Hike #942; Hopewell Big Woods

Hike #942; Hopewell Big Woods

6/5/16 St. Peters with Sharon Daley Kelly, Michael Woolley, James Quinn, Jennifer Berndt, James De Lotto, David Campbell (Captain Soup), Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Neil Washington, Dan Asnis, Dennis ?, Doug DeGroff, Coco ?, Pete G. Wilcox, Jason Itell, and Megan Reid.

Our next hike would be a circuitous point to point hike for the National Trails Day weekend promoting the amazing connections of all of the trails in the Hopewell Big Woods and their many parks, which would include Coventry Trail private lands, Coventry Woods Preserve, French Creek State Park, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Crow’s Nest Preserve, State Game Lands #43, the Horse-Shoe Trail, and Saint Peters Hiking Trails.

The group in French Creek SP

My original plan for this weekend was something totally different that just was not going to pan out at all. I had wanted to do a hike promoting all of my work on the Warren Highlands Trail in my home county of Warren. I was doing a lot of trail clearing whenever I could, and not a lot of volunteers were pitching in. Everyone is really busy, and that isn’t really what bothers me.
We had had a large meeting about the trail, and building and promoting it. I discussed the National Trails Day event, which people seemed keen on, but when I sent an e mail out to all of the people and groups with invested interests in the trail I got next to no responses about it. I asked myself why I was doing all of this work if my hike would just be like any other hike I do, just me leading a hike with no other group getting involved or bringing anything to the table. I decided to say “screw it” and cancel that plan.
My friend Sharon, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, has an office down in St. Peters Village, and we tried having a hike and after party there years ago, but it was another one of those days that barely anyone showed up. I rarely have that problem any more, so I asked her if she’d like to have another hike and potential event in the area again while she still has the office. Well, it turned out to be another day that knocked a lot of people out; there was a hurricane that hit land in the southern states and the rain was predicted to hit on this day.
When I looked at the forecast, it wasn’t so bad at all though. About half the group cancelled on us, but we still ended up with a group of sixteen, which is great.

Coventry trails map

I planned a hike that would zig zag around and cover many of these trails, a couple of pieces that I’d done before, but mostly entirely new to me. I was very excited to see something totally new, and something that was freshly planned in my mind. It’d been a while since I headed south anyway, and with my 911 Trail and Morris Canal series, it puts me north a bit more often, so this seemed like the right thing.

Box Turtle on Coventry Trail

We met in the morning at the parking area for the St. Peters area hiking trails. I made rather amazing time what with traffic in the Emmaus PA area and the fact that it started to rain pretty soon after I left. Fortunately, the rain let up pretty quickly.
I met the group and we shuttled to the start point, the Giant Supermarket south of Pottstown PA on Pottstown Pike. I planned a back road walk that would take us to the eastern end of the Coventry Trail.
We walked from the supermarket across the street by the Wawa. We followed Temple Road to a left on Kutz Road, then right on Hoffecker Road, left on Laurel Wood Road, then right on Harmonyville Road. It had a lot of really beautiful farmland, so the road walk wasn’t that bad. It rained very lightly while we were walking, but it wasn’t at all bad. The rain actually felt really good because it was like a misting. I used an umbrella briefly, but then did not need it again for the rest of the day.
We passed a lovely old log cabin, well kept, on Harmonyville, then turned left on Cherry Hill Lane and passed a beautiful giant White Oak. At the bottom of a hill we passed over Pigeon Creek on a road bridge. The Coventry Trail went into the woods with no available parking right here. There was one white paint blaze to mark the site.
We turned left and had to hop the creek on the trail. The first few blazes were kind of tough to spot, but we soon found them. Doug was great at spotting that stuff. We followed the trail through private land on a gradual up hill route, then cut to the left into deeper woods. We found a really nicely patterned Box Turtle in there while walking.
We continued on the trail to a side trail that went left to Woody’s Woods Preserve. Jason Itell and I hiked by those woods but didn’t go in back in 2009. One of these days I’ll have to head back and try to visit that spot. I think there is a way of making it into a loop somehow.
The trail system reminded me a lot of Patriot’s Path and the trails we have in NJ. They were quite extensive.
We followed Coventry Trail across French Creek Road, then it seemed to follow a berm for a while, maybe an old retention pond. It did remind me of a rail bed though. We headed up hill and turned left on the orange blazed Chestnut Hill Trail as we continued on from here.
The trail reached dirt Chestnut Hill Road and turned left on it, which was kind of hard to tell at first, but we figured it out, and then cut to the right out across Jones Road. After a while in the woods from here, we turned left on the green blazed Rock Run Trail.
Every trail was quite beautiful, and this last one even had lovely blooming Mountain Laurels on it. It passed through nice woods, and then across a meadow where a separate meadow trail joined. We continued down hill until the trail began to follow a stream known as Rock Run, in Coventry Woods Preserve.

