Hike #1502; Trexler Preserve to Allentown

Hike #1502; 8/28/22 Trexler Preserve to Allentown with Professor John DiFiore, Serious Sean Dougherty, Diane Reider, Robin Deitz, James DeLotto, and Violet Chen

This next trip would be another out in the greater Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, and one that I had originally intended to be almost exactly one year prior.

I had posted a hike that had this one as a backup, but flood waters ended up being far worse than anticipated, and so I had to use the backup to the backup.

The plan for the hike was actually in many ways a repeat of one I had done back in October of 2011, only now more of the greenway along the Jordan Creek was in place. It could be done as a much different hike this time. Even the road walk sections we did back on that one could be done somewhat differently than the way we would do this one. I was quite looking forward to it.

That last time I did this, our finishing point would be a bit further down the Jordan Creek than where we finished that last time, which would allow for some more wiggle room for exploring.

The meeting point would be the same location we had posted for the one the year prior, near the Home Depot in Whitehall area along the Jordan Creek Greenway. Parking spaces are set aside on the south side of the lot for trail parking just off of MacArthur Road near the White Castle.

From there, we shuttled to our start point, which would also be the same as our hike the year before, only this time we’d head to the south instead of to the north.
The lot we would start at would be the South Range Lot of the Trexler Preserve.

We started walking the trail directly from the lot; there were a few other people around, maybe two other cars, but otherwise it was pretty dead out there.

I was having trouble right from the start. The week had not gone very well for me.

After the last hike, which was honestly the most difficult hike of the year, I didn’t seem to be recovering fast. Of course, people I discussed this with told me it just boiled down to me getting older, but I knew the difference. This wasn’t some age related ache and pain. I was having serious trouble.

Somewhat recently, I’d had a few issues that were long lasting. On hike 1500, I’d gotten stung by the wasps that created aches and infections that lasted more than a week. Just barely prior to that, I had one more embarrassing but problematic thing I had to contend with.

I got home from work one day and found a very small tick embedded in my dick. Like BAD.

There was no one around that was going to help me with this. I sat in the bathroom forever trying to get it out. After that, it left a mark that lasted for a long time and itched like crazy. I didn’t even want to discuss it because I felt that inevitably someone would think I’d gotten some STD and was using the tick as an excuse (although that was just paranoia that came along with embarrassment. I do know that most of my friends would know better).
I kind of forgot about the incident and just carried on until I started feeling problems after hike 1500.

In addition to that tick bite, there were also some issues I’d been dealing with just before.
I had been to urgent care after I felt a pop in my hand earlier in the year. 

I thought that I’d snapped a tendon because of the audible noise that came from my hand while lifting a water grate. It made a snap and sent a sort of funny bone pain all the way up my arm. Blunt pain persisted for months after that and I could no longer close my pinky finger.
I went and got an MRI to have this looked at, and they found that I hadn’t broken a tendon or the “pulley” that holds it. I actually had a badly enflamed tendon, and it was too large for the conduit that it moved through in my finger.
So whatever this was, it could have been something that persisted from much earlier in the year.

I had a headache and I felt off. My energy level just wasn’t there, and I didn’t know what it was.

I had planned to have another hike during the week, and it would be a sort of retirement party hike for Jenny Tull, but then I was in no shape to be leading it and I had to deal with the baby as well.
Even as we started walking this first trail, I felt weaker every step, but I pushed on.
The side trail, which isn’t shown on the trail maps, leads to the Trexler Border Trail, the longest trail that basically goes around the entire preserve. The last time we hiked from here, we went left and continued through the preserve to the north and then headed east. This time, we would go the opposite way, to the south.

Trexler Preserve is a 1,108 acre preserve named for Harry Clay Trexler, who purchased this land between 1901 and 1911. It was Trexler's goal to stock the land with bison, elk, and deer, with the main focus on saving the North American Bison.

