Hike #1307; Rocky Hill to Manville

Hike #1307; Rocky Hill to Manville

3/19/20 Rocky Hill to Manville with Justin Gurbisz, Jason W. Briggs, Ellie Zabeth, Annika Krystyna, and Kirk Rohn.

This was another unfortunate loss of the journal entry thanks to Facebook.

It wasn't much longer after this hike that facebook eliminated the notes function, and this was at the very start of the crazy covid pandemic.
Being in my position, I was extremely critical of the management and severity from the very start. It was obvious games were being played on my end, but I really appreciated these hikes in particular because we had Jason, who is very close to the medical world, Annika who is a doctor, and Elizabeth who is a therapist. Combined with Justin who had now been a fellow state employee for some time, and Kirk who is a critical thinker and former military, it makes for really wonderful and respectful open communication about concerns and realities.

Half of the world was scared to death, and the other half seemed to be cautiously moving forward. There were a few naysayers from the start that said it was all a hoax, trying to unseat Trump, but most everyone was a little cautious.

I was checking in with my grandfather pretty regularly, but not going up to his house because there was concern about him getting sick.There was never a concern for my own safety. Despite having had my lungs burned out pretty badly, loaded with scar tissue from the fire, I wasn't worried about it in the least bit. Many friends told me that I would probably not survive it, and they'd look at my photos and say "Oh, look this will be Metrotrails patient zero".
There were daily briefings we were to watch with work, and we'd be making fun of Sean Latourette saying he looked like Johnny Bravo or Max Headroom (he's probably a nice guy, and we were just trying to make light of what seemed like all too heavy a situation).
Despite the warnings and the governor's "stay at home" orders, people were getting out more than ever. For the time of year, we had never seen parks fill up to such capacity as during this time. 

The problem was, we were to close parks to fifty percent capacity, which forced people closer together than they would have been otherwise. Even worse, we closed to twenty percent capacity and were to photograph it. As a proponent to keeping public open spaces open to public, this was a painful and sad time for me in particular.
This would be one of the last hikes I would actually post to the Metrotrails meetup group, and I don't recall, but I might have removed it or something. At this time, Governor Murphy called a curfew, stating that all people were to be in their homes by nine or ten pm. No one listened to this, and even Murphy himself said later that he had misspoke, that there was never a curfew.
We met at the Walmart area in Manville NJ, and then shuttled to the start at the Shop Rite of Montgomery near Rocky Hill. I'd put together a mish mash of stuff we'd walk to get us from there back to Manville.

We started walking around the parking lot, and then cut out toward a vacant lot where it looked like there used to be a building. We then walked through a small development of businesses and skirted a tree line before heading out to Rt 206 where we continued north until we crossed the Beden Brook.
At that point, things got a bit more interesting.
We stepped down into the woods, and my plan was to skirt a bit of a corporate center of some sort, Nakak Corporation and Blue Beacon Capital are shown there now.
When we got off of the road, there was an impressive old box culvert that was apparently an early road alignment. I would suspect this might even date back to the 1700s.

I was a bit worried because the route I chose would not take us too far away from public the entire way. We'd still have to walk some streets, but we'd also be on a lot of railroad track. With everyone inside, I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to finish walking some of the former National Railroad, later Reading Railroad, in the section from where we'd left off near Harlingen on up to Manville.
We bushwhacked through a bit of a mess, and then made our way into the back of the corporate center. We then turned to the left and skirted some of their enormous solar field behind the building.

Abandoned building site Montgomery

Beden Brook

We walked all the way around the facility, and then cut through a line of trees on the other side to a development known as The Willows at Orchard Road.

Old culvert

I had planned on doing some of this when I mapped it out because I saw a bit of a path along the south side of the development, but I did not know that there was a small trail system into the woods.
We followed this down slope a bit clower to Beden Brook where it was just a muddy foot path skirted by autumn olive shrubs. It wasn't a bad section, and had a little bit of puncheon in place.
We meandered through this for a bit, and then headed back toward the end of the development area where there was a couple of exercise stations.

Wetlands

We wandered along the edge, and I recall I wanted to try to bushwhack through the next section of woods through another business area and then out to Rock Brook School.

I figured we could use the back yards of these places to walk on through to the intersection of Opossum Road, but the first segment of woods we would have to bushwhack through was a complete slop mess, so instead we headed back out to Orchard Road.
We turned left after cutting through some trees onto Orchard, and then followed the front yards of the businesses and school until we came to the intersection with Opossum.