Old pavilion thing

Sharon said this preserve used to be some sort of an old scout camp or something, and the first evidence we had of this was a neat old pavilion building that was still standing, right on the Rock Run Trail. It was very cool, complete with a fireplace. There was a pond directly in front of it with a concrete pier out onto it. It looked clean and deep, and so I decided this was the first unexpected opportunity to swim. I went right in and found it very easy to float in there. The water really felt great, though it was colder the further out I went. Only Sharon was willing to go in other than me. We hung around here for a little bit and ate Dan’s Kit Kat bars he offered. Some of the group went ahead from here, so I figured soon we’d better keep going.
I kept finding four leaf clovers, and even one five leaf. I’m glad when people actually see me doing this without trying, because I get sick of people telling me that I must spend all day looking for these things, when the truth is I only really find them when I’m not looking for them at all.

Swimmin'

We continued on Rock Run Trail out to Hill Camp Road. The trail jogged to the right on the road briefly and passed some old scout structures or something in a field to the right with keep out signs. it then paralleled the road to the right for a while.
We continued north, and Delotto called me working on meeting up with us. I gave him the name of the road, and altered the route slightly so that we’d cover a little more of this trail system with just enough time for him to meet up with us. We turned right at the next intersection to reach Coventry Trail again, then turned left to follow that to the north. Soon, we reached the Furnace Trail, blue blazed, and followed it to the right.
Along the way, we soon passed a sign that read “Charcoal Hearth”. Someone asked me what it was, so I gave a brief lesson on charcoal production and it’s importance to iron furnaces like the nearby Hopewell Furnace.
We cut to the left when the trail looped around, and it took us back to the Coventry Trail. We followed this out to Hill Camp Road again, right across from the intersection with Wells Road. Delotto was waiting there for us, perfect timing, and he headed up hill to park his car.
The rest of us all walked straight ahead on Wells Road, which was a pleasant dirt road, perfect for our hike. At the end of Wells, we turned left on St. Peters Road.

Buzzard Trail

After a while of walking St. Peters Road, but not too long, we turned right onto a woods road that heads into French Creek State Park and makes connection with Buzzard Trail. I had hiked this section before and remembered the woods road that went out to this road. We turned right to follow the Buzzard Trail, because I felt that I hadn’t followed some of the middle section, but had the north and south sections. The sun actually came out in this area and illuminated the woods. It was quite beautiful.

