Hike #1453; Brodheadsville Area Loop

 

11/14/21 Brodheadsville Area Loop with Kirk Rohn, Robin J, Jennifer Berndt, Robin Deitz, Serious Sean Dougherty, Heshi, Diane Reider, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, Jennifer Tull, Eric Pace, Brittany Wieder, Stephen Argentina, Justin Gurbisz, Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, and Dan Asnis

This next hike would be sort of a variation on our annual tradition of doing a southern Poconos trip.
Our friend Michele Valerio lives up at Penn Estates, and so we had been doing our hikes to end at her house around the time of her birthday for several years. We also started putting some things together to make it a bit easier, like the annual costume hike.

For a while, the Halloween Hike was in the Hudson Valley somewhere, just because of the connections to authors such as Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe, but we shifted it to be the same as Michele's hike because it would maximize participation and keep interest going. 

I also didn't want to be tied down to doing a hike in a certain location every year on the same weekend more than I already am. We have the anniversary hike, we have Musikfest, we have this one, so I'd rather have more freedom, but the Poconos are still ripe for exploring so it's good to do this.

Because of all of the covid craziness, the past couple of years we have made it so the hike did not end right at Michele's house. Instead, it would be somewhere very nearby, and if she felt comfortable, we could go there afterwards. However, on these past couple of years, she has ended up having other things going on that kept her from even attending the hike.

I had been to Brodheadsville so many times in the past, but I had never actually hiked there.
Actually, it never really looked like there was anything worth doing up there, so I didn't pay much attention to it until a bit more recently.

Of course, I know everywhere has something special that is worth doing, but I have all sorts of other things that I'd been doing that I was more interested in, so this only came about when I was trying to figure out the birthday hike for Michele for this year.

The deciding factor for this route was the fact that there were so many little pieces of park property everywhere, beautiful connecting back roads with little traffic, and a winery, brewery, and distillery in one. I was able to put together a hike that would make our lunch stop at this establishment, and then include up to seven different off road properties we could wander through. The more I looked at the area, the better the hike looked like it was going to be.

One interesting thing about this hike was that I knew it was going to be a loop, but I wasn't entirely sure which direction I would do the loop until we were actually out on it, and even then I changed my mind on the fly.

I dubbed the hike on the Metrotrails meetup as the "Pocono Splendido Wino Loopy Loop Hike", which certainly sounded like it was going to be a hell of a lot of fun.
I'm not all that into constumes, but I put on a weird ass rancher outfit with a beige blazer and oddball sort of cowboy hat I'd gotten at a thrift store a while back, but never got around to wearing.
The meeting point was right behind the Wawa in Brodheadsville, at a public lot on Bond Lane, just off of Rt 715. I wasn't sure if we'd have a big crowd for it, but it ended up being great.

I got snacks and such at the Wawa, and then we all got together in the lot.

From the start, I felt a bit intrepid, and looking at the fields and such in the area, I figured we'd take a bit more of a chance. It looked like some of the fields were owned by the municipality or something, and that we should be okay going along the edge of them.
We started by walking Rt 715 north, just a bit to the intersection of Firehouse Lane. We turned left there, and then immediately right into some wide open fields. We skirted the right side of these fields as we headed northbound.

Before we reached the northern end of this first long field, and after we passed the last house through the tree line to the right, we turned right into the trees for a short bushwhack, which led us to the trail system of Chestunuthill Township.

We regrouped when we hit the trail, and then we all continued to the north.
This was a well graded trail in pleasant woods.
When we came to the next interesection, the decision had to be made whether we were going to do the loop clockwise or counter clockwise.
I started going left briefly thinking it would be clockwise, but then changed my mind immediately and we turned right.

The factor I used to make this decision was the unpredictable nature of some of the trails we were going to be on. If I had to cut anything short, I could do it toward the end, where the beginning had more predictable back roads to walk. So, we turned to the right along the trail to the east.
We came out to a large parking area, and then skirted it to the left, where another grassy trail lined with fence posts led directly to the township municipal building. From there, we turned right and crossed 715, onto Lake Mineola Road.

