Hike #1358; Whitehouse Station to Flemington

Hike #1358; Whitehouse Station to Flemington

9/24/20 Whitehouse Station to Flemington with Professor John DiFiore and Brittany Audrey

This next hike would be another point to point, this time between Flemington and Whitehouse Station, and a variation of some others I’d done in the past.

The park in Readington

As usual, I had planned out a route that featured both things I had done before, as well as a few things I had never done.
Also as usual, things didn’t go exactly as planned, so our journey had to be amended somewhat. Fortunately, it was the right small group for that to work out for us.
Usually we had far more people show up for the night hikes, but this was just a small one. Maybe it was because I posted it late, but regardless, I had a route planned that would involve trails as well as a golf course and some other stuff.

Pickel Park trail

After meeting at the BJs in Flemington just off of Rt 31, we shuttled in my van to the start point, which was to be Whitehouse Station in Readington Township.

VIew in Pickel Park

I had wanted to start walking on the trails from Pickel Park where the township garage is. My dad is the head mechanic there and I’d kind of hoped to see him, but it might have been too late for that.
He actually mowed some of the trails in Pickel Park that connect with the Cushetunk Mountain trail system, so I always thought this was kind of cool that my dad was working on the trails in the township while I was building the ones on the Hunterdon County land, sort of the same project on the two different ends.

Blue trail on Cushetunk Mountain

Usually, when I hike down this way, we park over at the grocery store close to Rt 22, but I really didn’t want to do that this time. I just wanted to go into the woods or onto a trail and that’s it.
During the drive, I found the Our Lady of Lourdes Church on the corner of Main Street Pulaski Road in Whitehouse Station.
There were signs there saying no parking, but I figured it’s a church and what would they really do. I ended up having no problem anyway.
We started walking from there out to Main Street, and then headed into Pickel Park.

Some new trail work on Cushetunk Mountain, on an informal connector trail

We wandered around the perimeter of the park a bit on their trail, past a pointless little bridge, and then to the edge of the property where the blue trail goes out through the Vislocky Tract, in fields, and out to Hunterdon County’s Cushetunk Mountain Nature Preserve.
The nicely mowed trails are always a pleasant way to start out, and the days were getting shorter, so I wanted to try to enjoy as many of the back woods paths as I could before it was too dark too early to do them.
We stayed on the blue trail for a bit, downhill through the fields, but then there was what I thought might be a newer path to the right. We took that down and across a little foot bridge, and back up to other fields. We then returned to the blue trail through the rest of the park.
I pointed out along the way some of the trail marking I had done back in 2008 or so. It was still holding on pretty good. I paint blazed much of the Readington Township property even though it was off from what I was supposed to be doing, just to show some consistency in trail marking between what we were building with Hunterdon County and what the township was doing.
When I was trying to blaze trails with international standard and turn blazes, it didn’t make a lot of sense that another entity, but a continuation of the same trail, was doing different.

Rogue trail work with shit white blazing

The project was a bit odd; Student Conservation Association was working with us on that one, doing all of the rock work, and my coworkers and I had to head out to do saw work and such.
The trail was laid out on the county land in a rather ridiculous way that went up and back down in a sort of pointless way, and it was quite steep.
The township section just went through fields and woods, so that was fine.
We continued on the trail out to the power line clearing where it turned right, and then left into woods to enter the county land. It then climbed the steep park, which got me winded.

Along the rogue trail

When we reached the height of the land, there was a red blazed trail that went off to the left.
This trail used to go up and end, and I hadn’t been on it in a long while. I figured we could go and do that, and when we reached the end, we would do some off trail downhill to the Round Valley Recreation Area trail system.
I had originally considered going up to the main Cushetunk ridge top trail to the east from here, but then figured this other trail was something I should check out again.
It was a good thing we did this. It changed the entire remainder of the hike almost completely.
We got to the top of the rise, and the red trail had a left turn blaze. I thought this could not be right. There were no blazes heading to the left at all, but there was a clear trail.

Round Valley Reservoir

To the right, there were white blazes continuing along the ridge. This was a new continuation of the ridge trail, which I had never done before, and it led back to the “saddle” as it was called, where an old woods road cuts across and down to the state’s Cushetunk Trail.
I realized pretty quickly what had happened.
The red trail ended at the intersection with the white ridge trail. There were once three blazes at the end of the trail, but someone had removed the top right one of the three, which made it look like a left turn blaze. Someone had also developed this new trail going left.

Fire ring

Although I still had not done the new connection to the right, I wanted to see what was up with this trail to the left.
We turned there and followed it along the top of the Cushetunk Ridge.
I had heard of something called “Cushetunk’s Throne” up there, which was supposedly a native American site, but I had never seen it. It’s an odd thing, because Cushetunk supposedly is the native American word for “pig”, but there are no wild boars native to North America. They were all introduced by colonists.
The trail, although unofficial, was beautiful. Someone had seriously graded it.