When Trexler died in 1933, he left the preserve to Lehigh County. The county took control of the property in 1935, and the elk and bison population began to dwindle. 

In 1975, they attempted to establish the Lehigh Valley Zoo on the property. Still, most of the property remained closed to the public, despite the wording of Trexler's will that the entire property be open to the public.

A civil suit was filed against Lehigh County by the Trexler Trust, and they agreed to the settlement in 2006. The entire property was open to public then, and the trail system was developed through the property.
I have really enjoyed this preserve greatly because it is still managed like a game farm, and the land still looks much as it did a century ago when it was managed for that purpose. Rolling hills with sweeping views haven’t all grown over with brush and tall trees. It feels like a very different area than the rest of the land all around it.

The trail brought us out to Jordan Road and then turned left to cross Jordan Creek on the road bridge. 

I had gone this way the previous time and followed Jordan Road, but this time I had another idea in mind. We would go to the left and continue on Trexler Border Trail a bit to the east.
We climbed uphill past some nice big trees, and then over a nice section of boardwalk in a flood plain. There was a shelter on the left side of the trail as we started to climb up a bit away from the creek.

We headed up to a more level area, with open meadows off the trail to the right. A few other people walked past us from the other direction, and we waited for them to get out of sight.

My plan was to cut away from the trail there, and then try to head to the east along the Kidspeace property which seemed to have its own system of trails through it.

The Trexler Border Trail follows the border between these properties just ahead and doesn’t even have a tree line, but we cut to the right before that, and found our way onto some more service roads through meadows. We found a vague trail through some of the open meadows which we followed slightly downhill and to the left. We could see the paved access road through the property snaking its way from the main building down to what I think is a maintenance building.

I hurried on through, ahead of the rest of the group. I crossed the main Kidspeace Road, and then got onto a gravel road that sort of went straight ahead through another meadow area, toward a steep hill where it turned hard right into deeper woods.

It was beautiful, with Goldenrod in bloom. There was a lovely giant Sycamore as soon as we got into the woods.

I walked closely with Serious Sean through this section and we chatted about everything from planning hikes, how the night hikes were going with him planning many of them, and about some songs he’d been composing.
He played a couple of tunes he had come up with, which were melodically great, and he had just finished tweaking the lyrics. They were really incredibly clever, and he had a play on words in one of them that reminded me of some of the classic hits of the late sixties into the seventies.

We got to a deeper wooded area with mowed trails coming in from the left. To the right, there was a set of wooden stairs leading uphill. It didn’t look like they had been used in quite a while, but they were in nice shape otherwise.
It looked like there might have once been a bridge over a small tributary to the Jordan Creek to the left, but nothing now.
My plan from here was to eventually head to the east on the slopes above the Jordan Creek, but it was looking more welcoming going more downhill along the edge of a smaller tributary to closer to the creek.

Sean played me another more up-tempo demo he had just recently finished while we weaved and hopped over and through vegetation which was great. 

He kept saying that the lyrics were corny, but to me it sounded like he was channeling the likes of Dylan, The Beatles, and John Sebastian with the progression of chords and lyrics. He’s really got something great going with these tunes.

Pretty soon, we reached the edge of the Jordan Creek, and there were enormous private homes on the other shore.

There was no path along the Jordan Creek here. I don’t think I expected anything in particular coming through this way. I had half a mind not to go this way right from the start of the hike, but I decided at rather last minute that we should give this a try. Most of the hike would be really easy, and so I figured we would throw some of the hard, unpredictable stuff on at the start.

We started bushwhacking to the left, parallel with the Jordan Creek downstream, up from the confluence with the little tributary. It was alright at first, but we had to keep gaining elevation to avoid brush and briars.

These light young woods were prone to having undergrowth because the canopies were not yet that large, and it was getting worse as we continued. 

