Hike #1364; Raritan/Flagtown Loop

Hike #1364; Raritan/Flagtown Loop

10/15/20 Raritan/Flagtown Loop with Professor John DiFiore, Jennifer Tull, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, and Kristen I.

A beautiful view at Duke Farms

This would turn out to be an incredibly strange hike. In some ways it is funny, and and some ways it is totally disturbing. It was quite a contrast to the emotion I’ve been feeling.

Duke Farms view

Life has had some weird twists and turns for me.
I’ve been talking about it a bit with friends, and if I’d had no one close to me through the time, it would almost seem unbelievable.
I think that might be what drives people to insanity more than anything else; failure to be understood and sympathized with.
We had recently done a great hike through the Duke Farms properties, former estate of Tobacco heiress and socialite Doris Duke. The re-imagining of her last will and testament, as well as changes throughout her former property have been quite the controversy.

At Duke Farms

Regardless of all of that, the land has been opened almost fully to the public, with her huge system of trails and simple access roads through beautiful landscapes, some natural and some manufactured.
I devised a similar hike to the last one, where we would pass through Duke Farms property, but then continue to the west on the old South Branch of the Central Railroad of New Jersey right of way west to Neshanic Station area, then return on back roads as well as the trails of Duke Island Park and more.

Heron Lake

I made the meeting point the Quick Chek in Raritan and told everyone to park on street nearby again, and I found a great spot directly across from it.

A huge Copper Beech in Duke Farms

Without going into much detail about the past, I have been victim of what had seemed to be neverending harassment online from fake Facebook and other accounts pretending to be women that were interested in me. My frustration was skyrocketing when some were dismissing it as “bot” accounts from Asia or something like that. Such was not the case. These were women reaching out to me and initially talking to me about hiking, and advise on the Appalachian Trail through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and other seemingly legit things.
The messages start our quite innocent, then turn to making passes on me in a very quick and unnatural flow. I would tell my girlfriend when I started getting them, just to let her know I was going to play along for a bit, and to see how long it would take for her to get some “proof” of my underhanded behavior. As far as I know, nothing was ever sent to her from it.

Big tree in Duke Farms

This would be in part because I only let it go so far until I would finally call out the guys name I suspected it to be, and then the profile would disappear. I wouldn’t think he would try this over and over, but I was pretty sure it was him when I called out names of three of the women that refused his hand in marriage, and the response from the fake account was “fuck you”, and it was again deleted.
Plenty of other things have happened that I assume was related to the same person including an attempted audit of Metrotrails that forced me to deal with bank management, and then harassment and threats directly on other friends within Metrotrails insisting that they find information on me or he would blackmail them. I have a collection of screenshots from these interactions, and eventually had to get authorities involved due to the harassment. At least some of the stuff was proven to be him, done while on the clock, and his job eventually transferred him to another location where he had less access to some of the resources he had been using to harass me.
The case was closed and only a few things here and there were suspicious.

Coach Barn in Duke Farms

Then, very recently, I was contacted by police. I had assumed I was reported for something suspicious inadvertently by a friend through a tagging situation, and it only briefly crossed through my mind that it might be the same person again.

Coach Barn meadow in Duke Farms

I dismissed it and continued normally.
There were some odd things going on that had me wondering if something else might be happening, but then I got a message from another odd girl.
This was a very pretty brunette with blue eyes, who reacted to photos that I had posted featuring me leading a group through Centralia PA, the ghost town with the mine fire, wearing a full suit and tie.
She said that this was definitely the kind of group she wants to hike with and wanted to know what was coming up.
She started direct messaging me, and said she wanted to join. She said she thought we have about the same sense of humor, with lots of ridiculous stuff.

Coach Barn Meadow in Duke Farms

She shared all sorts of blasphemous memes and such, and she did seem into hiking. This one was not like the others, and although her online profiles had very few photos, some of them were hiking.
I get people asking about the hikes all the time, and although I found this one suspicious at first, I thought she was a real one. She did start hitting on me online, and was trying to get me to hang out with her, but it was clear I have a girlfriend, and I told her we can be friends and that she can hike with my group though.
She asked about what hkes were coming up, and I told her about this one when she messaged me earlier the same day. She said she could make it as it wasn’t so far away.

Orchid Range Meadow

We all got to the quick check and went to the stores for snacks and drinks, then waited outside. The girl, Kristen (who also is apparently a realtor, although she told me she is in a labor union doing scaffolding work), was not there.

