7/31/16 Livingston to Morristown with Gregg Hudis, Jennifer Berndt, James Quinn, Lyz Hagenbuch, Ric Giantisco, Edward DiSalvo, Gail, Jim “Uncle Soup” Campbell, Serious Sean Dougherty, Doug DeGroff, Tom Edmunds, Sue Bennett, Terri Allen, Tamara Sapilak, Dan Asnis, Cindy Browning, Jason W. Briggs, Kenneth Lidman, Stephen Argentina, Kellie Kegan, Bhaskar, Diane Reider, Robin Dietz
This next hike would be the seventh in the 911memorialtrail series, the last part of the Lenape Trail, and the first part of the Patriot’s Path.
Russ addresses the group
This would be an even greater hike thanks to the guys from Morris County Park Commission, Russell J. Nee and Tom Edmunds who could help guide everyone, and Russ drove the “Slack Wagon” as we called it, Morris County’s fifteen passenger van which not only helped with shuttling, it provided a safety net for those unable to handle the entire distance, or just needed a break.
I met these gentlemen over the years of doing hikes as well as writing articles advocating trails for the likes of Skylands Visitor, Black River Journal, and others. I was introduced to Russ by Al Kent, who laid out the Lenape Trail, then was brought on to help Morris County lay out the Patriot’s Path.
Lenape Trail at West Essex
Russ wears many hats through his job at Morris County Park Commission and brings so much more to the table. He is also on the board for the 911 National Memorial Trail, and rightfully so because he manages the best and in my opinion most diverse and interesting component of the entire 1,400 mile route.
The Lenape Trail and Patriot’s Path are my favorite components because routes have been well identified for both hikers and cyclists. They of course must diverge, because some of the puncheons and rocky terrain traversed by these trails are not amenable to any bicycle. The route across northern New Jersey truly has trails everyone can enjoy. In Pennsylvania, a good bike route has been identified, but the route will alienate hikers, something I hope to help address as we move toward those sections next year.
We met at Speedwell Lake in Morristown, then shuttled with as few vehicles as possible to the Quick Check on the Roseland/Livingston border. The Lenape Trail crosses at the light there. It was slightly rainy in the morning, but the entire remainder of the day was actually excellent.
We tried to get into a circle to go over the route as best we could utilizing the Quick Chek awning, and then were on our way. It would be a great day of laughing and carrying on, and I think everyone had a really great time. To make things even sillier, Serious Sean brought along a lot of “safari hats” for everyone to wear!
Just one of the silly things we laughed at
The trail took us along Eisenhower Parkway for a short bit, then turned left along Eagle Rock Avenue.
It had been a while since I walked this part of Lenape Trail. It was sadly more road walk at this point than it used to be. I also noted an old blaze on a utility pole for another branch of the trail that was never completed by Al Kent, meant to follow another power line to the north. He told me in an interview for Black River Journal he’d just never gotten around to doing it.
Just a bit further up the road, the trail used to turn right into the woods. It paralleled Eagle Rock Ave to the north side. I remember hiking it back in 2007 after I’d broken my shoulder, and having great pain trying to jump over the bodies of water. The entire area gets seasonally quite wet.
Hikin' Safari
Soon, we reached West Essex Environmental Education Center. I regret not reaching out to Essex County to join us for this section, because it would have been nice to see inside the building, but I’ve simply had too much on my mind to focus that much.
To make up for the trail being shortened along Eagle Rock, it was actually lengthened in West Essex. It went into the woods behind the Education Center building, then immediately turned left in a circuitous route through the public land. It had some nice puncheons set up to get over wet areas, and was very well marked. There was also a deer extruder fence, and a mock up of a native American home.
Patriot's Path along Smith Ditch
The trail reached a boat launch area to the Passaic River, and I couldn’t resist taking a dip, nor could Lyz. We cooled off a bit before continuing on to the main parking lot where Russ met up with us again.
This lot is the western terminus of the Lenape Trail on the one side, and the eastern terminus of Patriot’s Path on the other. A seamless connection between two county projects that fit together so perfectly.
We followed the trail from here across the Passaic on Eagle Rock Ave, then turned left and right into Lurker Park. It was here that Tom Edmunds gave us a great little history of the park which I had never heard before.
He told us that the lands of the park were divided all up into tiny pieces and, as the story goes, given away to people who purchased a subscription to a local paper or magazine (though I can’t recall which). These properties were overall pretty useless, all part of a huge Passaic River flood plain, wet and mostly undevelopeable, but a good way to rope people in!
We continued on the trail through the park heading west.
This section too had been rerouted from the first time I followed it. It used to follow a seasonally wet cut in the middle of the park, but was moved to the south a bit, nearer to a power line, and up more high and dry. It soon emerged on the back of ball fields and such.
Smith Ditch
Russ was waiting for us at the next parking lot, and drove someone over to this point to give them a break.