I had to keep climbing to get further from the rougher stuff.
I started having flashbacks when we got to the higher elevation, and began dreading going through more wasp or hornet nests again.
This was just the type of terrain where we would find the buggers, and so I decided that we would go straight up the hill to the corner of the nearest field. From there, we could skirt the Kidspeace property to the east side and make our way out to an access road I could see on aerial images, and make our way out to Grist Mill Road.

The edge of the field was a bit rough when we reached it, but already there were some good views of the big villas on private lands all around us, on the opposite side of the Jordan Creek. 

The main Kidspeace building came into view to the west of us, to our left.

As we ascended a bit more, the field edge got a bit clearer. We reached the crest of the hill, and then came to a clearly mowed area.
Off to the left, there was a beautiful wooden overlook platform I was not expecting to find. Was this public land? I had no idea. I was not expecting to find anything like this over there at all.
I found out that this wooden platform was known as the Rich Biolsi Observatory. 

A sign on the property said it was part of the “Trusty Park” or TrustV Park”. The lower part of what was either the “Y” or the “V” was cut off because insects or woodpeckers had destroyed some of the wood.

The views from this platform were quite spectacular. Kidspeace was really clearly in view, and all of those private estates and homes were more prominent than ever. I was so glad we had come this way, because no one would ever know this place was back there.

We headed from the platform to the east, out toward Grist Mill Road and passed the sign, right about where the access road toward Kidspeace breaks off.

The access brought us out at the intersection of Grist Mill Road and Woodlea Road. There were no signs directing anyone to this observation platform from the road. It’s quite a private location.

We turned to the right on Grist Mill Road, and I got a call from DeLotto who was ready to meet up with us. I told him where we were headed, and he made his way out in our direction.

We passed several homes, and then came to the very steep slope in the wood line where we would have had to climb up had we decided to stay on the trajectory that we were on before above Jordan Creek. I was quite happy we decided against going that way.

I was feeling more fatigued and my muscles were getting really terribly sore.

I felt like I had been running a chainsaw all day every day for many days, but I had not run the chain saw at all this week. I just had no strength and felt very tired. 

I kind of figured it was because of waking up with my son in the middle of the night, but that shouldn’t have been making me so sore. Even holding him for a long time shouldn’t have done that.

I decided to have a Double Dog 18 beer to see if that would help to make it better.

We headed downhill on the road and soon reached the little settlement of Kernsville, with the centerpiece being the historic Kern’s Grist Mill on the right.

The old stone grist mill was built in 1806 by Peter Kern. I had passed this mill and went inside when we first hiked through this area in 2011. This was not long after the roof had been restored in 2007.
There still isn’t much done with the inside, but at least the building is protected from the elements with the new roof on it. The old roof had collapsed into the building in 2001 and the fate of the mill was not looking good.
I went down a path to the right of the building to view the head race leading from behind the dam on the Jordan Creek into the mill. 

I then climbed down and along the edge of the mill where I could peer into the inside to see it was in good shape. I didn’t see any kind of mill wheel in place though.

While we were on the day, some guy was waving and hollering at us from the other side. I didn’t realize it at first, but it was DeLotto!

When I realized it was him, I walked right out across the lower bench of the old dam over to greet him.
The dam was probably the original one, only it was capped with concrete. The original would probably wooden crib work with stone filled in, similar to the old canal dams. 

We greeted at the far side of the dam, and Delotto parked his car at an obscure little spot on the other side that was apparently public, but I hadn’t known about it.
I walked back across the dam to the others at the mill, and we walked around it to Kernsville Road. We turned right and crossed the bridge the the non weight bearing trusses, and on the other side turned left on Jordan Road.

I had considered going off trail and wading through the creek, which was kind of low with the drought conditions, but I was feeling so fatigued that I figured we should just stick to the road.

 It was a pleasant road anyway, with very little traffic, and it was close to the creek anyway.
The pleasant walk along the road afforded us some views across the creek and into the fields beyond, with a few homes along the right side.
When I had hiked the creek before, we walked this entire section actually in the creek. We continued along the road, and Haasadahl Road came in from the right. There wasn’t much more traffic after this point still.
I had been planning that we would get down into the creek after a little while and continue walking east, but then I looked at my google maps ahead of where we were.