Orchid Range meadow

I waited only slightly longer than I would wait usually, because she had just messaged me she was close a little bit before.
I could not wait though like I would for other friends at the start of these things, because if we didn’t get to Duke Farms soon, the north gate would close and I would have to change the entire route of the hike.
When she didn’t show up and I didn’t get any messages, we had to start without her.
We walked down Nevius Street to the Nevius Street Bridge, now pedestrian access only.

The Orchid Range building

I got another message then, with a screen shot showing she was only about five or so blocks away.
We waited a bit, and she didn’t know where to park.
I told her to park on street and to head to the bridge, and that she could probably park within sight on the bridge at several on street spots.
She stopped responding again, and I messaged her back that we have to go. We don’t have time to hang around, we have to get into Duke Farms. She would have to find a way of catching up with us when we were inside the place.
We followed the path on the other side and continued south to the North Gate.

Orchid Range Way

Fortunately, it was still open, and in we went.
The Heron Lake looked particularly beautiful with the fall foliage.
I got a message from Kristen, and she was on her way to join us. We walked to the east a bit on one of the paved access roads and hung out for a bit.
Kristen came through the gate and met up with us, and she was immediately in tune with everyone in a very surprising fashion.
She chatted with everyone like she knew them.
I walked ahead of everyone for most of this time. I suppose she was still a bit suspicious to me, and the more we walked, the more odd it seemed to be, but at the same time, the more she seemed to fit in perfectly.

South Branch of the CNJ, now Railroad Way

She immediately got out a Corona and started drinking it.
She had seen the hiking photos, and so she knew that I’ll indulge when hiking, but it seemed almost too natural that she would start like that among a group of strangers.
She was discussing stuff with Justin, and somehow King’s Park in Long Island came up. It was odd how she just went onto a kid with that, which is a place very special to Justin that he knew very well.
She pulled out some weed and asked if anyone wanted to smoke when we took a short break. Kirk respectfully declined, and she put it away and said “I don’t really smoke anyway”.

Former South Branch of the CNJ

This was all quite strange, but most of these events I kind of missed by walking ahead more. Jenny was up front with me, and I commented with her that she fit in with the group almost too well.
The guys came up to me pretty soon saying that she’s pretty odd, the way she was acting.

Central Way

We stopped at a restroom portajohn and she told us not to wait for her, and never to wait for her if she falls behind. That was kind of odd as well. We always either wait, or make sure the route we are taking is known.
We reached the Coach Barn, which is a huge stone barn building with a large clock tower on it, quite a magnificent piece. I was surprised they saw fit to tear down Doris Duke’s mansion, but that they would leave other structures like this standing throughout the property.

Brittany replaces the head at Hay Barn

We walked around the Coach Barn, and then got on a nice unpaved path through light woods, slowly growing back over in succession.
This was known as the Coach Barn Meadow. We followed it to the south for a bit and crossed over paved Oak Way, which took us on another grass path into Orchid Range Meadow. We turned right here, and followed the lovely wide open field of high grasses wet to the Orchid Range building, a large, lovely greenhouse style building at the south side of the meadow.

Hay Barn group shot

We turned to the left, east, on Orchid Range Way, another paved trail, to the intersection with Railroad Way, another paved roadway that runs beside the former South Branch of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, which would be a good amount of this hike.
We would not be staying on the railroad bed at this point however.
An unpaved path followed the railroad bed in both directions, and this is one of the only bits of the rail bed I had never followed before. We’ll get back there to do the rest eventually.

Dukes Brook

We crossed over the rail bed onto the grass surface Research Path. We followed this for a little bit until we got to paved Central Way, which leads to the way out of the main Duke Farms area, and we stopped at the Hay Barn.

CNJ grade on Duke Farms land

The Hay Barn was built in the 1880s by Buck Duke, Doris’s father, when he designed the property to be like his home estate down south. The barn burned years later, and Doris had the stone shell of it used as a sculpture garden.
We went inside there, and got our group shot with the statue of the naked ladies that Kirk commented last time “They’re just...good friends!”. This was another odd moment for the new girl.
She refused to be in any photos. She would not be in the group photo.
This would have been normal if it weren’t for the other things, but for whatever reason she didn’t want to be in it.
We continued from the Hay Barn on Central Way toward the main entrance.

