Hike #960; Northampton to Bethlehem

Hike #960; Northampton to Bethlehem

8/11/16 Northampton to Bethlehem with Jim "Uncle Soup" Campbell, Lowell Perkins, Jessica Anne, Brittany Audrey, Sarah Jones, Kathryn Cataldo, Kevin Kowalick Dan Asnis, Mila Gavurina, and homeless Robert

This next hike would be another point to point, this time on the Lehigh Canal again between Northampton and Bethlehem.
The idea to do this hike came from Lowell, when he told me once that the Lehigh Canal from Easton to Bethlehem was so excellent. I agreed, and told him about the same distance section from the other direction, and how it too is very good. I told him I would get around to posting that hike as a night hike as well, because it looked to be amenable to it quite well.

Lehigh Canal Trail in Northampton.

We got off to a rather stalled start because a lot of the group could not find the meeting point. We met behind the Sands Casino at the lot in the back. It was brutally hot, so waiting in the sun was no fun, but eventually everyone got there okay.
We shuttled in as few cars as we could to the CVS I think it was in Northampton. There was sort of an obscure lot between it and a gas station where we parked. After getting some food and drinks, we headed down the street a short bit to where the Lehigh Canal used to cross the main road. It’s now a paved trail through the park to the south.
It was pleasant and easy right from the start, and I looked forward to checking out some of the low water remnants of the former canal. The first cool thing we came to after the filled in trail section was the former aqueduct site over Hokendaqua Creek.

Aqueduct site

The crib work for the bases of the piers still remain in the water at the site, which is pretty cool. Because they stay continuously submerged, they don’t rot away completely.
We continued from here on a more natural surface towpath, with the canal prism (the arc shape which held the water) no longer filled in.

Lehigh Canal lock and bridge site

We passed beneath the abandoned railroad bridge, for the line which connected the Nor Bath Railroad on the east side of the Lehigh with the Ironton Railroad on the west. We also passed by a former canal lock site. This would have been the guard lock at the upper end of a slack water section, where the Lehigh Canal utilized the pool behind a dam in the Lehigh River rather than have it’s own independent trench. The bridge was likely a change bridge for the towpath, where the towpaths switched sides. We continued down stream from here, and soon came to a good spot to take a dip in the river. We all went in and enjoyed a nice little break.

Bridge remnant in the Lehigh?

We also passed the steel remnants of another old bridge out in the Lehigh that I don’t recall seeing before. I’ve no clue what bridge this might have been, but it looks like an 1880s style component to a truss bridge. I know of no washed out bridge remnants known to be in the Lehigh River, and have yet to find any information on what this one would have been.
We didn’t go too much further before we got to a really good rope swing into the Lehigh. We of course had to stop again for another break and swim. This is one I’d used before with the group, including on the first time we had walked this section, probably in 2007.

Former Lehigh Canal Towpath south of Northampton

It was a really good, relaxing stop. I was on edge from work pretty badly. It’s tough enough with patrons going crazy all the time, as well as dealing with co workers.
It was nice to have both Lowell and Brittany out, who have a common frame of reference for how things can be.
We continued walking along the towpath, just alongside the river at this point. The river used to be deeper in the canal days here, because there was a dam at Hokendaqua that is now purged out, that provided the slack water for the canal.
On past trips, we had to go up and walk the railroad tracks for a time because the towpath was so badly overgrown, but this time we managed to stay right on it, which was nice.

Lehigh Canal in Catasaqua

Even better, the towpath remained clear to the site of the dam at Hokendaqua. This section had always been badly overgrown, but it appeared to now be very heavily used by mountain bikers, so it was kept very very clear. We were able to just keep following the canal downstream from the dam, where it became canal once more rather than slack water.
Maybe it was this positive development that helped me to really start enjoying the evening.

