Hike #943; Whitehouse Station to Flemington

Hike #943; Whitehouse Station to Flemington

6/7-6/8/16 Whitehouse Station to Flemington with Lerch (Kralc Leahcim), Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Jason W. Briggs, Alyssa Lidman, Brandan Jermyn, Gregg Hudis, Stephen Argentina, Chris James Nani (The Colonel), and Jillane Becker.

Our next hike would be another Hunterdon County winner, a night hike between Whitehouse Station and Flemington.

I had actually posted the hike between Clinton and Flemington, heavily focusing the trip on swimming spots and the South Branch of the Raritan River, but then the high temperature for the day was only 65 and heavy rain knocked out the humidity a lot. I posed the question to the group if they minded me changing the hike to something good, but more appropriate for the weather. They all agreed, and so we shuttled with Lerch and Jason to Whitehouse Station, at a strip mall near the intersection of Rt 22 and Lake Drive.

Looking north on former Rockaway Valley Railroad bed

I had this as an alternative in the back of my head, as well as others, but I figured this particular hike would be good for this particular group. We started walking at the strip mall and stopped for some drinks before continuing on. We then got on Rt 22 and headed to the intersection with Rt 523. This is an offset intersection, where for a short time it is co-aligned with 523. In that short section is where the Rockaway Valley Railroad would have crossed over what is now Rt 22.

Former Rockaway Valley Railroad bed

It had been a long time since I’d tried to walk this section of the railroad bed. I may not have walked it since I went with my late buddy Kyle Zalinsky in early 2010. It was pretty overgrown, although it helped that a fiber optic line had been places beneath much of it.
Everyone followed me down from the highway, and I fought through the weeds. It got kind of wet, and I had to deviate to the left in order to keep at least somewhat dry. I kept my eyes open to the left because I knew the railroad bed would soon turn away from the somewhat cleared utility right of way. When I saw it, I turned, and knew I was going the correct way because I passed some old concrete abutments.

Old Rockaway Valley Railroad bridge site

The rail line was abandoned in 1913, but then efforts were made to repair it in 1916, but they were fruitless. It was abandoned and the rails sold off for World War I scrap. The line never did well, went bankrupt several times, and was abandoned at least twice. It earned the monicker “Rockabye Baby” because it’s poor grades cuased trains to rock back and forth, and there were regular derailments.
The line was built in 1888 to haul peaches, because Hunterdon County was the peach capital of the world, but the blight killed almost all of them off in 1890, so the railroad never had the chance to succeed.
We followed along the right of way for a bit, and then came to an interesting cleared path that had never been there any of my past times in the area. It was an official trail, and it pretty much seemed to follow the railroad bed.

Crossing attempt

Even though it was out of the way by a bit, I decided to stay on the trail for a bit. It turned right to follow a creek after leaving the railroad bed, and then came out at the dam for Cushetunk Lake, at a development area. There were some rocks at the base of the dam, and so it wasn’t too tough to hop across to the other side.
There were a few kids there fishing when we arrived, and they must have thought we were police or something at first. Lerch assured them that they were fine with us there, and I asked them about the path and where we could get through to the ball field park I’d been looking for.

Along the creek

They didn’t seem to know, so we figured it out. We walked up the hill a bit from the spillway area, then found an obscure path into the woods on a hill above the Rockaway Creek. This eventually led us out to an open area with some sort of a water treatment. I didn’t realize we had come so far from the railroad bed, and we went to go around it. Lerch went ahead to see if he could get through, but then I decided it was smarter to continue walking away from the place. Going back into Whitehouse Station and trying to find the railroad bed in the mess ahead would take too much time. Lerch came back, and walking the route to the north led us to a multi use trail we’d used before that connects back to town.

