Hike #956; Phillipsburg and Lopatcong

Hike #956; Phillipsburg and Lopatcong

7/28/16 Phillipsburg and Lopatcong with Dan Lurie, Sue Olivar, Gregg Hudis, Dan Asnis, and Sarah Jones

This next hike would be another tradition that happens only so often, and our third time doing the same.
The new Star Trek movie, “Star Trek Beyond” had just come out, and I always go to see the new Star Trek movies in the theater. In Spring of 2009, the 11th movie, with the new cast came out, and I did a great night hike to go with it.

The poster in front

That time, we walked over to the theater a short bit, then walked all the way to my house after. We hiked all night and finished in the daylight. It was rather brutal, and everyone fell asleep on my living room floor for a while before heading home.
A couple of years ago, when “Star Trek: Into Darkness” came out, I did differently, where most of the hike was before the movie, and we saw it to help also promote the Washington Theatre.
This time, Washington has been closed for about a year so we went back to Regal Cinemas where we saw the 11th movie, and I put together an almost-loop hike.
We’d arrive at the theater in time (in theory) to catch a showing just after ten PM, and then walk the short distance back across Rt 22 to the Shop Rite where we had met (me being picky, I wanted to be sure it was fifteen miles, so I made that the meeting spot).

Warren Highlands Trail at Farmers Fairgrounds

We met at the theater, then shuttled the short distance to the Farmers Fairground track where the Warren Highlands Trail comes out to Strykers Road.
There was a meeting coming up in September on the trail, which has a great many problems, and so I wanted to have a good grasp of what was going on ahead of time. Because of land management issues, I’d stepped away from the trail for a while until things could be straightened out. Unfortunately, this hike made me realize how much worse it had gotten.
We parked at the farmers fairgrounds, and I was at first relatively happy to see my carsonite posts to mark the trail that had not been removed.

Farmers Fairgrounds

My trail blazes a short distance away, along Harkers Hollow Golf Course have all been painted over, as well as the road walk to it, one of the many issues I have to report to the state come the next meeting.
The trail was easy enough to follow because it’s just along the edges of the fields, but I still need to add many more posts so that the route is abundantly clear.
When we reached the cut through to the county owned Geiger Tract, the section Matt, Gregg, Brandan, and I put in had been getting overgrown pretty badly. Also, a hunter had removed carsonite posts, put up a trail cam, and dumped his bait pile directly on top of the trail. Beyond there, the trail has been cropped over and cannot be followed easily.

Illegal signs, painted out blazes

We did the road walk section on Belvidere Road, then turned right into the Marble Hill state park land tract.
The first post has been allowed to completely grow over. The land owners had been keeping the area on the side clear, but clearly they wanted it to grow in so no one could see where to go. We also couldn’t see any blazes on the trees at first. I didn’t think much of it just yet, until we came to the pile of rocks where the first carsonite post in the woods was supposed to be.
Someone had pulled the post up and thrown it off into the woods. I managed to find it and put it back. It was raining, and so I was annoyed, but unable to do a lot at that moment to fix things good.
It got even worse as we continued on. I knew that the one land owner had removed the property corner and placed it further up, giving himself more land. This made it so that the trail, in order to stay on state land, would run across the middle of a crop area, and that the farmer was now plowing over private land.
The property corner issue came up at the last meeting, and I refuse to do the work to move the trail further up on my own volunteer time after all of the hours I put into creating it.

Warren Highlands Trail

The blazes had all been painted out heading up the hill using a good brownish block out paint. The farmer, with no blazes to delineate the trail, put crops all the way across it here. Similar happened further up at the state owned Fox Farm tract. Fortunately, further up the hill, after bushwhacking a bit on the former “Kelly Lane” (A legal road the land owner took the sign down for) , the path up the hill was still clear enough to follow. It just burns me up that we are giving out maps, have maps available on line, and are trying to promote a trail system that no longer goes through.
The county acts on issues when reported, but the state does not. A park police officer told me right out he would not do anything if sent up to the Warren County properties because “those people have more a right to that land than we do”. I will no longer call Park Police myself; first, because an officer told me right out never to call them unless I saw “fists flying”, and after reporting several dump sites, another gave me a parking ticket for parking at my own work place, and told me not to let him catch me in the park until my exhaust was fixed (which I had an appointing for within two days). Certain officers can, will, and have retaliated making it difficult to report real issues.