In doing so, I realized Werley’s Market was coming up ahead on this same road, and that it was open! 

I didn’t think there were really any possibilities for food stops on this hike, so this looked particularly enticing. I decided right then that we would continue on Jordan Road ahead to the little village of Guthsville where the market was.
As we got closer to the settlement, the name of the road changed to Huckleberry Road.

When we reached Guthsville, Village Road turned off to the left, and that would be our route. Werley’s Market was on the northeast side of the intersection, and the old Guthsville Hotel was on the left side, which was more recently a restaurant I understand, but currently closed. 

I’m not sure the future of the building.
The settlement itself was founded in 1780, and as per the old atlas maps of Lehigh County, the hotel was already in place by the 1870s.

We headed into Werley’s Market and checked out what options we had for food. I was quite content to sit down for a while because I was so tired.
I ordered an Italian sub sandwich, and saw that they had some of my favorite chocolate milk, by Clover Farms, as well as my favorite Arizona RX Energy iced tea. I of course picked up plenty of both.

With my full size sub sandwich, teas and two chocolate milks, it still came to under $10. I couldn’t believe that it was so inexpensive.

Not only that, the family who run the place are as friendly as could be. They were apparently from India, but had been in the US a while. A son was running the register while his mom prepared the food, and it was well worth it for the price. This deli might have been the best value spot we’d passed on the hikes all year.

We hung out inside for a long while because the air conditioning was good and it was so hot out. I ended up eating my entire sub, which I wasn’t expecting to be as large as it was, so on top of already feeling off, I ended up feeling stuffed. Two chocolate milks on a hot day was also quite a lot for me.

We looked around for stuff to take for the road, and they had slim jims for sale that now had “hot AF” on their advertising! 

I also noticed that this place had the Takis Fuego chips we had found in a trailer during the Winter while we were walking the Maybrook line in NY. Actually, after this, I noticed those things had been appearing everywhere.

We chatted with the owners for a bit, and promised to come back the next time we were in the area.
From here, we followed Village Road to the north for just a bit more, and then turned left on Rt 309 to cross the Jordan Creek. 

There, the greenway trail, paved at this point, has somewhat newly been constructed to the east only. The rest of it to the west was not yet in place.

We climbed down the left side of the bridge on a foot path, passed beneath the road bridge, and continued ahead along the paved trail.
This was a lovely section I had never walked at this point before. It was not yet developed the last time I’d hiked it, but I did come out back in 2021 for scouting and walked some of the new section from the east. I just hadn’t made it this far yet.
There were great little spots to the right of the trail where it was good to lay in the creek. I couldn’t wait much longer before I had to take a break and just lay in the water. 

I felt so drained and my body wasn’t function right. I hoped that getting into the water would help to begin to correct this problem.

It was refreshing, but it did not work much to offer me more relief.

While I walked ahead a little bit more, Diane found $100 just sitting on the trail! This was quite a splendid find! Either someone using the trail lost it, or maybe it had fallen out of or off of someone’s car. In this area, we passed beneath the PA Turnpike Rt 476 where it spans the Jordan Creek, so it could have been from there.

We continued ahead on the trail, and we crossed over a short section of wide boardwalk first over a small tributary. We then had another section of just pavement, followed by a much longer section of boardwalk which was quite impressive.

A little bit past the first section of boardwalk, there was a much more impressive and longer one. It weaved around with quite a nice aesthetic.

Pretty soon, we came within view of the old Wehr Covered Bridge. This was a Burr arch truss span built in 1841. The 117 foot span is the centerpiece of South Whitehall Township’s Covered Bridge Park.
We came out to the bridge and turned right on the road to cross, where there were lovely views of the dam on the Jordan Creek just upstream. There was once a grist mill on the north side of the creek in this area, but there look to be no remnants of it today.