Boardwalk in Whitehouse Station

We turned left on the trail, which goes across a long boardwalk section, then comes out near the old Jersey Central Railroad station in Whitehouse. We turned right here.
We headed up hill slightly on Rt 523 until we got to Pickel Park, at the Readington Twp. Road Department where my dad works, and headed into the fields. There are paved trails that go around these, making their way toward Cushetunk Mountain and Round Valley. We continued on the ones closest to the tree line, then reached the blue blazed trail which heads out across fields. There was a big group of kids coming in behind us walking the same way as we made our way along the paths to the west.
The other group caught up with us a bit when we started to ascend through the woods a bit. They were wondering where we were going, and I was wondering the same of them. They were headed to an overlook or something on one of the side trails at Round Valley, while we were headed further along on the ridge. When the blue trail made it’s way up hill from the township lands to the county owned Cushutunk Mountain Nature Preserve (a section of trail I worked with Student Conservation Association to create years ago), they couldn’t keep up with us anyway.
The Colonel, even though he hadn’t been out with us in a couple of years, was able to handle it really well. I was glad that he could make it out, because he had just become a Doctor, and was soon to move to upstate NY to his practice and would likely have little or no free time left.

Cushetunk Mountain ridge trail

We followed the blue blazed trail to it’s end, a larger woods road which is the route of another trail, and turned to the left. We headed up to the top and took a break before continuing on along the white trail, which follows the ridge of the Cushetunk Mountain.
The trails on the top were in deplorable shape. No one had been cutting them back and they were barely passable. They also hadn’t been marking them right and several places could have benefited from some turn blazes. It took far longer to traverse this section than I’d anticipated it would.
Stephen was coming to meet up with us, and he started down below at Mountain Road, in the county land parking lot. We met up when we got to the next trail intersection, where we’d soon descend into Round Valley Recreation Area.

Allo, Stephen!

Once everyone was together and we’d caught out breath, we headed steeply down hill toward the reservoir on the unmarked trail. There were actually some random carsonite posts on the overgrown trails, but Round Valley is an absolute mess when it comes to their main trail, the Cushetunk Trail.
The trail maps say that it is nine miles long, when truthfully it is less than eight, and the mileage is the cumulative mileage of the branches of Cushetunk Trail, of which there is an upper and lower, as well as other spurs closer to where we were ending up.
Somehow, when we got to the trail system, half of the group got turned around on one of the wrong unofficial trails and were heading the wrong way, to the fences near the dam. They eventually turned around and were soon heading back to us, but it set us behind.