Buzzard Trail

Somewhere along the way, I mentioned that I’d seen the new Pee Wee Herman movie. Pete all of a sudden bursted into a perfect Pee Wee impersonation. Most anyone can do the loud crazy in your face scream, but Pete has the actual talking voice down. Every time he spoke in the voice I wanted to fall over laughing.
The entire remainder of the day was filled with Pee Wee screaming and “Secret Word” stuff. The Hopewell Big woods sounded like Pee Wee’s Playhouse the rest of the day.
We continued on the Buzzard Trail past two trail intersections, and both were blazed yellow with red stripes through the middle. It makes it quite confusing while walking through. Jason and Megan had arrived at Hopewell Furnace and were heading to meet up with us. Somehow, even though I was watching the GPS, I missed the turn and we ended up closing in the loop of the Buzzard Trail to where we first got on it. We had to backtrack to the previous trail, and eventually we came to the intersection with the Hopewell Trail, after passing over the border to Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site.
Hopewell Furnace is an interesting site because the surrounding French Creek State Park was at one time sort of a National Park. It was what was referred to as a National Park Demonstration Area, and the Civilian Conservation Corps were very active there. When it went to state park, the federal government opted to hold onto the Hopewell Furnace itself which is surrounded by the state land.

Wood Lot House

We got a little further down on the trail and made a left on one marked by diamond shaped arrows. The National Park Service is really terrible about their blazing techniques because they won’t standardize like everywhere else. They always have to have carsonite posts or arrows or some garbage, and never done well enough.
We ended up losing some of the group here, who ended up on the paved road earlier. The rest of us reached the ruins of the Wood Lot House. Named for the “Wood Lot” section of land used by the CCC, they gave it this name, but it was originally a tenant furnace worker’s home built around 1800. Oral history places James Hilton, an African American wood cutter and fiddler living in the home around 1880. The building had tenants until around 1935 when it was purchased by federal government, and it saw it’s last repairs in 1941. After that, nature took it’s toll on it which left it in it’s present state.

Lloyd Meeting House

We got to the Hopewell Road and noted some missing. Hopewell trail continued straight across the road, but we waited for the others a bit.
Eventually, I walked on ahead through the woods to emerge at the Bethesda Church where I met up with Jason and Megan.
The Bethesda Church was originally the Lloyd Meeting House, founded by Hopewell Furnace employee Thomas Lloyd III as a non denominational place of worship soon after the Revolutionary War in 1782. The Lloyd family were already a local farming family by the time the Hopewell Furnace was established in the area in 1771. We passed view of the Lloyd House where the trail crossed over Hopewell Road.
Uncle Soup, Dan, and others soon caught up with the rest of the group and they made their way out of the woods. I looked ahead to try to figure out where the Hopewell Trail continued.

Hopewell Trail

The trail soon became apparent into the woods. I passed through and the others followed. it then passed through another swath and crossed a puncheon that had some very badly exposed metal screws coming out of the top. I warned everyone not to fall over on the things.

Scene in Crow's Nest Preserve

The trail soon entered the Crow’s Nest Preserve, a Natural Lands Trust property that was quite beautiful.
The Hopewell Trail went from being blazed with white diamond shaped arrows to reddish ones. It passed both through some meadows as well as some nice woods as we headed to the south through the property. After a final field section on the Hopewell Trail, we reached a triple intersection with a yellowish blazed trail, also using diamond shaped arrow things. We continued sort of straight ahead at an angle down hill, through the center of a field. The trail turned off to the left soon and down to a lower tree line. We crossed a footbridge over a creek and continued on the tree line.
We soon came to a foot bridge over the French Creek. We turned left here on Creek Trail, which followed the creek downstream without crossing the foot bridge. The trail started soon to turn away from the creek a little bit, but a red trail broke off to the right. Everyone sat down for a break here, and Doug and I went ahead to see where this trail went, because it was not on my map.

French Creek at Crow's Nest Preserve

The trail looked to be one that went through, and it was closer to the creek, so we went back to tell everyone to go that way. After we followed it only for a short bit, yet another unmarked trail went off to the right, with a sign that read “swimming hole”. Of course, we could not pass this by. We followed this trail to a section of the French Creek which had a nice deeper pool on it. It wasn’t the deepest swim spot, but it was good for getting wet and cooling off. We went in one spot firtst, but then Doug went ahead and found an even better spot, so we all got together there. The water felt great, but I didn’t want us to take way too long. It was of course going to storm, and we also wanted to get back to St. Peters in time to go to the winery just down from where we met.