Closed over Warren Highlands Trail

Furthermore, maintenance in state parks cannot answer to any of the issues either. Because the properties are all assigned to Spruce Run Recreation Area, where I work, it is the last thing in the priority list, especially in Summer.
There are 132 toilets in 16 different buildings at Spruce Run alone, and then there are the campgrounds, grills, and countless other things. After that, there is Voorhees State Park with six more restroom buildings as well as camp grounds, and then three more restrooms at Hacklebarney State Park. We’ve had trees down over trails in these places for over six months, and when I ask when I can take care of them, the answer has been “maybe in the fall”.
As we entered the woods section of the Warren Highlands Trail, still on state land, we came upon a mess of fallen trees that had to be climbed through in the pouring rain. This was no simple task to take care of. This was stuff that would require days with chainsaws to fix.
As long as these properties are assigned to Spruce Run, no one will ever see to them. There is only so much volunteers can do, and at this point the volunteers coming forward cannot even find where the trail is supposed to be.

Gregg!

We continued on the trail and I went rather far ahead. I was so annoyed with the situation.
To make matters worse, I feel so slighted by work because despite the fact that I put in volunteer time after work as well as every Sunday for the hikes, they want to again try to force me to work Sundays next Summer, as I go into my twentieth year leading these hikes.
We have to address so many hazards on trails and otherwise throughout the other three parks, but the issues with Warren County are probably the worst of any of the properties, and absolutely nothing is done.

Dan in the water

We stopped in the Fulmer Mine for a break, which always makes me feel better. I needed to cool off both literally and figuratively. Once we left, we headed down the well opened Warren Highlands Trail to River Road, then crossed and went down to the Delaware to take a dip.
It was so hot that even Dan went in! We swam around for a bit, then headed along the Delaware River a bit down stream to the giant concrete pipe.
No one ever gets tired of that, so we went on through and came out on South Main Street. We then walked the trail route for a bit to Union Square where we stopped for a break.
I don’t recall if I got something to eat at the hot dog stand or not, but we did stop there.

Dan in a pipe

From this point, we headed onto the former Bel Del Railroad. I showed everyone the old Morris Canal Arch, which was the end of Inclined Plane 11 West, and the western terminus of the canal.
We continued from this point along the former canal route through the riverside park. A paved trail follows where the canal used to go.
Once we got to the far end of the park, we turned right through a hole in a fence, then into former industrial lands where the canal used to go, and back to the railroad line. Lehigh Valley Railroad had a spur that went through the Mount Parnassus Cut here.

LV Railroad bed

We eventually came to a path that leads back out to South Main Street in Phillipsburg. We turned right, passed under the former Lehigh Valley line, and then traced the historic Morris Canal route through town.
Morris Canal Way is built right on the canal, and then we had to follow South Main to the new future trail section. There was a wooden silhouette thing covered in tarps along where the towpath would have been, not yet unveiled. Sarah met up with us at this point, having finished with classes. She only lives right up hill from the former canal, so it was easy for her to just walk down the hill to meet up with us.
The canal route took us under Green’s Bridge where I pointed out the old towpath remnants underneath, and then up Lock Street. It was a nice, pleasant walk here out past Inclined Plane #10 West, and then to the new development where they are utilizing the former canal as part of their retention basin. We followed that section and continued out to Rt 22 where we headed up to the mall and headed east.
It was a pretty easy walk the rest of the way, and Dan and Sue decided to skip the movie at the end and head back east.
I managed to get into the movie for free because no one was checking tickets or anything, and then I got free popcorn because both Dan and Sarah bought enormous containers of it!
It was good to finish off the night with a good new Star Trek movie. It was one of those ones that felt like a long but good TV episode, and a great distraction from my earlier stress level.