CNJ grade on Duke Farms land

Kristen had opened her second Corona by this point, and I told her that she should probably cover that up because we don’t want to get in any trouble. There is a guard gate there, and a guard on duty that also helps with the crosswalk.
She said she didn’t care what they thought. At this point I was a bit annoyed with her and reminded her that we had a group to think about, and that if she doesn’t mind getting in trouble, the rest of the group certainly doesn’t. She put her beer in her shirt or something then.

CNJ grade

We went by the guard and walked across toward the farm barn orientation center, and Kristen asked right out if the guard minded that she was drinking this. I think “I don’t give a shit” or something of that nature came out. She even high fived him with the beer bottled hand, and stopped to tie her shoes in front of him.
As odd as she seemed, I still dismissed it as she might just be kind of drunk, although I hadn’t seen her with more than the two beers, and this second one was barely started.

CNJ grade

By this point, the others were getting suspicious about her.
Kirk could see through something with her. He and Justin were saying she’s a “plant” or something because of her behavior. They were saying government official or something to try to catch us on places we’d been that we weren’t supposed to be.
“You’re military!” Kirk had said to her. But she insisted that she was not, to which Kirk said “No, I’m military, I know military, and you’ve been enlisted!”
She still adamantly denied ever being a part of any enlisted military.
We continued along the paved path toward the orientation center, but then turned to the right through the main parking area to the east.

CNJ grade on Duke Farms land

We headed along Farm Barn Lane to the east, and then started to go up and around the community garden area, but then it didn’t get us where we needed to go. We skirted the community garden, and then continued to follow Farm Barn Lane to the west through the property, then to the south to some sort of maintenance building, then to the right past some bee boxes and on into the woods.

Roycefield Road crossing

As we headed into the woods, I could see the grade of the South Branch of the Central Railroad of New Jersey on a fill to the left. We had crossed it in the farm area apparently, and didn’t realize it.
I decided we would try to follow it from there, which was probably a mistake.
At first, it didn’t look so bad, but then it got pretty heavily overgrown. We still managed to bully through it, and it soon skirted the edge of a warehouse property, which used to have a rail spur to it further to the east, which I think is now part of USA Container. We were able to get out to Roycefield Road closer to the fence by leaving the railroad which, which went into a deeper and rougher cut.

Sunset over fields

I had followed this grade once before, back in the Spring of 2008, in an effort to walk the entire CNJ South Branch from where it connected with Pennsylvanai Railroad in Flemington to its eastern terminus in Somerville, on the main line in the area that is now the Somerville NJ Transit parking area. That ended up being a really great hike, and we got through most sections of it alright, so I figured we would be able to do this bit of it as a night hike with little or no problems. I was wrong on that one.

Parallel with the rail bed

The rail line was originally the South Branch Railroad completed in 1864, and controlled by the Central Railroad. It formally became part of the CNJ in 1888.
In the early days, like several other area railroads, it owned a lot of its existence reportedly to the peach growing industry. Hunterdon County used to be the peach capital of the world until they were all killed by the blight of 1890. Still, a connection to Flemington, the county seat of Hunterdon, was still lucrative enough to keep the line going a long while.

A map showing the CNJ and other area railroads in 1895

Passenger service continued on the branch line until 1953, and freight on up until the 1970s. Today, only a stub of the line still exists, used by Black River and Western, from Flemington to Three Bridges. From there to Somerville is gone.
When we reached Roycefield Road, we turned right briefly to the north, and then cut to the left into somewhat overgrown fields, which I think are also part of Duke Farms. The sun was starting to go down, so I wanted to get to the clearer sections as soon as we could.
The field was getting rather annoying, and it had some thorny brush in it.

Sun setting

We pushed on through and were parallel with the railroad bed, but then I cut into the woods to get back on it.
It might be that I was on the rail bed in the weeds at first but we went up higher to another grade. In retrospect, this might have been the parallel siding to Roycefield and the container buildings.
Regardless, it was a little better walking in there than it was in the fields. It still wasn’t easy yet, as we had some logs and such to go over, but we could handle this.

Last passenger train on the South Branch, 1953

When we were ready to start walking down the tracks a bit, Kristen was missing. She did not come up to the other grade. I had to go back and find her. She had sat down, but I did not approach her. I told her to come on, and that it was better above.

Field view

She got up and continued walking, and we were all together on the rail grade heading to the east.
If we had come up to the grade earlier, we would have seen what remains of the Roycefield Station, which is on the right in the woods. I didn’t remember seeing it the previous time, nor would I have recognized it as a former station. It was quite small.
We stepped over two annoying fallen trees, and then emerged at a clearing where a power line came in from the fields and turned to follow the railroad bed. It is totally clear from this point a ways further to the west. This was what I was looking forward to.