Round Valley

They had even gone to the trouble of taking stones and laying them flat for those coming through with mountain bikes.
The trail was blazed with white, but very poorly with spray paint as splotches. There was also some really crappy looking red blazing, more rectangular but not really professional looking either.
I think some of this trail might have been part of the original Cushetunk Trail from Round Valley, because it connects in with it at an odd spot.
We found the connection, and the official trail goes down to the base of the ridge again from there, but this “rogue trail” stays up on the ridge.

Round Valley Reservoir

We turned right at this junction point and headed down to the base of the ridge. I had wanted to try to get to the waterfront either way, and by doing that, we could tell about where we were.
We reached the bottom, and the trail continued off to the right, but the branch trail to the left leads to the campgrounds. This entire area is very lacking in blazing or any signage at all.

Cushetunk Trail

People get lost in Round Valley constantly, and the real reason for it is such bad blazing. There is hardly any of it, and people have no idea if they’re on the right trail or not. If they got to the junction point with the informal trail we got off of, it would look like they should go to the right to remain on the ridge. But then, they reach another official red trail and a white trail. Neither the county park map nor the state park map acknowledge each others’ trail systems, even though the informally touch, and it’s been a disaster.
This all happened after 911, when the state made the county take the state trails off their maps for security issues, and they never gave permission to put it back.

Sunset on Cushetunk

There was also a Bald Eagle nest along the route, and so the trail was then closed for the nesting periodically. Now, the eagles have vacated the nest, and even if they hadn’t, there are so many nests right in close proximity to public, they don’t seem to care any more.
We continued on the trail toward the campgrounds, which is the “Lower Cushetunk Trail” but has no blazing any more I don’t think. The “Upper Cushetunk Trail” is the other one, at least on the old maps.
We continued and came out on the camp road, and then followed it out through the campground area.
The last time I was out to this point, it looked like absolute shit.

Sunset along Cushetunk Trail

This time, it was nice to see that the maintenance crew had done a fantastic job of cleaning the campground restrooms. It used to be that there were piles of shit paper next to the toilets super high, like several feet high, on the outside of the building, and the insides were so deplorable that people would go outside behind trees before going in.
Now, someone has been maintaining them better than I’ve ever seen them. I feel bad for whoever had to go out there and get rid of those piles, but I give them credit for doing so.
The Lower Cushetunk Trail is just a camp road for a while, and so we followed that across the access road, old Round Valley Road, which comes in from Dreahook Road.

Pond view on Cushetunk Trail

When we got to the open field where the pavilion is, we turned to the right to head over toward the water.
I came across some ATV tracks out there at this point, and followed some of them out onto the partially dry reservoir bed. This was a result of dam work going on around the reservoir.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Round Valley Reservoir so low. We walked along the shore down to the waterfront, and I found a fire ring, which I figured was an illegal one, and reported it the next day.
I found out later that it was not an illegal ring at all, but rather that the state police had had a training out there and they used their ATV and created the fire pit.

Mannon-Souerland Pond

Along the waterfront I found a good rocky spot and took a dip. It was still pretty hot out and the hard climb up Cushetunk Mountain made it rather necessary.
My plan originally was that we would be getting to the camp area just around dark and then follow the old Round Valley Road out to Dreahook Road then we would head from there to the golf course and walk through on that.
This time, it was still way earlier than it needed to be for us to be able to do that. I was not going to try to walk across the golf course in the daylight.
So we continued from here on the lower Cushetunk Trail through the farther campsites which was quite lovely and relaxing through the woods.
We got to the point where the Upper Cushetunk Trail joined again, just beyond a little hill at the end of the camp road.
We followed the regular Cushetunk Trail beyond through some nice woods, and got onto a rerouted section of the trail I had never done before.
When the dam work started, they moved the trail entirely, and actually added some distance onto it.
The trail weaved through the woods, and the old route is blocked off. The trail goes out past an old farm area, which I think was used as part of the scout camp property, and then descends to the camp entrance road next to the Mannon-Souerland Pond.