The hill below on Opossum looked really cool and it apparently goes across a one lane old stone arch bridge I've still never seen.
Still, we couldn't go that way. We had to head north on Opossume to continue where I was planning.
We followed the road north for a bit, and I recall we saw someone walking along the road, and said hello. I was thankful there wasn't an awkward interaction there with all of the craziness going on.
After passing Meadow Run Drive on the left, we turned to the left onto a gated gravel lane.

The lane led us out to a wide open field that was apparently at one time used as supplementary baseball fields.
We passed through two segments of these fields, and then reached another tree line where a mowed path led into the woods toward the Back Brook.
We turned left slightly in the woods, and then came to a very nice foot bridge over the Back Brook. I thought we were going ot be heading toward the Montgomery/Lower Middle Township School.

It was a very nice surprise that the trail continued on to the left along the Back Brook. We didn't have to go out in public eyes just yet.
This was a really nice little trail system following the creek to the west. It was an area known as Schuss Woods.
We continued along a nice foot path until there was another bridge over the Back Brook, this time leading over to the Orchard Hill Elementary School from the school to our right. We remained on the north side of the Back Brook, and the trail was move improved from this point heading to the west.

We continued along the very nice trail, which became paved and led us out to Burnt Hill Road. It continued directly across on the other side, on a route I had been planning to do anyway.
This section of path led out to a cul de sac on Riley Court ahead, but continued also along the creek area to the west. It entered the open area near the cul de sac and then reentered the woods. It skirted a retention pond and then had a connection to Dublin Road and Galway Road cul de sacs to the right.
We continued to the left, and the path came to an abrupt end.
We continued to bushwhack along the creek as best we could behind some of the houses. I thought we might be able to continue a bit easier, but it got to be really pretty badly overgrown.
We got to a certain point, regrouped, and then had to bushwhack to the right, north, up to a retention pond area.
We walked around the outside of the retention and came to the intersection of Squirrel Drive and Sparrow Court where we turned to the north on Squirrel.

I did not realize it at the time, but directly adjacent to this road, as well as Woodchuch Drive which we turned left on next, was the right of way of the nearly forgotten Mercer and Somerset Railroad.
I had walked through this area back around 2010 or 11, and it's so much changed that I just wouldn't remember it. Actually, I never walked the segment down this far. I had started in Harlingen that time so this was slightly south.
The railroad was originally intended to be a major through route, with segments in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and funded by the Pennsylvania Railroad. It was built mainly to block the National Railway from being constructed. This line would be the Delaware and Bound Brook Railway, which became part of the Reading Railroad system. 

The Mercer and Somerset was completed through in 1874, but the National Railway was built anyway. They battled it out, and even had a major skirmish in Hopewell, but the better grades on the Delaware and Bound Brook meant the haphazardly built Mercer and Somerset was no match for it. The Mercer and Somerset was abandoned in 1879.
I know there is a bridge at the point where the railroad once crossed the Back Brook, and hopefully one day I'll be back there to see it.
At the end of Woodchuch, where the railroad used to continue to the north, we turned left on Sunset Drive.

We continued on Sunset for a bit, and I recall talking to someone that was out getting their mail. Again, it was fortunately not too crazy yet, not anyone telling us we shouldn't be outside.
We continued on Sunset Drive past some enormous houses, and then turned to the right on Elm Drive through a development.
We turned to the right at the end of Elmo onto Rt 601; Belle Mead-Blawenberg Road.
We headed on this only a short distance to the former Reading Railroad/Delaware and Bound Brook crossing, which is still active. We turned to the right here.

Where we got on the tracks was technically still part of the community of Skillman, which was known for its sprawling old hospital grounds that had somewhat recently been demolished.
We followed the line to the northeast, saw some ruins along the way of concrete makeup, and passed beneath Dutchtown Harlingen Road on the way to Belle Mead.
We eventually passed beneath Rt 206 at Belle Mead.
The settlement here was known as Plainville until about 1875 when a man by the name of Van Aken, a New York City business man, purchased the area to build a city.

The settlement known as Vanaken was sold to Senator John R. McPherson when Van Aken went broke, and he renamed the location Belle Mead after his daughter, Edna Belle Mead McPherson, reportedly.
The area would have originally been a stop on the nearby Mercer and Somerset Railroad, but that would have been in Harlingen, of which the original settlement of Plainville was considered part. When the Delaware and Bound Brook went in, the original 1870s station was a handsome stwo story structure with downstairs waiting area and upstairs station agent quarters.

The station had steps down from the main road, which was apparently a big bother to people.
The station was much more fitting with the other handsome stations of the time that still stand, such as the ones in Hopewell and Pennington.