Sunset along the rail bed

When we were about ready to go, I counted heads, and Kristen was missing again. I called out to her, and she wasn’t there. I went back looking a bit and I still did not see her.
I came back out once, and then went in again with John after that. She was not answering at all. She could not have made it very far off of the grade. I was afraid she might have fallen and hurt herself. John said she was directly behind him when we stepped over the very last tree.

The rail bed

I’ve never lost anyone on these hikes before. I don’t leave people behind without a ride or knowing that they are safe.
We waited for a long time here, and I sent her a message asking where she went.
I didn’t have her phone number; only facebook messenger.
The good thing about this, which is sometimes annoying, sometimes a blessing, is that you can tell when someone has seen your message and is just intently ignoring you. That is what happened here.
The rail bed had been rough, but only I pushed through it really badly. No one else got as cut up as me, and Kristen seemed to have been doing fine.

The rail bed

After we waited for quite a while, Jenny said that we really needed to just get going. Her opinion was that she had seen it, and she just decided to cut out and leave. She didn’t indicate that she was particularly annoyed or anything. She had also told us that if she falls behind, don’t ever wait up for her.
Still, I don’t like doing that. I didn’t feel good about it, but we all continued along the railroad bed ahead. It did provide the opportunity to discuss what her deal was.
We all know people who have been on drugs, and she could have been on meth, because disappearing to go off and do some is something common among those users.

Mah leg

We talked more about how she seemed to know the group far too well. She came in far too comfortable. It was almost like it was an act, but also kind of too spastic to be well acted.
I didn’t want to waste all my phone power, and I didn’t have my charging cable, but I had to leave my phone on in case she turned up somewhere or was in trouble.
We continued on the clear grade out to Auten Road, and it continued to be good and clear on the power line on the other side.
This was a really nice section, and we could watch the headlights of the cars moving along New Center Road to the north.
We pushed through, and the power line turned off, but the railroad bed remained clear through a wooded section out to Beekman Lane.
It looked like literal crap on the other side of Beekman, with no good way through. We turned left on Beekman, because I figured we would use a parallel farm road through the dark to get back on it, or at least parallel with it.

On the rail bed

This turned out to be Hodge Road, and we followed it right below the rail grade out to where it becomes a regular street in the settlement of Flagtown.
Just as we were about to come out onto the street, a car was coming straight for us. We hurried off behind trees and watched, and it turned around to go the other direction at the end. I think google maps seems to show this as a through road, although it is not. Not for cars anyway. It worked quite well for us.
The settlement is named for Jacob Flagg, who purchased a tract of land nearby in 1700. The name was corrupted to Flagtown.
The settlement of Flaggtown was closest to Flagtown Station when the Lehigh Valley Railroad first came through. We could see those tracks from the grade here, because the two lines come very close together before eventually crossing one another closer to Neshanic Station. The CNJ too had its stop here, and it remained Flagtown Station until the station was closed. It was then changed to just Flagtown, and original Flaggtown became Frankfurt.
We turned right and went up the street from here into Flagtown, where we met with Carolyn. She parked at the Flagtown post office since it was closed.
I was ready to continue on along my planned route, which would have taken us closer to Neshanic Station, then through a park propety that used to be a golf course, but I checked with John on what he had for mileage, and we were already over what I wanted to be. To do 15, we would have to amend the route slightly. I didn’t want to be doing twenty.
I had actually posted this as a 25 mile hike by complete mistake, a slip on the keyboard, so it was kind of funny that it would end up being like that had we gone that way. Justin said we needed to do that to make up for the recent hikes he had missed.
I went over the map to devise how we would be continuing.
I decided on South Branch Road to the north. This was a larger road than what I prefer to walk on the night hikes, but it wasn’t too terrible.
We followed it north for a while, and eventually came to the intersection with River Road where we turned right, parallel with the South Branch of the Raritan River.
Along this route, we came to a vacant nice house on the left. I think this must have been a home for a minister or something for the church just ahead, or something of the sort.

