees, and then followed a narrow route on the power line. It went above the line for a bit on a side hill trail section, then back down below it parallel also. After a bit, it turned sharply to the left to switch back down. There were some nice seasonal views of the Adamstown area out here.

HST in Adamstown

The trail then passed in a narrow swath between some houses and a development road. It emerged right at the mailboxes for a house, down a line of ornamental trees to mask it from the yard, and steps to Old Lancaster Pike. None of this had been in my guide book. It had described that the trail reached the highway underpasses far before here. On the road, there were painted out blazes going to the left, and the trail now went to the right further into Adamstown. Then, we came upon more painted out blazes which had gone down across an open grassy area to the left, to Furlow Road. The trail now continued ahead on the westbound Old Lancaster Pike.
At the next intersection, the trail turned left on Furlow Road, and we passed what we could have reached via a shortcut much earlier had we known this was what they had done.

Historic spring

As we walked the road, we came across a giant sign that read simply “WATER”. We saw it before and thought it was just some off the wall thing, but it turned out it was actually an historic spring site that people still use.
The Crystal Springs, formerly known as Adams Spring, was originally where paths of the Shekelamy/Schuykill Native American tribes came together. These original paths were utilized to create the first road between Lancaster and Reading. In 1823, John and Nicolas Coleman opened a stage line that would stop at this site for water to be filled. The area was found to be a unique natural feature, in that natural sand pockets before surfacing. The area was welled in the 1970s, and it is known as a very unique natural feature.
Where Furlow Road met with Adams Drive, a cul de sac, there was a half tilted over Horse-Shoe Trail sign. This was where my guide had said we should have emerged. There were now fences along the other side. The trail utilizes the Rt 272 underpass of Rt 222 here. We passed, then on the other side saw where the trail turned up the hill to the right.
The trail went up a short slope to a grassy mowed section. We passed near to a yard for a house on our right, with the power line to the left. We then passed through a paralle swath of woods, crossed an access road, and continued to climb up along the edge of the power line. There were always views back in the direction we had come along the line, which was pretty nice. When we got to the top, though, we had a rather outstanding view to the west of Adamstown, better than I had expected we would find on this trail section.

View on the HST to Adamstown

The trail continued to climb a bit from here, to the left away from the power line, further up hill. There was a good side hill section, and it was kind of tough at times. I really need to do more hill climbing because I was feeling out of shape working on it. Neil seemed to have no problem whatsoever despite claims that he had been sick.
We talked, and he said that over the course of the day, he felt like he’d cured his cold through the hiking. I feel like that only makes sense, because if leg muscles are the only muscle in the body other than the heart capable of pumping blood, I’d assume it’s also moving White Blood Cells around to promote recuperation.
We weaved around on some pretty tight switchbacks, and then emerged into a back yard. There were signs on posts with arrows pointing to the trail, which remained only on the side of the yards. We came out onto Witmer Road, and the trail turned left to follow it for a short time.
Delotto was pretty pooped, and so he decided to walk Witmer Road out. It would be a tough climb ahead, which he knew he could have done, but didn’t want to risk it since he hadn’t been out with us in a while. He took the easier route to get to the Turkey Hill store on 272.

The trail turned right away from the road, descended and crossed a brook on a footbridge, then took to a rather steep switch back to the top of the next hill. We weaved through the woods a bit more, and then came out to a power line. The trail was a bit confusing at first, following the edges of farm fields close to the power line, but we didn’t lose it.
I got kind of disoriented because I could see steam stack stuff in the distance. I at first figured it must bee Three Mile Island. We were able to see that from the HST back on Governor Dick Hill on one of the other hikes, but then I didn’t think, we were now hiking east, and that was well west of us. I realized that we were looking toward Limerick Nuclear Power Plant.

HST view

The trail continued on the power line all the way to Rt 625, utilizing a farm road on the far south side of the line before reaching the road. Directly across, we climbed wooden steps to a road known as Pinnacle Drive. This road is really obscure and easy to miss if not hiking the trail. It looks like it’s just a driveway for a couple of houses, but it amazingly just keeps on going far back into the woods. It made a hard left turn away from the main road and was sparsely developed. The narrow road was narrower than a lot of rail trails we’ve hiked, so it was just fine to walk. It was also very easy, and we made good time on it. Dark was coming soon.

HST

Along the way, we passed a pretty pond on the right side. I figured we’d eventually get to the end of the houses, but we never did. The trail turned to the left away from Pinnacle Drive before it came to it’s end. We headed up hill through woods. We passed through one odd meadow area close to a private home that looked as though it was intended for another home itself, but it was never built. We then ascended a bit more, and the woods were again filled with Taj Mahal deer hunters’ stands. More of them that were like tree houses. We never see these in NJ because permanent deer stands have been pretty much outlawed.

We came by one blaze with a Horse Shoe stuck out of the tree. I remembered reading that the trail used to be marked with yellow horse shoes. I’ve occasionally seen some of them along the way. there were still a few in place at Hopewell Furnace in Chester County on posts, even though the official route now seems to bypass that section. This one was growing into the tree pretty well.
We continued from here over the crest of a hill, then down along a wash to Schlouch Road.
The trail crossed the road and then a small stream, and continued on parallel with power lines out to cross Allegheneyville Road. We continued on the other side up hill slightly, just down hill and in the woods parallel with the power line. There were some nice views to the north into the next valley.

It was going to get really dark pretty soon, and this was the last leg of the hike. There is a side trail, blue blazed I think it was, that led down to the Brecknock Township municipal building where we had met. Somehow, we passed by the trail intersection by a bit. When I checked my phone GPS, it showed that we were well beyond it. I recalled the trail being better delineated the last time we hiked the section to the east of here, but now all of the underbrush at the power lines had been mowed off.
Delotto had text messaged me that he was talking to the local police at the Turkey Hill in Allegheneyville. They said that the car would be alright at the municipal building.
We backtracked as it got darker, and crossed to the north side of the power line so that we could see where the trail broke off. Doing that, we found it. We followed the trail with some switchbacks down to the parking area to finish off the hike.
Neil was able to go back, while Justin and I went to pick up Delotto at the Turkey Hill. The police were still waiting with him to be sure everything was alright. They had questioned him about the cars at the municipal building, and when he told them red car with “Metrotrails” written on it they said “Alright!”.
The police pulled out as we pulled in, and we took Delotto back to the start point.
Although it was one of the smallest groups, the route and overall experience were really nice. I love having days like this, experiencing new places and juicing the day for all we can get.
Now, there are only two more hikes planned and I’ll have completed the entire Horse-Shoe Trail. Hopefully I’ll get to that within the year.