Hike #362; Mid Hunterdon

 Hike #362 8/14/8

8/14/8 Mid Hunterdon County Loop with Jack Lowry, Susan Dawson, Gerry Martiniak, Bill Jacobsen, Al MacLennan, and Diane Panaritis.

Group shot at Echo Hill Environmental Education Center

I lost the original journal for this one as well unfortunitely...if anyone has a copy let me know!

Bill with his vast collection of Golf Balls for sale at Deer Path Park!

Deer Path Park, east side.

Deer Path Park on the beginning of Round Mountain

At the Bowman Stickney Farm, Readington Township park

Bowman Stickney Farm

Hunterdon Arboretum

Hunterdon Arboretum

Hunterdon Arboretum

Hunterdon Arboretum

Hunterdon Arboretum

Hunterdon Arboretum Gazebo

Hunterdon Arboretum

Trail bridge under Rt 31 at Hunterdon Arboretum

Crossing Prescott Bridge to Echo Hill

Pond at Echo Hill

Pond at Echo Hill

North fields at Echo Hill

Trail crossing the South Branch of the Raritan

Trail crossing the South Branch of the Raritan

Under the Rt 31 bridge over the South Branch.

Under the Rt 31 bridge

Deer Path Park

Deer Path Park parking lot

For this hike I actually took a day off of work to lead a hike through the parks where I work ending at one of the county concerts. It's a shame they would'nt pay me to do promotion like that. Oh well.

We started at the concert location to make a loop, Deer Path Park. When Bill showed up he had tons of golf balls in his trunk he had been selling to people. He picked them up during regular walks and made a bit of money off of them. I thought it was funny enough to get a picture of it.

We started walking around the park's perimeter, I forget which one, but we ended up on the west field, across the inlet to Deer Path Pond, then up to West Woodschurch Road where we crossed onto Round Mountain. We headed up this way and then down the other side into Readington Township's Bowman Stickney Farm park. My dad had built new parking areas for this park which I don't think I'd led a hike through since the trails were first shown to me by Al Rebovich (Gerry was there for that one...I think this was actually Gerry's last hike with me as of this writing...).

We followed the trails and ended up taking an unmarked side one accidently for some time. It took us a while to realized we had to turn back.

From here we headed past the farmstead itself, then followed the perimeter to the west, which took us through fields on mowed trails. This eventually led us out to Stanton Road. The trail follows the road briefly, and we took a break at the General Store there. Gerry bought me a juice drink as I recall.

The trail then went back onto Round Mountain on a narrow easement to the Peter Buelle Trail. We followed this to the right which led us down hill to Foothill Road. We walked briefly back to another part of Stanton Road, then followed that down to the back of the Arboretum. We wandered into the Arboretum and did a weird zig zag loop covering pretty much all of the trails in there. We then went out by the gardens and took a break in the office building.

Next, we passed beneath Rt 31 on the trail bridge headed over to Echo Hill Environmental Education Center. I think we followed the trail to the right on the perimeter, then headed down the main road to Lilac Drive. We crossed directly and then followed the former Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks south. We reached the site of Stanton Station and then crossed the South Branch of the Raritan on the road bridge to the Stanton Station Section of the South Branch Reservation. We followed this trail south, crossed the tracks (I jumped off the trestle abutment again) and then south through the somewhat ovwergrown part of the trail system. Like the previous time I went through, we waded across the two pieces of the South Branch, walked under Rt 31, and entered teh Wings section.

Once here, we followed the trail south for a little bit and then made a left onto the Readington connector trail back to Deer Path. I think we followed a roundabout route back to the cars from there. I recall singing a lot, as Jack and Susie had their guitars. We must have gone to see Felix Caveliere this time, because I seem to recall a lot of Rascals songs going around.

Jack, Susie, and I stayed for the concert which was awesome as I recall. It almost got cancelled because it started pouring down rain just after we got back to the cars. We had to wait it out over an hour, but we were glad we did.