Just ahead on the right was the lovely Greek Revival South Branch Reformed Church, built about 1850 on the South Branch of the Raritan River just south of the confluence with the North Branch, near Branchburg.
We stopped for a little break here, and Jenny had prior engagements the following morning so she wanted to cut out early.
She called for an Uber, and we waited for it with her. We tried to convince her otherwise, but she had already called it.
We figured if we made dumb sounds or something, maybe the guy would think the ride is for all of us and just leave, but we had no such luck, and we weren’t as bad as we could have been.
By this time, I had gotten a response from Kristen. She said she was fine. I asked her what she was doing, and why she didn’t respond earlier, to which she replied “I know. I’m a dick.”

I told her that my phone was about to die, but that if she needed a ride I would get her when we were done with the hike, and we were getting closer to the ending all the time.

We turned left just after the church on Studdiford Road, and then turned right on another South Branch Road. Brittany played some music on her external speaker in this area while we were in secluded areas, and we turned right at a fork just after crossing over Holland Brook. This was still considered part of South Branch Road.
We walked up that to a developed area on Old York Road, which was the historic old aboriginal trail turned road that crossed New Jersey between Philadelphia and New York City.
We turned right there, and headed out of the developed area to cross the North Branch of the Raritan just above the confluence with the South Branch. I pointed it out from the bridge.

She found Santa

We continued on Old York Road and overshot where I wanted to turn right because it looked like a driveway. We had to backtrack a bit.
We headed downhill to the western end of Duke Island Park where we could get on the Raritan Power Canal, which started behind a small dam on the Raritan just downstream from the confluence.
The power canal led us directly back to Nevius Street where we were parked a couple blocks up the hill.
The route was kind of hard with tree roots through this section, but it’s quite beautiful. We did come out to the open for a bit in Duke Island Park when it paralleled a parking lot, but the trail is much like a towpath canal in that it is natural and follows a serious berm on the edge. We were barely out in the lights until the very end of it when the ambient light from downtown Raritan shone over the water to where we were walking.
My phone was long dead by this point or I would have gotten some beautiful lights on the canal photos.
We only had to cross a couple of accesses, and the only time we saw other people was on the old truss bridge built for the Hibernia Mine Railroad in Morris County, and then repurposed as a road bridge in Somerset until several years ago. They seemed kind of surprised that anyone would come wandering out of the dark to there.
When I got my phone back on Kristen commented that she had found Santa and that she was hanging out with him. She sent a selfie with a guy with a beard.
I picked her up near Somerville Shop Rite, and the situation got even weirder.
She waited behind just to get alone with me, but the others were too close and John had come back looking for her with me.
I drove her back to Somerville and asked her which car was hers.
“I don’t know” she said.
I told her I have to take her somewhere, and asked her what kind of car it was, and said I’d help her find it.
“It’s a police car” she said. I quickly responded “So a Crown Vic?”.
She said since she had drank, she couldn’t get in her car anyway. She said she wanted me to take her back to my place. I told her that would not work and she knew that.
I eventually told her I would just take her to the quick check and told her to eat peanut butter items until she was safe to drive. She seemed to think that was funny.
She didn’t want to get out of my van. Before she finally did, I felt disturbed by her mentioning “You’ve been in a relationship for 21 years” citing that I needed to experience new people.
Nowhere on my online profiles does it give that specific number. Only those closer to me would known that both of my serious relationships, for which there was no single time between, equal a span of 21 years.
I’d explained to her that I didn’t even think she was real for sure until she actually came out to the hike, and tried not to give too much information in explaining why, but let her known it was a former friend that had screwed me over regarding my girlfriend.
She wasn’t letting up; she said she was going to steal me. She thought I was cute and wanted to “bang” me (a term I hadn’t heard in quite some time), and she said she was going to send me tit and ass photos until I gave in. She only sent one ass photo.
I tried explaining to her that even if I didn’t have a girlfriend, I wouldn’t sleep with someone I’d just met either way.
It was absolutely clear that she knows someone close to me very well. When she mentioned the first name of the guy who had been harassing me before, I at first thought nothing of it. I was tired by that time and already home ready to go to sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I didn’t think I’d ever even told her his name.
Regardless of whether I said it or not, she had to have remembered it pretty well to have repeated it, and all of her other behavior, as well as other statements, left me feeling paranoid and disturbed again.
When I woke up in the morning, her two FB profiles were gone. Had she realized she said too much and had blown her cover? Or is it she was just angry that I rejected her?
I really don’t know what it was, but it’s got me thinking.
It reminded me of my recent statement that a genuine person can talk forever. The audience will at worst become annoyed at the barrage of speech, but someone with harmful intentions and dishonest narrative will eventually drown in their own words.
Whatever the case my be, I will be able to get past it.

HAM