Hike #1333; Frenchtown Area Loop

Hike #1333; Frenchtown Area Loop

6/18/20 Frenchtown Area Loop with Jennifer Bee, Kirk Rohn, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, Ken Zaruni, Jennifer Tull, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Rich Pace, and Luke Fresolone

This next hike would be another loop in the Frenchtown area. It’s always a good one to do, because there are some great, diverse trails, and the return trip offers good swimming spots in the Delaware River along the former Bel Del Railroad.

Along green trail in Frenchtown Preserve

Like we normally do when hiking this area, I made the meeting point the Bridge Café, which occupies the former Frenchtown Station on the Bel Del Railroad. Much of this hike would be a repeat of other stuff we’d done, but there were still a ton of trails in the Frenchtown Preserve as well as the Horse Shoe Bend Preserve that I’d never done yet, and I would incorporate those into this trip. We walked in through the middle of town, and then headed up Rt 12 for a bit. There is a back way into the Frenchtown cemetery from a sort of driveway from there, which we took.

Frenchtown Preserve

We crossed the cemetery directly, and then reached the Little Nishisakawick Creek on the other side. We descended slightly and crossed that, then went up the other side to reach the yellow blazed trail in the Frenchtown Preserve, which is a state park administered through Delaware and Raritan Canal state park. The former farm lands are all mostly young growth forest now, which were zoned for high density development before it was saved. The trails that weave through the preserve have tight corners and cover just about every inch of land, because they’re made by mountain bikers.

It’s a pretty nice place overall. I decided this time that we would spend more time on this preserve than we ever had before, by weaving around and doing the most ridiculous loop in it possible. We followed the yellow trail to the left, then turned right on orange which took us gradually uphill. When the orange trail turned right, the red trail broke off left from that, and a blue one went straight. I think we stayed on blue to the next four way intersection, and then went left to continue on blue. In a very short bit, we turned left on a green trail. This took us to an interesting vantage point at the springs that start some of the Little Nishisakawick. There was even an interesting overhanging rock down in this first gully.

It was rather impressive topography we had not seen here yet. The green trail weaved back to the south and crossed the blue again, but we turned left on blue. This was probably the most indirect trail we were on the entire way. It weaves back and forth all over the place, but overall its easy and pretty relaxing. I quite enjoyed it. When we reached the red blazed trail, we turned right. This took us back toward the west again, way out into the preserve. We weaved around on that one until we got to the orange blazed trail on the left, and we turned back there.

Frenchtown Preserve

That one followed more of the boundary to the south side of the preserve back to the east side, turned to the north along a tributary of the Little Nishisakawick, and then turned uphill to the parking area for Frenchtown Preserve. Jen was running late, and so she walked up from the station to this point to meet up with us.
From there, we had a very pleasant back road walk along Horse Shoe Bend Road. The road is only lightly traveled, and so it’s not at all a drag to be on it.

Frenchtown Preserve

We continued to the height of the land on the road past some pretty old barns, and then descended very slowly toward the crossing of the Copper Creek.

Frenchtown Preserve

This was our first good break spot. It was pretty hot out, and so we laid down in the Copper Creek to cool off.
The bridge there is a pretty interesting one. A stone arch, it was reconstructed so that it could take on larger vehicles making the sharp corner without hitting the edge of the bridge. It sort of preserves the historic character of the original stone arch, but alters it for practicality. Hunterdon County is home to over two hundred examples of these little stone arch bridges, more than anywhere in North America.

Frenchtown Preserve

After cooling off for a bit, we headed up across the bridge to the entrance to Horse Shoe Bend Preserve east. This has a long dirt road that goes back to an old house that no one lives in any more. I think some local groups have meetings there, but with all of the covid crap going on right now, I suppose no one is using it.
I was originally going to do the loop trail on that side of the road, but I had noticed another trail broke off of the driveway to the south, and I wanted to check that out instead.

Copper Creek Bridge

Brittany turned back at this point because she wasn’t feeling well, and the rest of us turned onto the other new trail, which was flagged off with orange ribbons.

Horse Shoe Bend Preserve

The route weaved through woods and eventually terminated in the middle of a field across from the main Horse Shoe Bend Preserve property. I think this was Hunterdon Land Trust or Conservation Foundation. I can’t remember at the moment.
We cut through these fields, and then came back out to Horse Shoe Bend Road a short distance away from where I normally go into the preserve, on a mowed path that sort of just comes out to the road. It’s adjacent to a dog run area, but not on the regular trail maps.