The bridge now has two piers holding it up in the middle, but I believe the Burr arch truss once held the entire structure up with the single span.

We turned left after the bridge and onto the grass in Covered Bridge Park. From there, we just followed along the grassy edge of the Jordan Creek for a while. It was a very pleasant walk through this area, but my fatigue was getting worse.

We eventually came to a foot bridge that spanned the creek. I had crossed this before, but it was looking far more interesting these days. The entire side of the steps up to it were adorned with paintings of children fishing and playing, as well as animals and natural scenes. It was quite impressive.

The bridge was kind of impressive the first time I went over it too, because it was not a covered bridge, but was of a sort of covered bridge theme. 

Although it wasn’t covered, there were wooden framework sections that were the profile of a covered bridge over top, which is really a pretty neat idea.
We crossed over the bridge, and then turned right immediately on the other side to continue following the Jordan Creek downstream.

As we walked the clearing in the grass, which was a bit further from the creek, we came to an opening in a stone row that brought us over closer to it once again.

This was an odd spot because every so many stones in the wall were situated vertically, and where we passed through the wall had two vertical stones placed. 

I noted after going through that the wall extended a good while beyond where we turned.
As we approached the creek, more of this same construction continued to the edge, and then there was sort of a stone ruin next to the creek. I’m not sure if this was a barn, or maybe a mill, or even another dam across the creek at this site. I searched on the historic Lehigh County atlas from the 1870s, and there was nothing there at the time. It could be that it was some sort of infrastructure placed after that, and that the wall was maybe a WPA project from the 30s, but it struck me as much earlier. 

It might be possible that this was a dam or ruin that existed and had already been gone at the time of the 1870s map. I still don’t know what any of this was.

From this ruin spot, we turned left along the creek downstream, passed a giant multi leader Sycamore, and then approached the Manasses Guth Covered Bridge at the far east end of Covered Bridge Park. Unlike so many of the covered bridges we come across, both bridges at either end of the park are in regular everyday use for vehicle traffic.
The Guth Covered Bridge is a 108 foot long Burr arch truss span built in 1858 and rebuilt in 1882. This single span is still in use without any extra footings holding it up.

We crossed over this bridge, and then turned left on Iron Bridge Road. 

This area ahead is a really weird one. It feels like the middle of nowhere, there is a school and some businesses nearby, but it is almost apocalyptic. There are abandoned houses around the area, and the road is barely used. Just kind of otherworldly.

As we headed around the corner on this road, we came upon an abandoned house with the front door wide open, so we had a look. It looked like it was ready to be moved into. There really looked to be nothing wrong with it compared to other homes we often find abandoned. 

I was thinking maybe one of the parks, county or maybe another conservancy might have purchased this and other lands since there are apparently abandoned farms with homes and other buildings all through the area. 

An initial search didn’t reveal anything of that sort, but it does seem strange that all of these adjacent properties have the same things in common.

After having a look around, we continued to the east along the road, and the Jordan Creek turned north through the old farm property. These fields are still in cultivation despite having the homes vacant. I had considered when I planned the hike that we would walk in the creek downstream from here, but I was just too knocked out to handle it.

We continued down the road to the east, and soon came to a very handsome old stone barn with wooden stable type areas between support sections. 

This barn was once the Wenner Farm according to the old atlas. The barn looked to be in fine shape with a very good roof. I think someone must have put some money into this structure to get it in such fine shape.
It wasn’t so apparent from the road, but there is another abandoned farm house out back behind the barn. It would have been easy in normal circumstances to go back and have a look at it, but again I was far too worn out to handle it.

Delotto was looking out for me pretty closely. I think he also gets it because of his diabetes that he has to watch, and he knew that there was something very much not right with me. 

He kept offering food and snacks and water to me all day long.