Echo Hill moonlight

It was going to get dark from this point, so we had to get off of the trail before reaching the recreation area itself. We turned left on the scout camp road, and then reached Stanton-Lebanon Road where we turned left.
I posed it to the others which way we would go once we got further down. The sun was starting to go down, and we were walking the edge of the road, and could either cut onto another back road or go directly into the back of the Hunterdon County Arboretum.
We had done the arboretum somewhat recently, so it was decided we would turn right on Grange Road.
From there, we could either cut directly across Rt 31 onto a jughandle and into Echo Hill Environmental Education Center, or we could to left and cut into the north side of the Hunterdon County Arboretum, and then use the tunnel under Rt 31.
We settled on the latter. From Grange Road, we turned to the left and cut through the rear field behind Farm Credit East bank or whatever it is, then turned right at the end of that back down to the intersection of Rt 31 and Grange Road.
I had forgotten there was one private home between this location and the A-frame building adjacent to the Hunterdon Arboretum. I wanted to just cut straight through. I tried doing so, but then saw the private home and headed back out.
We reached the edge of 31, then passed the A-frame building on the left.
This property was purchased with green acres money, and the plan was to make it a park ranger station, but the county basically stole it and turned it into a nurse’s headquarters, which was kind of illegal since it was purchased with the green acres funds.
The property was bought while I was still working for the county, and we had started working on connecting a trail over to it. I’d installed a foot bridge over a small spring on the south side of the property to the arboretum that would be wide enough to get mowers across, but nothing ever was formalized about it.
I wanted to walk across the property and find that foot bridge. I ended up stepping over the little brook, but found the foot bridge just after that.
We reached the tree line, and then cut to the right to get beneath the Rt 31 underpass. We were then into Echo Hill, and crossed over the Prescott Brook on the rock hop.

Train goin by

We headed from here up past the pond and to the main building. It was locked up so we couldn’t go in and use the restrooms or anything.
We went around the building, and then up along the north side of the orange blazed loop trail through the property. I showed the pavilion building I had worked with my coworkers on, which was originally a camp building. We headed out to the fields to the north, and then in through the large stands of evergreen trees on the northwest section of the property.
The moon came out, and it was absolutely beautiful. We headed slowly downhill, and reached the entrance road to Echo Hill, which used to be a camp.

Train goin by

Once we reached Lilac Drive, we crossed directly and got on the tracks that used to be the Lehigh Valley Railroad main line.
We turned left to follow them to the south for a bit, out to Stanton Station Road, where the station used to stand.
The old railroad station still stands actually, but it was moved up onto Echo Hill to be used as a camp lodge. Just about when we got to the station site, a train went by, and we paused to watch it.
From there, we turned right on Stanton Station Road and crossed over the old truss bridge across the South Branch of the Raritan River. On the other side, we reached the Stanton Station Section of the South Branch Reservation.

Moon over power lines

We turned left from here into that preserve, and the trail was kept in great shape.
We followed it along the river downstream for a bit then through a nice stand of evergreens. We got to where it used to go along the steep slopes at Cole’s Cliff, but followed the rerouted trail to the right, gradually uphill, to the intersection with another trail.
We turned right here, and it leads out to a parking area on Old Clinton Road. We turned under the power lines and reached that site with no problem.

Moonlight over a barn

From there, we crossed Old Clinton Road directly, and there is a paved trail directly on the other side, which skirts the back of a development.
We continued on that, and when we came to he first trail intersection, we turned left.
We emerged on Demott Road, and followed that to the right, to the intersection with Rolin’s Mill Road, and continued straight across on another paved path. This was a very nice section through woods and meadows.
We continued south, and it emerged at the very end of William Barnes Road. This connected with Scarlet Oak Road, and we continued to the left out to Old Clinton Road again, which has a couple of ninety degree bends near the intersection.
We only walked this east briefly to reach the entrance to Lone Cedar Park.
The trail through here goes uphill slightly, and is a nice unpaved, mowed route.
We kept to the right on this trail which eventually took us out on Packers Island Lane. We followed that south, which was very pleasant, to River Road, and then out to Rt 31.
We cut to the south, then walked through the parking lot for Stop and Shop, Chase Bank, HealthQuest Fitness, and other stuff. This took us out some of the Jack Cust family sports complex properties, and out to Bartles Corner Road.

Sign north of Flemington

We walked directly across the street onto the lawn of Hunterdon Care Center, which is easy to reach the BJs where we were parked from.
We simply went over the lawn, through the parking lot, and then by way of an informal trail that goes between the lots behind that shopping center and the care center. I think it used to be a regular through road, but was vacated. Someone threw a pallet into a wet area where there would have been a bridge, and we were able to cut right on through.
I was really glad to have done this hike, because I saw some stuff I’d not done before, but it also woke me up to wanting to see how we could potentially fix the confusing problems in the Round Valley vicinity.
In the days following this hike, I reached out to Hunterdon Parks and had a very nice chat with my former coworker Tom Sheppard, and also with my supervisors with the state. Hopefully some talks will come out of it, and the trail system connections can be formalized, which will make it much safer for both property managers and public.