View in Horse Shoe Bend Preserve

Carolyn called me around this time, and I directed her to try to meet us at the Cooley Preserve, which is a state park property that shares a common trail system.

Box Turtle

Rich was also to meet us at about that point, so it worked out well with timing.
We headed around the north, then east side of the dog run area, and then cut through a line of Osage Orange trees in a corner of private property to get onto the orange trail on the north side of the preserve.
We made our way along the fields, which had beautiful cloud views as the sun started to go down.
We reached a low area, and the trail dipped down through a section of woods, then came out in more fields again on the other side. Pretty soon, we turned right from Horse Shoe Bend Preserve into the Cooley Preserve, all field perimeters, which doesn’t have any kind of markings.
We continued gradually downhill through the fields, and soon saw Rich and Carolyn heading up from the parking lot area toward us. We then cut more straight across fields to the south.

Cooley Preserve view

When we reached the south side of the fields, in a somewhat shaded corner, I spotted a Box Turtle. Then someone else saw another. And then another!
I had never seen so many Box Turtles in one place in my life. One of them appeared to be laying its eggs. We didn’t disturb them more, and continued on to the east.

Box Turtle

We made another corner, and there was yet another Box Turtle. It started getting me a bit concerned, because the Cooley Preserve is eyed to become a new state campgrounds.

Box Turtle

Since Bulls Island closed to camping due to a horrible accidental death from a falling Sycamore tree in 2010, it’s been planned that the state would replace it with another campground along the river somewhere, and I had only recently found out that this was an area being looked at.
If they use the grassy section of it closer to Rt 29 that used to be yards associated with a now gone house, that would probably be fine, but the field areas get badly wet, and I wouldn’t want to see anything disturb such a healthy population of the declining Box Turtles.

Cloud view in Cooley Preserve

We took the Field Edge Trail back to the orange trail, and then turned right down to Burke’s Run, where we hit a white blazed trail. This was where I was less familiar.

White trail along Burke's Run

Rich knows these trails very well because he lives in Frenchtown, so he led the way along this trail. It went along the creek pretty closely heading to the east, but at points it looked like it was almost in the creek. Rich pointed us in the correct direction a few times on this stretch.
Brittany called me in this area, and having walked a little ways, she was feeling better and walking back. I gave her directions on how to meet us further along on the orange trail where it crosses over the south entrance road.

Orange trail

The orange trail joined in from the left, and we soon reached the South Entrance Road, where we took a break.
From here, the trail turns right on the road briefly, and then left back into the woods. It then skirts the property boundary along a fence, which is actually quite a bit nicer than it sounds.
The route crossed a driveway and weaved us through the woods along a wire fence. It also had some nice sections of puncheons set up beside wider areas for equestrian and maintenance vehicles.

Orange trail

As we reached the south side of the preserve, we came to the yellow blazed Flagg-Kirkland Trail, the longest trail in the preserve.
We followed this weaving through the woods quite a while, went across a foot bridge, and then passed through a meadow area.
After another small stream crossing, we crossed over Fairview Road. The trail then continued uphill a bit more to the south, then cut back to the west again.

Orange trail

We passed yet another Box Turtle in the middle of the trail in this section as well.
We continued on Flagg-Kirkland until it looped us right back to Fairview Ave again. We then turned to the left and followed the road downhill to Rt 29. Just barely to the left of this spot, there is a good pull off area where we could access the old Bel Del Railraod bed. From there, we headed directly down to the Delaware where there is a good spot to take a swim. We had hit this same spot just last year as well.

Orange trail

We eventually climbed up and returned to the rail bed, then started following it to the north again.
It was a nice relaxing walk back, and Rich and Carolyn would just cut back out when we got to where the parking for the Cooley Preserve was just across 29.
In this section, my co worker Luke, who had worked maintenance at Round Valley, life guard at Spruce Run, and this year in visitor services, ran backwards from Frenchtown to join us for the remainder of the hike.

Orange Trail

We stopped one more time on the way back at the boat launch area before we reached Frenchtown, because it was another good opportunity to swim.
The night hikes always take longer when we have swimming options.
We eventually made our way back up once more, and walked the remainder of the distance back to Frenchtown and the Bridge Cafe.
It was another really great time to be out, and I could probably milk one more loop of the same area out of this, and knock out maybe the last of those trails I hadn’t done yet there.

Box Turtle in Flagg Kirkland Trail

I think I’ll probably wait until next year though, before I try to do just about the same thing another time. I think we all appreciate the places more when we’ve had a bit of time from them, and there are plenty more places to see before Summer is over.
HAM