I chose this lovely back road because it was as narrow as many trails, in some cases narrower, and had a beautiful ambiance. There were amazing views of Lake Mineola along the route.

The lake was a popular destination in the 1920s and 30s especially with a pavilion where events were held. There was a dock and swimming, and people traveling from pretty far to visit.

The place had already been in use as early as 1914 as a sort of camp and retreat, but I'm not sure how much earlier than that it dates back.
Sadly, the popular pavilion at the site burned down in 1955. I believe it was used as a camp at some point after that, but now it appears to be all private residences.
I tried to put together some then and nows with the photos I took on the trip as best I could, using photos from the collection of Fran Mitticombe Mabus. It's hard to say where everything was today just because it's so much different.
We continued along this road, which eventually turned away from the lake to more farm land area.

Lake Mineola Pavilion fire, '55

We continued to a left turn on Burrus Blvd, which turns and goes out behind a medical facility of sorts. We continued straight where the road turned, through mowed grass to the next tree line.

This brought us into the Buena Vista Cemetery, behind the Zion United Lutheran Church.
We cut directly across the cemetery, which was quite pleasant, and then into fields directly on the other side. We skirted the left side of these, and in short order came out onto Silver Valley Road.
We turned left here, and the road was another very pleasant one with hardly any traffic.
It was up on this road that Serious Sean met us after having run a bit late.
He was parked at a lot a little further up the road on the left, at the Silver Valley Natural Area parking lot. I told the rest of the group to wait at our turn, which was to be to the right into a wide trail, and I went ahead to get Sean.

There was a good size pond with a very nice view and a dock ahead there, which I checked out, and the two of us walked back to the rest of the group where we cut into the preserve on the other side.

The preserve there was not all that well or officially maintained I don't believe. It was basically like just an ATV path for some of it, first through a meadow that is certainly farm fields that grew over, and then into light woods. We turned hard to the left, ninety degrees, and then followed what was probably once a road going to the north.
This took us to a foot bridge on what is in some places shown as private property, but in others not. Maybe it is an old sign, maybe it's an illegitimate sign, or maybe it was a recent acquisition, because land along the next road to the north has public signs posted all along it.

The bridge spanned the upper reaches of the McMichael Creek, which was one we had hiked along in the past through Stroudsburg and surrounding area. It flows into the Brodhead Creek.

After we got across the bridge, we came to a very wide meadow that looked like it had been somewhat quarried out. We kept to the right on an ATV track, and then continued to a slope to the north. We ascended a hillside here, where there was a pretty nice view to the hills to the south of us.

We continued to the left along the top of this rise, then contininued into a wooded area.

I wanted to get out to Kennel Road, but it was a lot of undergrowth and brush. We continued a bit farther, and eventually found a spot where the brush didn't look quite as terrible. We turned to the north and began bushwhacking and made our way out to the road.

We turned right on Kennel Road, past some houses on the left side of the road. Fortunately no one saw us and gave us a hard time about coming out of the woods. I felt better when I saw the public signs.

Kennel Road was a really nice one to walk. I usually judge the roads based on whether they have a yellow line in the middle, and even though this one did, it wasn't too terribly busy.
We continued on this road out to Mcilhaney Road, where we turned to the left.
This road was probably the worst stretch I planned of the entire day. It wasn't really all that busy, but when cars did go by, it was often a pickup truck driven by a hick that felt they had something to prove by going far too fast. There were some turns on the road that were a bit unnerving for pedestrians.

The road was also the most major up hill of the entire trip. There wasn't a lot of good open space to use in this stretch, so I just had to choose the best roads to get us up toward the winery.

We went steeply to a ninety degree bend, then gradually after it.

We continued past an abandoned farm area where there was a collapsed building and might have at one time been an old farm house.
We continued ahead to the intersection with Heller-Mcillhaney Road, and turned to the left to continue uphill a bit more.
We continued on this to Neola Church Road, and turned to the right at the top of the hill.
This was a somewhat busier road as well, but we were not on it for too long before turning right on Spruce Woods Road.
I chose this road specifically because it was a beautiful little road along a creek most the way.

