4/19/9 Horseshoe Trail; Devault area to St. Peter's Village with Jillane Becker, Mark "Bobo" Godfrey, Jason Itell, Larry Butler, Anwar Yafai, Tim ?, DJ Ray Cordts, Bijal Shah, Jim "Mr. Buckett" Mathews, and Eric Pace.
This next one was a point to point, mostly on the route of the Horse-Shoe Trail in southeastern Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the original journal entry for this one is gone. Probably lost to the fire, but also lost to facebook after being rewritten.
For now, I'll have to try to remember everything that happened unless its recovered.
We had done one hike on the Horse-Shoe Trail previously, and I fell in love with it pretty quickly. It was just different. It went through back yards, along back roads, through woods, and had constantly changing scenery like all of the trails I love the most. If I hadn't been totally enamored with it by the first bit we did in the Fall of 2008, this one definitely did it.
We met in St. Peter's Village further west, which was a spot I'd been wanting to get to, and shuttled with as few cars as possible to Devault, where a branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad used to pass through. Last time, we'd followed the trail to where it crossed the defunct tracks and then followed them north through the Pickering Valley, but this time we started south of there and would follow the old tracks to the trail crossing and then follow it west.
While we walked the tracks to the north through the Autumn Olives and parallel with State Road. We ascended a bit above the level of the road, and Bobo found an old tire which he rolled down the slope. It went all the way down, across State Road, and then rested in someone's front yard. I told him we probably shouldn't have done that, and we just moved on.
The Horse-Shoe Trail with its yellow blazes crosses the tracks a little north of there at a place called Aldham. We turned onto it there and descended to State Road, then I recall it went off of the road a bit and past a little pond, then back to follow State Road.
As fate would have it, Bobo had to walk right back past the tire that came to rest in the well manicured front lawn. I think he might have rolled it away from there at least, but I don't recall. He might have just left it there.
We cut into the woods, and the trail crossed a tributary to the Pickering Creek on a log, with a step on it. We then climbed through woods, and the trail weaved through wood lands and out along private lands intimately, sometimes on the roads, and sometimes just barely into the woods parallel with them like on Pikeland Road.
We weaved through the Valley Hills and past Brightside Farm parallel with Yellow Springs Road. We kind of followed what was like a retention berm, and passed a pond full of millions of tiny frogs.
Green Lane, Foster, Bodine, and Horseshoe Trail were the names of some of the roads the trail went on or parallel with.
Somewhere around the Kimberton Knoll Jillane and I fell behind and stopped to pet and feed grass to some horses fenced in on the right side of the trail.
We passed a little dam in view on the Pine Creek, and then continued on Horse Shoe Trail to Rt 113, turned right, and then left on another road called Horseshoe Trail. We started seeing horse drawn carts around this time, and all of the properties looked well kept and stately.
DJ Ray joined us and I believe he parked at a lot on the corner of Horseshoe Trail and 113.
The trail was really nice on the long stretch of Horseshoe Trail road, and sometimes was just into the woods parallel with it, but one thing didn't go as planned for this one.
Jason was taking a leadership roll in this one and had the guide books, but his was a bit out of date. The trail as he had seen it went on to Nantmeal Village to the west, but the blazes turned us to the right up Bartlett Lane, a gradual climb on a dirt road with pleasant farm scenery. It was really nice, turned us onto Green Lane, and then cut into the woods over hills of farm lands. None of this was in the guide.
We crossed Rt 100/Pottstown Pike at Fairview Road. The trail at this point was supposed to be down at Ludwig's Corner to the south, and that was the northern terminus of the Brandywine Trail.
Not any more; now the Brandywine Trail extended to the Horse-She Trail at this point. We continued up from Fairview into the Welkinweir Nature Center.
Prizer Road, Coventryville and Warwick Furnace Road, and Mt Pleasant Road were all crossed just ahead. The hillsides the trail followed afforded us splendid views over the valley of the French Creek. Eventually, we would descend to the French Creek itself and follow it into Warwick Park. I think the trail probably touched bits of what was known as the Sow Belly Railroad.
The trail was longer established in this section and climbed to a bit higher elevation. In the middle of the park, it wasn't as interesting as it had been previously, but the woods were nice.
Jason, Bijal, and Anwar all headed way ahead of us. Jillane and I fell behind everyone else, but not so terribly far behind.
We all convened at a playground in Warwick Park in Knauertown while Jason, Bijal, and Anwar went ahead to get the cars having covered twenty five miles. I'd have to do a different hike to connect us to the St. Peters Village area.
I really loved this hike a lot and was going to dedicate to completing the Horse-Shoe Trail. It became a big thing for a while over the next couple of years, although it would take about a decade for me to finally finish it.
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