We stopped the group again for another brief history talk and such. James was making odd fart noises with his phone app while walking past people, which never gets old.
From this point, the trail follows a section of road walk to the south through East Hanover. We first followed a section of Ridgedale Ave. We must have looked insane, the lot of us wearing safari hats. Ric had an umbrella that was made to look like the tsuba of a Samurai sword sticking out of his pack.
I think we turned right on Barnida Drive, and just followed some development back streets to Gail Drive, where the trail turns left.
At the end of the road, the trail continues straight along the backs of yards and through a swath of trees to Valley Road. We took this to Troy Road and turned right, and then the trail turned left along the wetland of the Whippany River.
This area can be a mess. People party, litter, ride ATVs, etc, but overall a good job is done to keep the trail well marked enough. I actually really love this section. It’s something different.
We followed this bit for a ways out to Troy Road again at Smith Ditch, a straight as an arrow tributary, probably created a century ago as an effort to drain the Troy Meadows. Cindy met up with us there, as well as of course Russ.
The group at the Octopus Tree
At this point, I knew exactly where I wanted to get the group photo. Just ahead, in the state owned Troy Meadows Natural Area, is a giant Swamp Willow with eight branches that go up and down, and re-root themselves back to the ground. I was very impressed that Mr. Kent saw fit to route the trail right over the top of the center of the tree. It really made it something special.
When I interviewed Mr. Kent for the Patriot’s Path article in Black River Journal, I asked far more questions than we could ever have printed. I asked about legacy, about inspiration. Al Kent is a humble man; he said he never wanted a trail named after him, that he was never good at sports or anything, but that he could walk a long way. He was modest and didn’t care much to acknowledge how much he had personally accomplished.
I paused, probably in part to illustrate to him what this trail meant to me, and why I appreciate it, and I mentioned the giant Willow out on the Troy Meadows with the trail going right over it. Mr. Kent perked up, I smile came over his face, and he pointed his finger.
“I’ll take credit for THAT one!” he said enthusiastically.
As the interview progressed, one of my final questions for Al Kent was his favorite spot on the Patriot’s Path. For a few moments he had no answer “Ohh, I don’t know...” he said.
I gave him a moment while he tried to explain that there really wasn’t an answer to that. Then, he looked up with some certainty and said “That tree you mentioned... that’s a good one”. I made sure to include all of that in my article.
Russ joined us for the hike back to the special tree, and much to our dismay, we found one of it’s eight large branches had been recently cut with a chainsaw by an ATV rider.
The Troy Meadows now had ATV tracks going all through it, both on the trail and out around the tree. The one closest to the ground had been cut so that no one needed to climb up onto the tree any more.
Whoever did this probably has no clue that they’d altered something that was a significant natural landmark, treasured by some people.
Patriot's Path near Bee Meadow
The trail took us through the lovely wetlands, with some nice views of the Troy Meadows, and then back out to Troy Road. We had to walk Troy Road for a bit, then turned left in Hillary Court. It was kind of funny that the sign read “Hillary Court - Dead End”. Regardless of political affiliation, that’s pretty funny for the times.
Patriot’s Path now went into the woods at the end of the cul de sac. I had never walked this section before. In the past, we always went to the Bee Meadow School property and followed their paved paths to the roads or to the power line heading to Troy Road. This new route remains in the woods, and was actually pretty nice.
Bee Meadow Park
The trail came out across Reynolds Avenue from Bee Meadow Park. We followed the marked trail down hill into the park from here.
Once we were down by the Bee Meadow Ponds, the blazes ended. This is one of the tough spots on the trail because of a holdout landowner who doesn’t want to allow for the trail to come through. Still, there is a good way out, and it turns out the way Tom Edmunds led us through this tough spot was the way I figured out how to do it several years back!
After taking a break at the restrooms at the park, we walked around the ponds to the west, then came around to the east a bit to use an ATV path out to the end of Wilson Place. A short walk up hill to the right on Washington Avenue leads to Parsippany Road, and just up hill from there is Woodland Ave and the next blazed bit of Patriot’s Path.
Historic church along the trail in Whippany
There was one confusing spot where the trail turns away from the road under the power line. There is supposed to be a post denoting the turn, and Tom was looking around. He noted that someone had removed the post from that point. Other than that one spot, the trail was easy to follow the entire way through, and that post removal was probably just the land owner not wanting people mucking about trying to figure out how to get through to Bee Meadow. We followed the trail on the power lines to Jefferson Road, turned left, then left again through the open area parallel with Malapardis Brook. The trail continues through open field, and I went down and took a dip in the brook (it was too hot not to).
It looked like there was once some sort of a dam in this section on the brook, and there were some pipes and such.
The trail led us along the edge of a development and out to a traffic light in Whippany, across from a strip mall where we stopped for a lunch break.
Patriot's Path in Central Park
I chatted with Russ in the lot here for a bit until we finally got everyone to congregate back together again.