Just ahead of this next farm, we came to the concrete arch underpass of the former Reading Railroad. This was a branch of the Philadelphia and Reading line that went from the main through line, I think the West Penn Division, at Alburtis, and then connected with the Ironton Railroad in the Lehigh Valley. Today, it only goes from that line in Alburtis as far as far as Geo Specialty Chemicals just to the northeast of Iron Bridge Road, and it is abandoned from there. We walked it as part of a hike probably in 2014.

The official name of this was the Catasauqua and Fogelsville Branch. The road section we were on was also once the route of a trolley line.

I assume that the name of the road is probably for an iron bridge that originally would have carried the line over this road and the Jordan Creek. There are three concrete arches there now, two of them to carry the creek and one for the road.
Just before we got to the creek, there was a guy down fishing along the west side of the creek. I was feeling super overheated again, and wanted to get down to it again, so I waited for the east side of the culvert.

At the end of the retaining wall on the east side, there is a path that leads steeply down to the creek, and requires holding on to a rope and I think a hose lined metal wire to get down to the water level.

This was a bit tough for me in my weakened state. The pain in my forearms kept getting worse all the time like I had been spending hours working out.
When I got to the bottom, I could see the fisherman upstream from me a bit, and I didn’t want to bother him, but I really badly needed to get into the water.
I laid in it at the deepest spot I could get to and got myself completely saturated. Every time I did this I hoped it would make me feel a lot better, but I still continued to get worse over the course of the day.

When I stood up from the water, the pain was so bad that I wanted to just lay back down. 

I went back over to the guide wire and path I had used to get down to the creek to begin with, and I didn’t have the strength to pull myself back up. I was stuck staying down there. This was the point when I recognized that I had a very serious problem and that I would have to go to a doctor for it.

I had to continue walking down the stream away from the group until there was a gradual enough hill up to the right that I could just walk without having to use my arms or exert too much energy.

Apparently everyone was looking for me to come up, and then they saw me emerge from the brush further down the road and walked to catch up with me.

We continued down Iron Bridge Road a short bit until we came to Cedar Crest Blvd. This is a really busy road, but the earlier main road here is just slightly further to the east, and would have had its own bridge there.
We turned right on Cedar Crest briefly, and then cut through the weeds on the other side to reach the old road route.
On the old road, just up from the former creek crossing, was a beautiful old stone barn with a wooden addition, and just uphill from that, a beautiful old stone farm house. 

This was the former Troxel Farm, which was already in place by the mid 1800s, but I do not know when it was constructed. The beautiful farmstead is now vacant, like so many others of the area, but it was in very good repair and the grounds around it looked to be kept up pretty well.

 Someone commented on my photos of the area that the “days are numbered” for some of these structures “for better or for worse”, because there are big changes coming to the area. 

I’m not sure if they’re thinking warehouses or what, but it would be really sad to see these old buildings go.

Directly across from the old Troxel farm is another old house, which also appears to be vacant but in pretty good repair. 

We made the left turn from here onto Minnich Road, which is a really fantastic, little used road going in the direction we needed to go. We passed a garage there associated with that Troxel farm house, and it had the center section collapsed.

We continued up Minnich Road, came out of the shade, and had a rough walk uphill toward Albright Road.

I was really struggling by this time. My upper legs were getting the same sore pains that my forearms already had, and the rest of the group was offering to Uber me out of there. They insisted that I did not have to finish this hike, but I was absolutely hell bent on doing so.
The hill wasn’t even all that bad, but it was killing me.
When we got closer to the top of the hill, I noticed a Cottonwood tree growing right up against a Black Walnut, and it made me think of my favorite story of Greek Mythology, that of Baucis and Philemnon, from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Eight Brief Tales of Lovers. 