The Appenzell Creek flowed right alongside the road for this entire stretch. It felt like a relief getting onto it and away from some of those busier roads.

I chatted with Robin for a while about the entire mess that politics have become the past few years, about her experiences in it and mine, and it was really nice. I also realized that she had been out hiking with me years before in Philadelphia, in the Fairmount Park hike that Jason and Amanda Kumpas had come up with. 

We continued on Spruce Woods Road out to Neola Road. Along this route we realized that some of the group had missed the turn and went the wrong way on Neola Church Road when the rest of us turned. I gave directions on how to get back together, and I called Dan to let him know he should take that shorter way as well.

Those of us that went the right way turned left on Neola Road and headed across the Appenzell Creek, and headed slightly into the woods to check out the creek a little closer. It was really pretty and rocky.
Over there, I noticed that the predecessor to the current bridge over the creek used to be just upstream of the current bridge. The road approach on the other side was still there, and abutments to a bridge that had carried it were still there.
I suspect that the main flow of the creek might have originally been near the bridge abutment we were seeing, but that at some point a flood or whatever might have changed the course of the creek somewhat.

We turned back to the road and headed slightly uphill again, and then turned right on Walters Road, which was another lovely, lesser used road more like the kinds I prefer walking.

The distance on this road to the winery, the Mountain View Vineyard, Winery, Brewery, and Distillery, seemed to go by really extremely fast. Before too long, we were walking up the driveway to the place.

Things were starting to calm down somewhat with the covid craziness, because we were allowed to sit on an enclosed deck area all at a long table. For a while, we couldn't sit at all anywhere as a big group.

We went over the menu, and I had a look at the wines that would be a bit sweeter, as well as cheaper, and settled on a bottle of Split Rail Riesling, which was a semi sweet red table wine. I shared the first one with everyone over dinner, and then got another one for the road because we liked it so much.
I ordered a pizza there because it looked like the best thing for me, and it had chicken on it, but I neglected to notice that it was made with barbecue sauce rather than pizza sauce.
I really don't care much for barbecue sauce, so this was really the only let down from the place.
Someone had a beer they couldn't finish, so that got passed on to me to drink as well.

Not only was it the one beer and the wine, plus I was able to sample wines that others got, Dan Asnis ordered a flight of stuff and he could barely finish any of them. I ended up drinking them all.

By the time it was time for us to go, we had all probably had a good amount to drink, except for Heshi because I think he waited outside and took a nap most of the time we were in there.
Even Eric got flights of both wine and beer, and then he got some beer to go for the rest of the trip.
We got ready to head out, and headed to the front for our regular group shot (we also got one inside), and headed directly through the vineyard rather than head back down the main entrance road we had walked up. I figured this would be a nicer walk to the east.

As I walked down between the rows of grapes I felt loopy. It was a pretty dizzy walk down, and many of us were laughing and giggling. Sean and I were up front and I mentioned this was going to be a ridiculous remainder of the hike.

We turned left on Sawmill Road, and more of us got stuff to go than I even realized. I think everyone had a drink in their hand just walking down the road. This was literally middle of nowhere, somewhere around Jackson Township, and we barely had any cars even go by us.

We took Sawmill Road and continued straight on Walters Road, which which went straight at its turn, and followed it to the northwest a bit. Brittany had picked up some sort of moonshine or something like that, which was absolutely delicious, and so she was passing that around too.
I don't think anyone was walking in a straight trajectory for quite a while.
The hike was living up to its "loopy" title.
We continued to Twin Pine Road and turned right.
From here, we just followed along the road through light residential area, and we were dancing along, singing, and just being silly for a while. I eventually stopped the group to get back together.

Where we were going, we would have to be a bit more quiet, because there was a little bit of private land probably before we could get to where I wanted to be.
The next bit of the hike was to get into State Game Lands #186 to the north.
We headed up the road just a bit more, and then when we were well past houses and such, as not to invade anyone's privacy, we turned hard to the left off trail.
We bushwhacked through, and made our way through some evergreens where we couldn't be seen, then reached the bottom of a slope where we began climbing to a small unnamed ridge.

