Hike #923; Millburn, Union, and Summit Loop
3/13/16 Millburn, Rahway River, and Watchung Loop with Brandan Jermyn, Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Jason W. Briggs, Serious Sean Dougherty, Shayna Michaels, and Dan Asnis.
Our next hike would be a big loop starting in the town of Millburn. This was another one that was sort of planned ahead of time, but not because it was anywhere on my “to do” list as much, but because I wanted to fight a parking ticket.
snow bank BS
I had gone to NY City to fight the ticket I’d gotten there and parked at the Short Hills train station to ride in. I parked at a spot that was apparently permit parking only, but there was no way to see the signs that read such because it was hidden under a fifteen foot snow bank. I photographed the site and brought it to court.
I figured I’d do the same thing we did with NY City, I would go to court, and post a hike immediately following it in the area immediately around it. It worked out so well the first time, so why not? And furthermore, it’s taking something negative and turning it into something very very positive.
I picked up Brandan and headed to Millburn. We got to the court and found a good two hour parking area only a couple blocks away. We were in and out with the court. I wore my brown suit, which is sort of beat but still looks kind of professional. They let me on in, and we sat in the back. I was called first after the girl that was already up. I gave my evidence in the form of photos I’d printed at Rite Aid, and I pled “Not Guilty”. I explained that I had no problem with the law, but felt it was unreasonable to be ticketed based on the fact that I could not see signs. I also brought photos pointing out that the only sign reading “permit parking” is on the left of an entrance, and anyone would always pull in to the right of an entrance. The judge dismissed it immediately.
Unfortunately, even though we were not even gone a half hour, I’d left my lights on and the battery was now dead. Shayna was already waiting for me, and fortunately she was able to come over and give me a quick jump. We were then on our way a few blocks to the Locust Grove parking lot just north of the station, in South Mountain Reservation.
Rahway River in Millburn
We didn’t actually use the Locust Grove lot for anything but parking this time. I’d come up with a weird hike that would take us to the south and west, first along the Rahway River. Serious Sean and Dan arrived, and Uncle Soup walked over having taken the train to Millburn. We were ready to go, and we followed a pathway through town along the edge of the Rahway River after a short road walk. We then cut into a small municipal park with a lovely pond, right on the river, in the middle of it. It was a pleasant and easy walk on streets and little park trails heading toward the Rt 78 underpass.
Willow Street took us out to an area where we could get right along the river downstream by the underpass. Willow Street took us out to an area where we could get right along the river downstream by the underpass.
RemoveRahway River bridgeI knew the only way to get around would be a rather long road walk. I really didn’t want to do that. I figured I’d have a look and see if there was some kind of way through. I tried walking in the water and found it only to be about ankle deep inside. I first tried to go across to the center, but that wasn’t going to work. Everyone eventually agreed to go through, and we all waded under the thing. The Rahway River had it’s confluence with it’s East Branch confluence here, so the river got bigger. We had to walk under one more section of bridge from the first one, got to the other side, then had to follow a path to the right.
We went along sort of a deer path, and along the top of a drainage pipe, then descended to stream side to one more underpass. We went under Springfield Avenue without having to get wet, then continued along the edge of the river. It wasn’t too bad in this part either. There was an opportunity to get up on land above the river, but we chose to stay down a bit closer to the river itself. It looked like there was a public greenway along it. We saw a lot of junk laying around. Floods hit this area very hard. Still, we were able to move through it rather easily. I recall one spot we got to a confluence and had to backtrack slightly to get over, but it wasn’t too bad.
Along Rahway River
There were pretty giant trees like Silver Maples in the stretch. At times there were sort of deer paths along the way, but otherwise it was some bushwhacking through reeds and such.
We made our way to Morris Avenue, and Serious Sean recognized the area, having explored it all before. We made our way out to a lovely triple stone arch bridge on that road, then crossed over onto Washington Avenue. Immediately, there was a park entrance road on the left from there, so we walked on down into it. It was mowed lands and such, and there was a basketball court, so Brandan and Uncle Soup started sparring with that a bit.
Uncle Soup tearing up the court
I think they had to keep playing until someone eventually made a basket.
From the end of the park, we entered woods along the river and dealt with similar to what we had seen before. Lots of flood plain with tightly knit washed out sticks and litter. We followed this for a bit, and eventually came to a spot where we could go up hill to a flood protection berm. These are agreat to walk across the top of. We followed that section for a while, and there were sounds of sirens going off from some emergency somewhere. When the berm ended, we were back into the woods tracing the side of the river through more woods on fisherman’s paths.