I always think of that when I see intertwined trees together, and at this point in my life it kind of makes me sad given my situation.
There are some of the Ovid stories that seem to have been recycled into the Bible.
Baucis and Philemnon were poor mortals who were chosen by the Gods Zeus and Hermes in disguise to entertain them. The mortal couple spared no expense, and despite their lack of riches, offered the gods the best of all they had to offer. Before they departed, Zeus and Hermes revealed themselves as gods and rewarded them for their kindness with one wish. Baucis and Philemnon chose never to see the other perish. They grew old, and when their time came to die, they were turned into intertwined Oak and Linden trees, and spoke their farewell to one another as the bark covered their lips.

The more level portion of this road, just after the uphill turn, was once part of the trolley right of way, which had followed Iron Bridge Road to the west, and had crossed Jordan Creek just downstream from Guth’s Covered Bridge. 

At a line of trees that went to the left, the trolley bed used to continue “cross country” through the fields.

We continued to Albright Road; when we had just about reached level ground, I decided to open up a Double Dog 18 beer. At this point, I had been afraid that it would make me just feel worse, but I felt completely awful at this point so I would either be doing it all the way or making it better.
Thankfully, the beer started making me feel better than worse, and the next bit got a lot easier. 

Albright Road took us into the little community of Scherersville, which isn’t even shown on Google maps from what I can see.

 I suppose the colloquial village name is probably only used by those who live there today, if that.
We turned left on Orchard Avenue past the church, and then hard right on Pirma Ave.

There are more abandoned homes along Jordan Creek throughout the stretch parallel with us, which I want to check out.

While we walked this route, near the intersection with Whitehall Ave, there was a whole bunch of stuff sat out for free alongside the road. I was surprised by some of the stuff we were seeing. There were awards from local old man clubs from around Northampton, or badges or something (I don’t understand their ranks or initiations or anything), and then a whole lot of very old photographs. 

Some of them might have been from along the Jordan Creek.

This looked like old 110 film, but they were black and white. They’d faded to pretty much sepia by this time, and I thought I should take all of them, but I didn’t. I shoved a few things into the side pouch of my pack and that was it. I was clearly not even in my right mind at this time, because I couldn’t really focus much on anything except trying to get done.

There was a lot of other stuff in this pile we went through, including some car stuff Delotto liked. I told him that since it was so close by, he could simply drive back and get it at the end of the hike. 

I figured he would do it, but he simply couldn’t bear to leave a 1981 Mack Truck calendar that was in the pile, so he brought it with him for the entire remainder of the hike! 

When I posted the photos to the Metrotrails facebook, I ended up getting comments asking what the story was with the guy carrying the old Mack Truck calendar out on a long hike.  

We continued out along Pirma Ave, and the old trolley line used to cross in an area just before we came to a point above the Jordan Creek again. The road was on a high slope above the creek and took us east to Mauch Chunk Road, at a location that was historically called Ringers.

We carefully crossed Mauch Chunk Road, then turned left along it and across the Jordan Creek.

Immediately on the other side, we dropped down through the grass into Jordan Creek Park. My legs felt the fatigue trying to hold myself up going down even this little bit of a hill.
Paved roadway still existed to the right for the predecessor bridge to the one that is already there. I’ve tried looking for a photo of the original bridge to no avail.

We continued along the right side of the park for a bit, out to the far end of the baseball fields where the trail continues into woods along the creek.

We turned to the left instead of following this main trail, and had a little break near an old quarry pond where another trail goes into the woods and eventually joins with the main one.

This was a really a great break. It felt good to sit down and just relax for a few moments, and I was feeling a bit better probably for the first time in the day.

After hanging around for a bit, we turned into the woods on the nice foot path, along the right side of the quarry, and past some very nice big old trees. Pretty soon, the foot path joined the Jordan Creek trail. It was a wide trail that I could easily get a stroller along, and really want to bring my son back.

We had had a really great March on Musikfest hike at this location a few years back, during a major flood where we ended up walking through the water along this creek for miles.

We continued along the water, and we came to a deeper pool where Delotto and I went in for a final, much needed dip. The water levels were low, but this spot was still good and deep.