By the time we were on the ridge, we were into the state game lands. I switched back in order to get up the hill, and then we started moving along to the west a bit. It was much more pleasant up top.

There was a bit of a view through the trees to the south, and we could see somewhat obscured as far as the Blue Mountain and Kittatinny Ridge to the south.

There were a couple of outcroppings and such, and the woods was pretty clear of undergrowth. We eventually found our way onto a sort of old woods road which carried us along nicely to the west for a bit. However, I had to watch my phone gps pretty closely. It would have been nice to just continue along that route, but it wasn't the way we needed to be. It would have led us onto private land.
I had the group catch up, and then we headed off trail directly to the north near the boundary of the state game land.

We made our way downhill just a bit, and then slightly back uphill. I could see the occasional car go by on Running Valley Road before we even got to it. I turned slightly to the right to hit the road at an angle, and we came out to exactly where I'd wanted to.
I had hiked through these game lands before a few years earlier, and we came down from the opposite side of Running Valley Road to about this location. Someone who met late had left their car at the lot we came out at as I recall.
So, this was the only spot where this hike connected to all of the other hikes I had done before.

Once everyone was out of the woods, we turned left on Running Valley Road heading west. I think the hill climb was enough to work some of the alcohol out of our systems a bit. 

We had a long walk along Running Valley Road to the west, which I can barely remember because it seemed to go so quickly, turned left on Neola Road, and then turned right on Sherwood Forest Road, which was a bit more up hill. I don't think anyone was quite feeling like it at the time, but we pushed on.
I think I had Dan take another way around in this area as well to save him from the tougher stuff.
A short distance up this road, there was preserve land on the right, part of the Sherwood Forest Greenway, which is slowly coming together I think under Broadhead Creek Watershed. It looks like there is land that would get us through on a future hike.

This time, the hike would take us to the south. There was reportedly a wire gate or something on the south side of the road that was the start of the trail in the Sherwood Forest Preserve. 

We continued walking and eventually got to this point, then headed into the edges of fields to the south. We skirted that and then hit the woods where a yellow trail followed a woods road to the east again.

We stayed with the outer most trails to the east, which weaved around, and then climbed rather steeply through woods and uphill  more than I was expecting to do. I was loopy and having trouble with it, and Brittany was getting kind of the same, bracing herself on me as we helped each other up the hill.
Pretty soon it leveled off, and we continued along a scrubby top of the hill to where there was a nice view to the south. Through trees, we had a somewhat obscured view to the Delaware Water Gap to the southeast, and straight ahead was a splendid view to Wind Gap from the north.

It was kind of neat because I had recently been seeing so many views looking north at Wind Gap on Warren Highlands Trail through work, but this was basically the same view only to the south.

We waited at the top for everyone to catch up, and then continued along the top of the ridge area on what was supposed to be another trail, which then looped back to a woods road that descends back to Sherwood Forest Road.
We followed this trail for just a little bit, and it was not getting us anywhere. We reached a sort of stone row and the blazes were hard to see. I'm sure we could have found it all the way through, but we were running out of daylight and there was one more section we had to get through before it got too dark. So, we headed back by way of a short bushwhack to close to the overlook, and then followed the woods road from there directly down.

The woods road descended, and was lined with a wall of young white pines, above which were the brilliant colors of mixed hardwood forest and some mature white pines. This road took us back out to Sherwood Forest Road where we turned to the left for a ways.

Everyone was getting burned out tired, but we pushed on. There was an abandoned looking log cabin on our left, and then we turned left onto Ash Lane for just a little bit. We continued for a couple blocks distance through a little residential area, and then turned left onto Forest Drive.

This very short road took us to the entrance to the Big Woods Natural Area, the last major park area we had to go through. There was no shortcut around this one at this point. It was starting to get darker, but the route would take us out to Little Mexico Road, which was where we needed to be to get back to at least Rt 715.

Jen was really tuckered out at this point, so she stopped to try to call for an Uber at this point. I think Dan Asnis had managed to get one at this point, and either she went with him, or she managed to get her own back the last few miles to the cars.