Rahway Valley Railroad bridge
Soon, we reached the abandoned Rahway Valley Railroad bridge over the river. We had walked across this before on another hike intended to trace that entire right of way. Someone on line had told me that all of the rails were removed on this in 2012, but I had photos of the entire line still in Fall of 2013. They were still insistent that they were gone, but now I knew he was wrong. All of the rails are still in place, and we’d pass it on other spots too. I tried crossing it, but it was insanely slippery from the rain, and we didn’t need to be on the other side anyway. We turned the other way and walked the tracks out to Meisle Avenue. The park of the same name was right across. We turned left here on the road.
Stream
We just followed the road to the west for a little bit to a smaller stream crossing. We crossed the road over the stream, then turned left to follow it downstream on the right side. It wasn’t long before it met it’s confluence with the Rahway River.
The stream was much clearer to follow the side this time. There was a rather good fishing path or something on the right side, which got even better when we were closer to homes. A lot of people were using it coming right from their own homes, but the maps showed that it was public land along the river. We kept following it, and stayed quiet as we went close to houses.
Rahway River
We followed the pretty well worn path for quite a while until we got to Milltown Road. We climbed to the road, then crossed the bridge and continued walking along the river heading up stream. Dan was pointing out that there was a Taco Bell close by, because we were pretty close to Rt 22, and actually kind of parallel with it at this point. I kept saying we weren’t going up there yet, I wanted to enjoy the river side for a bit longer. We were doing really well following this section, and I wasn’t ready for it to be over yet. There was very little undergrowth and really just a beautiful section. Eventually, we had to cut to the left and head up to development. I think we came up behind some banquet place. When we went to cross Rt 22 (we’d done this on a past hike with great difficulty), Brandan faked us out pretending to run, and Dan ran out and across.
Sean and Brandan went to get a bite to eat at Wendy’s up the road, while Uncle Soup, Dan, Shayna, and I went to Taco Bell. I had some delicious shredded chicken quasadillas. After eating, we took off down the median of Rt 22.
We got to the Wendy’s and I had to get a burger there because it just looked so good. Everyone was soon ready to go, but as we got a little ways down 22, Dan realized he’d lost his ear buds on his phone. He turned back to look for them while the rest of us continued on. He would be able to meet again.
Memorial helmet
We turned right on Springfield Road and stopped by a store for drinks along the way. I was happy to find a Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot.
We continued down Springfield Ave to Black Brook Park, with a paved trail crossing. We turned left heading east on the trail.
We made our way to a foot bridge where the trail crossed the Black Brook. The water was so stagnant that it looked as though it was frozen. We took a little break here, then headed a little further and found what I guess was a worker’s memorial, because it was a hard hat mounted on a wooden mount, on a tree.
We continued along the trail which turned away from the brook to higher ground, parallel with some industry.
At an intersection, we turned right. This wasn’t hard for this piece, because it was all part of East Coast Greenway. We made the right turn and continued on the paved trail. Off to the right in this area, I spotted a strange circular thing out in the woods. It looked like some kind of moraine, so we went over to have a look.
It was a giant earthen rim, like sort of caldera. We walked around it, and still have no clue what the thing could have been.
A dam thing at Lenape Park
The East Coast Greenway turned left at some point, and so we took a break at the bridge where it crossed over a small body of water for Dan to have a bit of time to catch up. When we still didn’t see him, we continued straight on the berm rather than continue on the ECG. This unpaved section led to a dam on the Rahway River, which we were able to walk across the top of after going around a section of fences. I had done this before; the section was first shown to my by my late buddy Kyle Zalinsky when we did a Rahway River themed hike. We were now in Lenape Park, and crossed a parking area to reach another berm, with another paved trail on top. We didn’t have to go far on that before Dan caught up with us.
Echo Lake Park
Uncle Soup knew exactly where we were, but didn’t know it quite connected. He seemed to be getting the most out of seeing how we could do all of this.
The trail took us through to Springfield Ave, and we crossed following Nomahagen Brook into Echo Lake Park. Dan I think caught up with us right at that point along the creek, but before the dam at Echo Lake. We took a short break there because there were restrooms, then continued on along the edge of the lake heading to the west. This time, we stayed pretty much to the north side of the bodies of water, where in the past coming through here I think we switched off. This time, we ended up going along a maintenance area and had to bushwhack a bit next to a chain link fence.
At the west end of Echo Lake Park, after the ponds, we tried going over a brook but there was no good crossing. It was pretty muddy. We ended up having to follow the tributary up stream through the lawn of the park before finding a place we could cross. We then headed up hill through grass and picked up another section of trail on the other side, in what google maps calls Eliza’s Crossing.