Two foot bridges span the creek just ahead of this spot, and the trail went up a slope on the north side of the creek for a bit, which I thought would kill me, and then came back down a rather steep spot where there were some steps in place to reach where another foot bridge spans the creek. I felt like my legs could give out on every steep step down.

From there, the trail got to be much easier. We continued right along the edge of the north side until we came out to the access at Mickley Road.

We turned right on Mickley Road and crossed the Jordan Creek, and a bit of a greenway trail had been developed on the other side in the grass to the left, which I didn’t remember having been there.

Directly across to the west side of Mickley Road and on the other side of the brige was the historic Helfrich's Spring and Farm.

This area was settled in 1799 by John Helfrich, and it remained in the Helfrich family until 1912 when Sylvester Helfrich moved to Allentown and leased the farm out.

The pond on the property in front of the house was built by the Minsi Fishing Club in 1908. Their home base was up the hill from the farm and barns.

The fishing site did not live up to the club’s expectations and so they disbanded.

The property was then purchased by William E. Erdell for use as a floral business.

After that, the property was purchased by Horace McCready Sr. in 1944 for his floral business that had started about a decade earlier in Allentown. The farm has now been in the McCready family for more than half a century and is well maintained. It has an outstanding aged ambiance even with all of the flooding through the area.

 

Soon, we came to the next foot bridge over the Jordan Creek, which took us onto the last leg of our trip.

The trail dipped down on the other side of the creek and meandered back and forth within a quite wide and mowed off park surrounding. We continued ahead to pass beneath Route 22.

In this last stretch of trail, we came upon several discarded shopping carts, so I went into the British “Supermarket trolleys what people ‘as discarded because they came from the broken homes…” thing from David Firth’s Jerry Jackson.

I pushed one of the carts and sat my backpack in it for the remainder of the time. 

But then, another cart showed up. And then another one. This entire section of trail was loaded with abandoned shopping carts.

Before too long, Delotto, John, Sean, Diane, and I all were pushing shopping carts down the trail!
We continued with the carts along the trail until we got to the Home Depot parking lot and the end of our trip.

We left all of the carts along the edge of the parking lot by the fence, returned to their homes. There must be a whole lot of people, probably homeless that utilize the carts to get their stuff away from the area, but I’d never found so many serviceable carts in one close area as like here.

We had finished surprisingly early considering the bad condition I was in. I leaned on my car or sat in the grass, I can’t remember quite what at that time, and Delotto hurried over to the White Castle for some food. 

He gave me a Slider pretty much as soon as he came back, which I didn’t realize, but I probably needed it.

We all kind of just hung out in the parking lot for a while since it was so early, and when it was time to shuttle the drivers back to their cars, the group took care of it for me so that I could just drive directly home without a problem.

I still ended up having to do work at home when I got there, and carrying my son up and down the stairs was not easy. Some of the time, I had to just sit on my butt and scoot down the stairs. It got really bad.
I ended up going to the doctor the next morning, and they tested me for lyme disease. They prescribed doxycycline as usual for that, assuming that was what I’d had.

The blood work came back negative for new lyme this time, but there are false negatives. I got tested for several other things including MS, Parkinson’s, other blood-bourne pathogens, as well as other tick related infections. I tested negative on everything, and the only thing they didn’t test that we thought might be something was Powassen.
I had to go twice for the amount of blood work I’d gotten, and to this day they still don’t know, but assume Lyme disease again, for the fourth time. Fortunately, the doxycycline seems to have worked, although I have persistent shakes and pains that may never go away, meaning it is now chronic lyme.

I was planning to do a hike the following week on Friday, because I had weekend work, but by the weekend I was still in such bad shape that I really could barely handle it. And so, I missed another week hiking for the first time since my son was born.
That is very telling of how bad this was, because I never cancel a hike, and I still had to do everything at home that I’d normally do. It was the roughest point of the entire Summer.