Trail at Crow's Nest

We made our way across some puncheons and continued on the red trail out to Harmonyville Road. We turned right on the road when we got to it, and then soon another red trail, the connector to Deep Woods Trail went off to the left. We followed it up hill through fields (the deep woods section was not the part we would be doing before leaving the preserve). There were some nice views from the top of a hill as we made our way around the southwest part of Crow’s Nest Preserve. We made a left at the next intersection in the fields to pass through just one bit of the woods and out to another field, then headed up to reach Northside Road.

View in Crow's Nest

Here, we turned left to follow the road for a short while.
The road led us out to the intersection with Tyndall Road. The roads were very lightly used which made it nice for walking, but at this point we were moving along a little more quickly. The winery closed at five PM, and we had been close to being able to make it. I was in a hurry for a bit until Mike reminded me that there was a bar and restaurant open at the end, and if the winery was closed, we’d still have somewhere to go either way. He was right, and I was able to enjoy the rest of the hike much more from that point.

Tyndall Rd

We followed Tyndall Road down hill a bit, and I waited up to make sure everyone was catching up and seeing the turns. Phone service was pretty good for me all day, but a lot of people had almost no service at all. Mine was a little strange in that I had perfect internet and text message service, but phone calls were spotty. When Delotto was trying to meet up, I had full data bars but his voice wouldn’t come through. Very strange occurrence that hasn’t really happened anywhere else.
Jason checked the weather radar, and it looked like the storm was going to hit at just around five. As per the radar, there was no way this storm was missing us.

Death radar

I still wasn’t at all really worried about it. We had barely anything left, a bit over a mile, and we’d covered a lot of good distance.
We soon reached where the Horse-Shoe Trail crossed Tyndall Road and regrouped. At this point, the trail follows a long abandoned branch of the Reading Railroad that came out of Elverson PA to the west. I’d already hiked most of the entire land in that direction. We turned left into State Game Lands #43 and began following the railroad bed back to the east.
It was a very pleasant section of just simple cinder dirt off through the woods.

HST crossing

Most of the right of way was in good shape as long as the Horse-Shoe Trail was following it, but it eventually turned off to the right. The trail remains on the west side of the French Creek until it gets down by Warwick Park south of Saint Peters, and we needed to stay on the railroad bed to get back to our cars.
We continued on and came to where a tributary to the French Creek flows under the railroad bed. There is still a pretty good railroad tie bridge over the site of the crossing that looks pretty cool. Just after that site, there is a secondary underpass.

Rail bed

The second one had some sort of stone work around it, with a large metal pipe in the middle, laid out. From that point on, the rail bed is in very deplorable condition. We pretty much had to walk on a berm beside it because flooding of the tributary has washed all surfacing off of the right of way. The entire route is like walking a river bed full of very large rocks. Still, we powered on until the rail bed looked like a rail bed again, and headed to the east.
At some point, we had to turn off of the rail bed to get down to the town. It was looking like we would make it to the winery after all, but too many in the group were behind to catch up to it. If we continued straight it would take us to the old rail bridge over the French Creek, which is further north than where we wanted to be.

Tributary bridge in Game Lands 43

I waited a few moments where an informal path broke off to the right. Some in the group had already gone ahead and were reaching the railroad bridge over the creek. It’s a really cool bridge, but I wanted to get back across sooner. Someone told me the bridge was fenced off these days anyway.

Washded out railroad culvert pipe

I finally decided to just turn right on the side path and make my way down across the creek, whether I had to wade or if I found the bridge.
Obviously, the road in St. Peters was straight ahead as was French Creek. No one would have a problem getting back to the cars. I hurried down and over some rocks where the tributary went into the French Creek, then followed a path down stream a little bit more to a concrete bridge across, right to our parking lot. I headed across and tried to figure out which building the winery was, but couldn’t quite figure it out.