Brandan and the gate

We passed by the old metal gate that’s been there forever, on what appeared to be the main trail.
This trail was horribly marked and continues to be. The Student Conservation Association has been sent out three years in a row to do the same project of marking the trail, but they could never quite get it done, and there are too many alternate paths with no one taking lead and telling them which ones to mark and which ones not. The employees had only marked this trail occasionally by ATV, and so the blazes were so intermittent that one could never know if they were on the correct branch or not. The trail also goes onto private property at one point, and even though SCA worked to move it back, people continue to use that because it’s never been marked properly.
A Summer 2016 job put SCA out there again to put mile markers out on the trail, with some red marks on it, but it still needs many turn blazes and someone to actually walk it and do it properly, or else people will continue to get lost badly.
We all reconvened at an intersection with an old woods road that crosses Cushetunk Mountain back to the trail system there, and all of the kids we saw earlier came walking by us in this section. We continued on the Cushetunk Trail heading to the south from there.
When we reached the camp grounds, it was sad to see garbage left all over, and animals had torn it all apart. The restrooms smelled awful and look to be clivus units.
I must say that I like the concept of the clivus unit, but in parks there is really no room for them from a management standpoint. Regardless of good intentions, these toilets fail and have to be cleaned out if people put trash in it, but out in these unsupervised campgrounds, all of the trash goes down the toilets and they just can’t work. We have the same issues with the ones at Voorhees, and I’ve seen it elsewhere. The mistreatment of these facilities by public ends up with employees having to go down and shovel up human waste with snow shovels.
We left the camp grounds and made a turn onto the access road toward Dreahook Road, once a main road that descended into the little community in Round Valley.
We turned right on Dreahook Road and continued along Dreahook Road to the west, and at some point Park Police went by us. They passed twice, and one of them asked Dan, in the back of the group, what we were doing. I guess he told them a night hike, and they had no further questions.
Jillane met up with us at Cushetunk Road, and parked at a good pull off spot. We all continued from here to the gravel road entrance to the Bouman Stickney Farm, which also has trails, managed by Readington Township. We reached the old house down the road, then turned to the right onto a mowed trail section. We weaved through the property, and the stars looked great. We made our way through a couple of tree lines, then to the utility right of way through the Bloys Farm, and up hill toward Stanton Road.
I was originally planning to go right, then left up Round Mountain on one of the Readington Township trails, but instead it seemed best to follow Woodschurch Road straight ahead. It’s a dirt road, with only a few houses and is very lightly used. I didn’t want to be wandering the other trail and being close to anyone’s homes at night, so we followed Woodschurch to the next trailhead, and followed it up hill parallel with fields to the west.
The trail took us into the woods, and then connected with the Peter Buell Trail. This orange blazed trail was the original one to traverse Round Mountain, and intended to be part of a longer trail system. It wasn’t kept all that clear, but it was passable at this point. We followed it out to cross a power line, then down through two more sections of meadows. When I worked for Hunterdon, I kept these down pretty well, and even moved a section of the trail to prevent erosion, but today all of it is grown over and becoming a mess of Autumn Olive. Hunterdon County Parks really has no maintenance division any more, and so they just can’t keep up. It’s sad to see the mess it’s become.
Soon, we reached West Woodschurch Road and Deer Path Park. We headed directly across to the Cedars Pavilion, and over to the restrooms for a break there. We then passed by the Overlook Pavilion and soon reached the edge of the property, with it’s parallel walking and horse trails. We continued to the west here, down hill to a foot bridge.

Spinny thing

Some new parcourse circuit stuff had been placed on the exercise trail route, and the best one was a spinny thing near the footbridge at the bottom of the hill. We can really get the thing moving with some effort, and so it’s pretty fun.
We spent some time here, then continued on along the trail heading to the west.
We left the park to Deerpath Road at a little cut through, turned left, went around a ninety degree bend, and at a second bend went left into the Wings Section of the South Branch Reservation. There is a good long trail there which leads to a dead end out on the South Branch of the Raritan that I’ve always loved. I would drive a zero turn mower all the way to the end and get it good and clear. It was kind of nice to see that someone was still maintaining this trail section for the most part. We skirted some back yards, then entered a long wooded section that was quite comfortable.
My plan was to head across the river at a shallow spot to Assiscong Marsh, another section of park land I’d been using for years. Unfortunately, it was too dark and I couldn’t see where we needed to go. Lerch and I waded across the river, and walked up and down in through the water trying to find where we’d need to go in, and for the life of me I could not find it. I decided the best option would be to continue to the end of the trail and wade the river to the good access points across from former Lipton Tea, on Rt 523.
We got back on the trail for a while, walked till it ended, but there was no access out to the river. We had to backtrack some more to a spot where we could get down, then waded the river. We got across alright and got comfortable again on the other side.
From there, we crossed 523, walked along the front of Lipton, and then out to the sports place built a few years ago at Bartles Corner Road. We turned left and skirted the complex, then further left to head into open fields to the south of the road.
I wasn’t totally sure what we’d be doing here, but it looked like it’d be promising on aerial images. It actually turned out to be a great route! We came close to the tree line near the west side, then continued south for a bit, skirting it. Near the south end of the field, I cut through some hip high grass and ended up on a trail! This trail led due south and into the parking lot of an office complex building directly accessed behind the BJ’s and CVS where we had parked! I decided to remember that exact route for future use because it was so convenient to connect from the river.
Even though I worked in these parks, and I’d explored them to what seems like no end, it only goes to show that there is always so much more to see.