The current station building replaced the original in 1919 and was marketed as an improvement. Whiel attractive, the second building did not hold a candle to the original one.

Passenger service continued later on this branch than on others, and it served this particular station until 1981. It apparently hasn't been used for anything since the 1980s.

After we went beneath Rt 206, the station was standing on the left. I had never seen it close up before, and Justin and I were quite keen on going and having a closer look at it.
The floor boards inside were huge and pretty incredible, but starting to bow out pretty badly. It wouldn't last that much longer. Holes through the roof were causing collapses through the floor all the way to the bottom.
There were still stairs going up to the upper level, "Jersey Winders" as they call them around here.

These ones had the basic framework still in place, but the board sections for standing were all either removed or rotten away.
I recall that we encountered some sort of an animal or vulture inside that scared the shit out of us before we headed back out. This was not so uncommon an occurrence for us.
It has been reported that the old station is to be demolished, so I wanted to visit it at least once before that happened.

Everyone else waited outside pretty patiently while we bummed around inside.
We soon headed out and continued northeast.
We passed beneath Hillsborough Road and Homestead Road, and crossed a brook called the Pike Run. We paralleled 206 for a bit, but much of this section was in a bit of a cut.
I was quite surprised how wet this section of railroad was. Even between the gauge of the tracks, there was a whole lot of spring water coming through. It was very muddy in there with a lot of standing water. I would imagine it must have been a drainage and flooding nightmare during some particularly bad times. It must still be quite a liability because the trains fly through this section of track super speed.
A spur came in from a business to the left, we crossed under 206 again, followed by Rt 514, followed by Hamilton Road, and then Sunnymead Road at grade before reaching the Tri State Aviation place.
I think Jason and Elizabeth headed farther ahead just after Justin and I got out of the station, because they were motoring and I think it was just Justin and I for a bit.

The lights got stronger after the aviation place as we entered the near side of Manville. I'd walked through some of the town before, on other tracks, but never on the old Reading. It stayed in a pretty deep cut through most of the town, and we passed beneath a pedestrian bridge.
Soon after, we came to where the tracks go over Main Street in Manville on a bridge.
Some were ahead of Justin and I, and Jason and someone else, probably Annika, was behind. 

I think Kirk was just behind us talking to Elizabeth, not too far back.
As we were about to go across Main Street, a train light came upon us. We hurried across and down the edge of the bridge, and I texted Kirk and Elizabeth to head down asap.

Justin and I waited down below the bridge looking up for some time, and didn't get a response. The train sped by pretty quickly. There was no way they were going to miss it, so I was only slightly concerned. At this point we were just over a mile from our cars.
We started walking Main Street north through the town here.
I think at some point we waited for them to catch up with us.
There was really no one around in town, but a few cars were still going by. I was slightly concerned about getting in trouble for being out.
Although the "curfew" was later stated to have been illegit, some police gave out summonses for violation of the governor's order. I wonder what came of those after he stated that there was never a curfew. This is one of the reasons I wonder how any police agency can support the man.
We wandered through the lovely town, which wasn't the predominantly Polish town I'd remembered walking through with Skyler Jermyn several years before. It was all pretty much Spanish now.

Just before getting back to the Walmart parking area, we passed beneath the former Lehigh Valley Railroad bridge, which has a relatively low clearance.

We were rather surprised to see a large Western Express tractor trailer wedged beneath the bridge with the top of the truck scalped, and the center section bent in half. Stuff was falling out of it onto the road. He must have been going at a good rate of speed to get so badly wedged under the thing, and to break the container that badly.
Jason told me later that he was there just as it happened, and the driver was pretty much in shock. His days of driving truck were certainly over at that point.
There were police all over, some of them laughing at the incident. This is not nearly the first time anything like this has happened at this location.

None of the police said anything to us for being outside, let alone congregating. We just walked on by, and headed back up to our cars with no further incident. 
We all headed home, and I felt a little better about continuing with the hikes, because this was at the time that it was all pretty new and crazy.

1919 bridge construction Rt 206

Both Justin and I pretty much knew we had already had covid. When we went to Connecticut for our two day trip, I had gotten so terribly sick that one day I considered going to the hospital. The following week, Justin was very sick, and we just hiked it off. Within a week, we were pretty much better. I wasn't 100% for about a month because the coughing persisted for a long time. It felt like I should be able to hack something up, but I couldn't, or nothing was coming up. So we're pretty sure that was what it was.
Pretty soon, the hikes would go to secret level text message invites only.