Sow Belly Railroad bed

When I didn’t see it walking up the road to the left, I figured I’d get on the other old railroad ed heading south.
The rather forgotten “Sow Belly Railroad” was a short lived line that had a switch back up to the Saint Peters Quarry, and then connected with the Reading line. On the other end, it made connection with Pennsylvania Railroad out near Kimberton, further down the French Creek. It’s amazing that any remnant of this line even exists today. the town of St. Peters itself really doesn’t even look amenable to railroad lines.
I remembered passing through here before, and being surprised when I found one isolated spot where the rails were still in place behind a house. We headed down around the building and then found the winery.

Sow Belly Railroad

It wasn’t 5 yet, but the door was already closed. I was ready to just give up and go jump in the creek, but then Jen knocked on the door. They let us in!
It was called the West Hanover Winery, and they offered us a tasting for wines were were interested in. We hung out for a little bit, and I settled quickly on a bottle of “Steuben”. It reminded me of MD 2020, a semi sweet, but better tasting. I actually rather liked it. They allowed me to use their cork to pop it open. James, Jen, Sharon, Mike, Doug, and I can’t quite remember who else all joined us in there.

Foot wash station

We wandered back toward the cars, and it started drizzling. We had made it back, but the day wasn’t over. I stashed my stuff in my car and headed over to the creek.
Although it was pouring, I laid down in the creek by myself and enjoyed the rain and strong flow of the stream. I was by myself, and I nearly lost my shirt and car key because so much water was flowing down, with tons of mud, out of the parking lot. I headed back out and found some of the group under the porch of an unoccupied building adjacent to the parking area. I went and joined them there, and Jen and Delotto went to wash their feet off in the heavy running water in the road.
We went over to The Inn at St. Peters Village, and were shown in to a table for dinner. This was white linen table cloth, very clean and posh looking. Delotto called it when he said he didn’t know that we should be in there!
We asked if we could have a seat on the outside. Many of us were dripping wet at this point. I had gone swimming, and Delotto went in the rain after I did. The girls agreed to set us up outside, and we had a guy named Luke act as our server.

French Creek boulders

There was a pizza special, and so a lot of us got that. It was quite good. We had a good relaxing dinner and then headed out off of the balcony of the place to the giant boulders along the French Creek to do some exploring. We sat through the remainder of the deluge of rain, and it was over within the hour.

Along the French Creek

Even if we had been completely stuck in it, we’d have been totally fine.
The boulders along the creek were awesome. Delotto, Pete, Neil, Jen, James, Dan, and I all went to check it out.
the way the water disperses through the rocks is quite amazing, with flows passing through tight areas where one wouldn’t think they could fit. I found a spot where I could climb down between the rocks like a cave, and then come back out in another area. One in particular I’d almost have to crawl under to get to the other side, but I decided that today was not the day to do that. There was a flash flood warning, and if I were to go under some of these things, and water came from another area I’d certainly be pinned.

Cave under the rocks

It was still really cool to see what of it I did see. I’ll have to plan for another hike in the area for Summer time, but I’m pretty well booked for the rest of the Summer with great stuff going on.
Much of the group headed out and didn’t get a chance to say goodbye; they wanted to beat weather or traffic or whatever, and that’s fine.
I tried sticking a happy bag in Dan’s car when he wasn’t looking. He unfortunately found it before I had a chance to drive away. I don’t even remember what was in it, but I know there was at least something that was not junk in it.
I drove Delotto back to his car and we talked about what a fun time this was. We talked of how people let negativity effect them so badly. They saw the forecast only for the heavy downpour that it promised, not for how long it would last, or how much of a chance there would be. This hike was overall probably the best hiking weather we’ve had all year.

The lesson of the day was to go where the fun is. Hardly anyone was interested in my trails day plan? Well, I took my event and put it on another completed trail that needed promotion, and where there were other things to incorporate.
The forecast is poor for the day? There is no such this as poor weather. Only poor clothing and poor attitude. We must place ourselves in good positions both geographically and in our own minds, and there will be no failure.