The group crossing Nomahagen Brook
We made our way out and across the bridge, onto what is shown as “Squid’s Crossing” on the google maps, then followed the trail gradually up hill. It led toward the Mountainside police headquarters and library and such. Along the way, this odd trail had signs calling it the “trading trail”, saying to “take a treasure, leave a treasure”. It was almost like geocaching, but with just leaving random crap. Everyone started looking to see what was in the things as we went I recall.
When we came out from the trail, there was a footbridge crossing over Rt 22 to the Mountainside Library. I had used this once before, but at the time we ended up doing a road walk, because I didn’t know about the trail behind the place. We crossed, passed an historic home by the library, then made our way on a paved path that parallels New Providence Road heading up hill.
Moxon Pond
The paved path abruptly ended when we reached the intersection with Whippoorwill Way, and we continued straight on Deer Path. We only had to stay on the road a short bit, and we cut off to the right into the public lands of the Watchung Reservation, which has no official trails at this point.
I’d not been into this bit of the park before, and it was really nice walking along the edge of Moxon Pond, a small rather unknown pond right up against the developments to the south. We were able to follow high land on the west side of it, then descend on a ridge section, and ascend again on public land up toward WR Tracy Drive. We did just that, and didn’t have to go too far on Tracy before we got to the abandoned former entrance road to Watchung Reservation.
The road was pretty obscure from Tracy. The only other time I had followed it was from up hill. We managed to get on it, or at least parallel with it, and headed up hill to the Sierra Trail, the white blazed long trail that makes a circuit around the Watchung Reservation. When we got to it, we turned right.
We followed Sierra Trail to the east side of the park, but didn’t continue on it directly. It goes out and around the “Suicide Tower” where I’d filmed somewhat recently with Mark Moran, Rusty Taglierini, and Jesse P. Pollack for a piece on their upcoming book “Death on the Devil’s Teeth”, about the Jeanette Depalma murder case. Jesse had come across some new information and partnered with Mark to put the book out, and were visiting some places for filming when I was called in.
We didn’t go that far this time, but instead cut a corner to follow the Sierra Trail north, around a circle. We then headed down hill toward the Watchung Stables. Uncle Soup and I got ahead just slightly, and almost everone made the wrong turn and remained on the straight trail. We had to hang out and wait for them to catch up.
Once together, we continued on Sierra Trail to the northeast corner of the park. Where the trail turned left away from a woods road section, we continued on the woods road ahead, leaving the reservation. There is a great hidden road off of Summit Road, where pedestrians as well as animals can pass beneath, then over the bridge over Interstate 78 without crossing any lanes of traffic.
Trail from Watchung to Hidden Valley
We passed some really impressive graffiti as we walked through these sections. Once on the other side of the highway, we turned right, or east, parallel with Rt 78 but behind the giant retaining wall.
We walked on ahead, and we got separated briefly as some went up hill to find another path and the rest of us followed the regular path toward Hidden Valley Park. We came together at a turn out there.
I had found out about this weird connecting route from Summit to Watchung from Joe Tag several years before, and absolutely loved it. We followed the path, now farther from 78 to an old road, then came to a washed out bridge. We crossed here, and then continued to the abandoned right of way of the Rahway Valley Railroad. Tracks are still in place at this point near it’s northern terminus of Summit NJ.
Rahway Valley Railroad
We didn’t follow the railroad this time, just crossed. It’s still rather overgrown. I was however happy to see the rails were still in place, despite the fact that someone on one of the facebook groups was insisting that almost all of the rail was removed. We’d now seen the rail bed in a few places and could confirm that they were still in.
We headed down hill and emerged in the back of the Knights of Columbus place in Summit. We took Shunpike to a right on Harvard Street, and we were across from Bryant Parkway. We crossed the road and then began following the paved paths through the park. I cut corners where I could.
We headed down hill and across the bridge over the inlet to Bryant Pond, and headed out the north side of the park. We turned right on Springfield Ave, which tuned us right on Morris Ave, then across an intersection and left on Millburn Ave.
Millburn
We had to dash across traffic. I wanted to get home by the time Jillane was home, because we were making such good time. We headed back into Millburn, and then turned left. Unfortunately, we had gone left on Old Short Hills Road, which was the wrong way. Uncle Soup had to catch a train back home, so he was able to get up to the station platform, but the rest of us had to go up Old Short Hills and cross a pedestrian bridge, then follow a path parallel with the north section of the train tracks, off of the fill, to head back to the Lenape Trail end point.
We’d most certainly succeeded in turning my misfortune into very good fortune. It was a great day, exploring new places and connecting them with old ones we know and love. The positive momentum continues.
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