From here, the trail goes over a little ditch and out to Mt. Pleasant Ave through Whippany. We turned right in town, crossed Whippany River, and then headed up hill to where the Lucent facility used to be at the corner of Parsippany Road and Whippany Road. It’s amazing that the entire huge building complex is now completely gone. The saddest part was that these lines of giant, beautiful trees were all cut down in favor of a giant new complex.
The Patriot’s Path, I was told years ago, was intended to go off road from Whippany along the river to Eden Lane, but that had not been done yet. We turned right off of Whippany Road to Eden Lane, went down hill, then left into the township’s Central Park.
New Patriot's Path where the industries once were
A lot of the group got a bit behind after the lunch break, and some of them were not even to Eden Lane yet. I had stopped to talk to Russ when we got to the west side of Central Park, and he told us about what good partners the township was, going so far as to replace their sidewalks with better surfacing for walkers.
During our conversation, my phone rang from those still behind.
“Where are they?” Russ asked. “I’ll get ‘em” he said, and took off like a superhero to the van to go back and bring the stragglers forward to the rest of the group.
The heat was a bit much for some, and they opted to cut out and ride in the van the rest of the time. Russ has the right personality for this stuff; he’s the kind of person that anyone would say “Yeah, I’ll hang out in the van with this guy!”.
Patriot's Path on an old road along Whippany River
The trail ahead crosses Rt 287 on a road bridge, and then follows the Whippany River on the other side. This section always used to be an old paved industrial access road, and a complex had been demolished in the mid 2000s there. Today, the area looked totally different.
There was a new housing complex up from the river, and a newly paved Patriot’s Path along the edge of it. Apparently the developers had to re-do the trail when they built the complex. It really looks nothing like it used to until getting to the other side. Then, it’s just the same old road through the woods along the river, which I absolutely love.
We continued out to another industrial area with two old railroad spurs going to it. We crossed the parking lot, then turned left into the woods and over a bridge into the lands of the Morris County Frelinghuysen Arboretum. The trail led out to the community gardens along Hanover Ave.
From here, we ran across the road, although the official trail goes way off to the left, over 287 to a crosswalk to cross, then back. There wasn’t really any traffic on this Sunday afternoon, so we didn’t bother doing that.
The next bit of Patriot’s Path is known as “The Jail Trail”, where it passes through the jail property on an old access road before climbing up to the Morristown and Erie Railroad tracks.
Jail Trail section
It’s one of those weird sections; if one were to continue, they’d end up at the jail. Where the trail does end up is immediately parallel with the active railroad tracks, a good example of “rail with trail”, out to Ridgedale Ave.
There, the trail crosses the tracks and follows a swath of land caked between the Whippany River and an industry, followed by a high fenced in cemetery.
The trail emerges on Garden Street, then we turn left on New Street. I regrouped everyone when we got to the next little park along the Whippany River, Abbett Avenue Park.
The trail continues along the river through this little park in a sort of crescent shape, then follows George Street to Martin Luthor King Avenue.
Pocahontas Lake
We turned left here, passes beneath the NJ Transit railroad tracks, then turned right onto Patriot’s Path heading to the north again.
We passed the dam and Lake Pocahontas, and continued through some woods to one more broken bit of the Patriot’s Path. There is a former railroad yard where the trail was not yet blazed, but we just skirted it out to Cory Road where we turned to the left. The trail follows along the edge out to the intersection with Speedwell Ave.
Everyone was congregating in the Speedwell Ave lot; many were ahead of me with several still behind. Stephen and James ended up going off trail to retrieve a kayak they’d found.
Stephen and James like their boat
They actually managed to pull the thing up, but I’m not sure what they did with it, it one of them took it or not.
It was a great help to have Russ there with the van again because it made the car shuttles so much simpler. Everyone had a really good time, and for the most part could just do their own thing at the end.
A few of us went down to the water and checked out the dam some before heading out. This was just about the best place we could finish this hike and start up the next one. It’s a great lot with lots of history and interesting ruins.
Speedwell Lake
This spot was also where work halted on the former Rockaway Valley Railroad extension, which was intended to connect from Watnong Station to the west, but was never finished after a great deal of work was undertaken in 1916.
If only all of the hikes we do could have such overwhelming support like we had on this one.
The Morris County Park Commission Van doors are adorned with the phrase “Enjoy the Experience”. If only other agencies could follow their lead in terms of land management and outreach, the problems we face on so many other properties could be simplified and solved.
Park and trail management is more than just maintenance and management. It’s important to stop thinking so much in terms of management, and start thinking more in terms of leadership. After all, these facilities exist for people, and if we can’t share the whats and wheres of all of these amazing lands, there is no point in any of them existing. A lot of park agencies have dropped the ball in that regard, but Morris County clearly has vision, and our series is that much better thanks to them.
Speedwell Lake
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