Lehigh Canal in Catasaqua

The towpath stayed really nice and clear and took us right under the former Central Railroad of New Jersey tracks, a double through truss bridge set. We continued along good pathway out to the road crossing in Catasaqua, and then continued along the road for a short bit until the trail turned back down to the towpath again.
Lowell and I had a nice conversation regarding music, and whether people are born with some sort of rhythm, if it’s learned, etc. My take on it was that it has to do with patterns and mathematics. Everyone interprets things differently, but it would explain, for example, why some people love jazz and others hate it. To the untrained ear, the music is rather random, but the relationship in instrumentation is evident when listening to a piece for longer (that being said, I don’t particularly care for jazz).

Catasaqua Lake overlook

We continued on the trail through Catasaqua Lake Park. It was getting darker, but the trail was easy and nice to walk. We took a little break to look at the starts from an observation deck on the lake.
Some sections of trail ahead were closed because of the construction going on around Route 22 bridge and down to the American Parkway bridge. We had to walk some roads through some sections here, and rejoined the historic canal route at what used to be Kimmet’s Lock. It was here that we took a side trip over to the abandoned trestle over the Lehigh.
I’ve always loved this trestle because it’s deep and so easy to jump from. The first time I did it was on one of the Musikfest hikes in 2006.
I’d never jumped off of it in the dark before. The only like was from the American Parkway bridge just to the south. We got out to the jump spot, which was recognizable because people had tied some ropes and such to the trusses. Uncle Soup got right out on the trusses to take pictures. Only he, Lowell, Jess, and Brittany followed me out there. I hesitated a little bit, and then jumped. It was awesome and I was glad I’d done it.
Lowell, Jess, and Brittany stood at the top for a while psyching each other out. The girls kept stepping out and then back, but Lowell was determined to do it. He finally jumped on his own, and was immediately happy he’d done it. Jess and Brittany followed right after with less hesitation.
We climbed up the other side and walked the bridge back out the way we came to continue on our way, now high on adrenaline.
We took Bradford Street for a little bit, and a section of the D&L Trail connected high above the former canal, but provided an off road alternative for a bit. We had a nice view of Allentown from this, the biggest hill we’d have to do the entire night.
When the trail section ended at Albert Street, we turned right and soon reached the next bit of the canal. The section behind us was another former slack water section, where the towpath would have been along the river. Much of this is now obliterated, but there is still a dam, which is why the water is so deep at the bridge point.

Me being a lunatic in 2007

I always have fun when we reach the Allentown Dam. Like a raving lunatic, I hop across the river on the little pillars intended to block debris from flowing further down stream. The other thing I like to do is to pull myself into the fish ladder and get myself jettisoned out.
This time, there wasn’t as high water in the river or as strong flow at the fish ladder, so it wasn’t as fun shooting ourselves out, but it was still good and silly.
Crossing the dam, we remained on the pad just to the right of the obstructions, and since it wasn’t insanely deep, Lowell, Brittany, and I went across the entire river that way. Brittany fell in several times and went completely under; each time I was thinking “oh my god she’s going to drown”, but she kept coming up laughing harder each time.
We made our way back across the river, and rather than try to follow the towpath ahead, I know it gets overgrown so we used the parallel road for a short distance to Canal Park, from which point it is always perfectly clear to the end.