We entered the woods and it was already starting to get pretty dark. There were some side paths that went into different directions, and I don't recall any reasonable trail blazes guiding us.

As we walked, I just kept my eyes on my phone GPS and hoped it got us where we needed to be simply based on following the trajectory we needed.
The trail went gradually down, and we still had a bit of daylight as we made our way off of the somewhat washed out old road, and into some open fields to the south.
We headed through the first field and then through a tree line, then came into a second field where we turned right to skirt the upper end of it.

Pretty soon, the cul de sac at the end of the road came into view, known as the Storm Avenue trail head. Google maps calls this Little Mexico Road, so I don't know what's going on there.

Just ahead, there was an intersection, and I suppose that's where the name of the road changes from Storm Ave to Little Mexico because that named road I think goes left and right.
As I understand, the settlement area was actually called Little Mexico, and historic maps show that there was a school house nearby called the Mexico School.
We continued straight on Little Mexico, which was a very nice road to walk, and then turned right at the end of it onto Effort-Neola Road. This was a busier road, but not too terrible. We followed it directly out to Route 715 where we turned left, to the south.

It had been my intention in planning this hike to do an off trail section from Effort-Neola to 715 on a somewhat recently acquired piece of public land that connects the two between corners, but it was dark by the time we got to this point and I didn't want to push it.

Rt 715 was a busier road that I would have liked to walk. This last part of the hike was kind of crappy by comparison to other sections, but it wasn't all as I had planned because I wanted to be off the road. We still went about the hike the correct way, because if we had done it the other direction, we would have gotten to the winery quite late. All of the tougher trail stuff was later on. doing it the direction we did.

The road section really wasn't all that far, but in the dark it seemed longer.
We continued down this until we got to Idlewood Road on the right. We turned rigth uphill here for just a bit, then turned left on a dead end piece of Fairfield Drive to reach a trailhead of the Chestnuthill Township park trail, where we had been earlier in the day, and where we would have reached sooner if we'd done my original plan.
We all got in the woods and regrouped. As we moved further down, someone mentioned to me that Kirk was missing. I held everyone up before the next trail head, and tried calling him. He didn't answer right away, but we got him soon enough.

He had gotten on Idlewood Road and just continued walking it uphill instead of making the first left turn toward the park. Stephen ran back the track to Fairfield, and then to Idlewood to find him.

Eventually, Stephen found him, and we waited until they got back to us in the woods. 

From there, we continued on the trail to the left, which took us back out a slightly different way to the parking lot we had come into earlier, before we headed out and around Lake Mineola. 

We turned right at the parking lot this time, and then walked Rt 715 to the south to get back to where we had met in the morning.

I forget what the mileage was, but it ended up being farther than I was planning, and a lot of what we we were doing was somewhat difficult. It also didn't help matters that we spent so much time at the brewery having a good time, probably close to two hours. 

I drove Serious Sean back to his car just up the road and we were on our way.
This was really a fantastic trip for me; it was one of those weird concoctions I threw together, where it felt like a piece of art.

This hike was something that no one would ever in a million years try to throw together, but I saw it as a full piece that would be a different interesting thing at every turn. It was a good example of how I stopped creating visual art so many years ago, and instead started living more artistically.

The hike felt like one of my night hikes, only mostly during the day, and turned into a night hike. I missed doing those hikes ever since my son was born, and this really felt like it harkened back to that. My day hikes are different for obvious reasons, but I think the palat I work with for the night hikes is a little different, trying to make something of a more limited media.

In that way, some of these obligatory hikes around parties are very fun and fulfilling on a personal level. 

I've been doing so many series hikes that are just "the next section" of whatever, but that doesn't allow me to slap together something completely strange and interesting in the way I used to almost every night hike. That was the missing component. But, I still want to continue with those series hikes.

It's a situation that has no definitive solution, but I feel good actually recognizing components of what brings me joy rather than something so narrow as night or day walking.
This was really just a great day. It was a great, big group, and it felt more "normal" than any of the big group hikes had felt for a long while since the pandemic stuff.