Historic canal image in Allentown

As we entered the park, a few people were behind, so I decided we’d take a nice break under the dark pavilion above the canal. We walked up the stairs and sat ourselves down. Conversation ensued, and we were all obviously happy and enthusiastic. We were in all likelihood having some sort of odd, deplorable conversation. I think it might have been about women using the “I have diarrhea” excuse when receiving unwanted advances.
We sat talking for a bit, and when we were ready to go someone put a light on just briefly and found a man sitting side by side with us that we had not known was there.
The guy must have been sitting there the entire time! We just walked up on the pavilion in the dark with him sitting there and started having weird-ass conversations. He must have been scared shitless.
We greeted him, and he introduced himself as “Robert”. Somehow our conversation went back to work, and turned to ass kissers and such, and he just chimed in that he knows just what we’re talking about. He’d been living in the homeless shelter in Allentown, and there was some other guy that was a brown noser that got to stay, and he had to leave because he failed a urine test.
Robert was a very tall, slender black man who came to this area from the south. He told us his plan was to head west, farther out across Pennsylvania where he may find more opportunity. Everything was just a dead end to him in the Lehigh Valley. We gave him a beer as well as some swigs of a screwdriver, and he was very gracious to have met us.
I asked him what his plan was next. He said that he was going to a camp he knew of on the other side of the river closer to Bethlehem. “Well, we just happen to be going your way!” I told him, and he was happy to join us for the remainder of the hike.
Kat and Kevin opted out at this point, and got an Uber. This was the farthest she’d hiked with us yet, was doing okay, but didn’t want to push it too far. Mila went with them because she had to catch a train back to NY City, and we’d be cutting it very close if she stayed with us.
The rest of us continued along the towpath heading toward Bethlehem. This is about a five mile stretch of nothingness. It’s peaceful, and the only sounds are that of the river, crickets, and the sparring of the couplers of railroad cars across the canal in the gravity yard of the former Jersey Central lines. Some ambient light from the rail yard shines on the towpath from time to time making it a bit easier to see.
We wanted to stop and swim again, and Robert told us that he knew of a really good one we might not know of, and that he’d point it out to us when we got there. Sure enough, there was a very vague path that I’d never gone down.
Had I not had a good amount to drink, I might have thought twice about following a homeless man we’d met in Allentown down a barely trod path to some secret spot on the Lehigh, but at the moment of care free inebriation, I don’t think the thought crossed any of our minds.
Robert’s spot was not just some hang out; it was a spot intended for river recreation going back a long way, probably to the 1930s because there was a stone bench that looked consistent with Civilian Conservation Corps work.
Robert pointed out a rope swing to try out, which I was all about. I climbed to the edge of the river, rope in hand, but as I swung out, the rope broke and I went crashing into the water. I landed in such a way as not to get more than a couple bruises, and it’s probably a good thing that I went rather than someone else. Despite that surprise, we stayed and swam around for a bit, which was really nice.
From there, we continued on the canal back toward Bethlehem.

Sands garage

We had spent so much time swimming, jumping bridges, running across dams, and other nonsense that Musikfest was over for the evening. I don’t think anyone really minded; we’d had quite an amazing night regardless.
We continued on the towpath for a bit, and I THINK we walked on to the Fahy Bridge, and used it to get up to Bethlehem Steel. I suppose it could also have been the Minsi Trail Bridge, but I can’t remember at this point. Either way, we crossed over the river and made our way back to the Sands Casino area.
I don’t know what happened to Robert; he was with us when we got to the parking garage, but then he disappeared. Maybe someone offered him a ride? I’m not sure. Everyone left except for Lowell and I, who hung out in the parking lot and talked for quite a while, then went to a nearby mini mart for snacks and hung out for a while more.
Uncle Soup had said earlier in the night “There’s no excuse why everybody shouldn’t be out here...”.
He was right of course. People find so many ways to talk themselves out of doing things that promise to be amazing experiences. Lowell and I talked about how he tries to coerce people to come out, but they just won’t have it. It’s not only “if they only knew”, because we all have friends who have joined us, but then had something or other keeping them from coming back.
I have a friend who reminisced with me about a hike back in high school days saying “That was the most fun day of my life!”
“Then why don’t you come out any more? It’s not like anything ended!” I responded.
Similar conversations with other friends have come up, and excuses like “I’m just too busy”, “too out of shape”, “too old”, “I don’t know if I can any more” all come up every time.
People tend to mentally cripple themselves, and in doing so abstain from the most medicinal experience I know of. These hikes are just the therapy I need to get through my day to day crazy life.