Hike #412; Basha Kill Loop

4/26/9 Westbrookville/Wurtsboro/Basha Kill with Jillane Becker, Shelly Janes, Eric Pace, "Amish Paul" Hassler, and Jim "Mr Buckett" Mathews.

The journal for this one was also lost by facebook so I'll have to do it by memory.
This one picked up where we left off in the Long Path series at Westbrookville, but also featured a good loop we could do with the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which we had never really gotten involved with previously. It would be the first of a great many trips in the Delaware and Hudson series.

We had last left off with another loop at Otisville Road and went to a small parking area with an outlook area and dock onto the Basha Kill Creek, which flows into the Neversink River to the southwest. The Long Path follows along the wetland, and some of the time follows some of the old New York, Ontario, and Western Railroad's Port Jervis Branch, abandoned in 1957. We had followed much of that on the previous trip too.
We met at the parking area, and then took the aqua blazed Long Path out to the old railroad bed. The bridge where it had crossed over the Basha Kill in the wetlands was long gone with abutments remaining.
It was really hot for April. Flowers were blooming, baby snapping turtles were crawling around, and leaves were popping.
The Long Path followed the rail bed shortly, through badly eroded areas and a spot with fantastic views over the wetlands, then took a side path onto some high ground above the wetland where we were able to go up onto an observation platform.
Amish Paul was riding his bike along the entire way, and he let me borrow it for a bit. I ended up riding it straight into the Basha Kill wetland laughing hysterically. Amazingly, the bike floated.
I was drinking some Grand Marnier I had gotten I think from my old buddy Al Eisberg for my birthday recently, so I was feeling pretty happy. Al and I had a camaraderie about Grand Marnier because we both worked for this tree cutter named Dick Dalpe, and after a day of tree work, we would have to take Dick to the bar. He'd lost his license so we had extra hours there, and he'd pay for our drinks. He always had a beer or two, and a glass of Grand Marnier. Al started giving me one for my birthday whenever he came to the parties.
We continued on the railroad bed when the trail got back to it, and it was pretty nice for a long while.
We stopped to enjoy the view at a bird watching spot in the settlement of Haven, where one of the only roads crosses the wetland. I believe the road was closed to traffic at the time.
We continued from there north, and there was some sort of camp or time share or something to the right. Jillane and I got way ahead, and went over on a playground where we started fooling around. We saw Shelly coming toward us so we had to hurry out of the way and continue on.
We made another spot at a little wooden bridge on the rail bed where a stream flowed into the swamp. Jillane, Paul, and I took a dip here.
Soon, the trail went beneath Route 17, and came out to S Road. The railroad bed was overgrown and on private land ahead from here, and the Long Path turned left on S Road.
We followed this for a bit, and came upon two old farm houses to the left, and barn buildings. Of course, we had to go in and have a look around. They probably wouldn't be standing much longer.
The buildings were really cool, abandoned for a long time, and still full of stuff. I tried playing with the piano inside one of them. They'd end up being demolished within a year or two and on a future trip we saw a guy with an earth mover ready to take them down.
S Road became Pennsylvania Avenue into the town of Wurtsboro, named for one of the presidents of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. I can't remember where we stopped for food if we did there. We then made our way back to the canal, which was sort of a trail from Pennsylvania Ave, and started on our way back.
The old canal gets to be a wreck and not easily recognizable after a bit, and then is obliterated by Rt 17. We climbed up to it and dashed across. I think some of the group went to the nearby Rt 209 bridge to get over.
We all went into the woods to try to find the canal, and I found large berms. I don't know what their purpose was, but it was not the canal I was on. The others had found their way to it, and I think I got a hold of them with my cell phone.
What I did end up finding was something quite different: an injured Red Tailed Hawk.
The hawk was in the middle of this berm, it stood up, and stretched its wings, and then fell backward. I thought perhaps it was playing dead or protecting a nest.
The others joined me, and we determined that it probably had probably been hit by a car out on Rt 17 and made it to that point.

We made our way from here back toward the canal towpath to continue southwest.
The towpath was super wide, and I was very interested in this. This was my first experience really with the construction of the D&H Canal, save for seeing a bit along the Delaware Aqueduct in the upper Delaware River valley. It was actually wide enough to be a road on much of it.
It was also interesting that the abandonment structures on the canal were also historic. The canal lasted until about 1898 in this area, and then structures were built for its abandonment. Bridges were dismantled, and abutments were often dismantled and then placed down across the canal turned into culvert underpasses. We saw several of those. 
We also passed a spot that sort of looked like a lock, and I didn't know what it was at the time. It turned out it was a dry dock, with a lock mechanism on the one side for draining or filling the dock area to take boats in and out.
A little while after the dry dock, we came to where it crossed present day Rt 209, originally the route of the Old Mine Road. It was a little rough going through because it was more overgrown than where we had just been, but we got through on the entire section.
The canal took us back across 209 again and into an area where it was kind of a wreck. Much of the towpath and such had been pretty badly washed away by a nearby stream. In these woods was an old abandoned house, which we of course had to go and check out.

The canal was pretty unrecognizable through the next stretch. It was some rough walking, and we had the hawk with us. We had him wrapped in a short some of the way so his talons wouldn't inure us, and we took turns carrying him.
We had to come back out to Rt 209 before reaching Haven again, and at that point Shelly figured she'd better try to get this hawk to some help. She knew of a Raptor Trust over near Milford PA, and so she was going to go and see if she could do something.
Everyone went with Shelly except for Amish Paul and I. Paul had actually already gone ahead on the canal towpath, and I didn't want to cut the hike so short anyway.
This was a really nice section. I felt like I was walking it alone, but then Paul and I found each other a little ways ahead.
We continued on along it, all the way out toward Westbrookville and an access called Diner Fields Lane. When we got to that point, I headed over to the water thinking I could probably just wade across instead of going all the way out to the road the long way and then down Otisville Road. Paul opted to take that longer way around, which wouldn't be far since he was on a bike.
I ended up in water so deep I was barely able to touch, in the middle of the Basha Kill wetlands. I think only Paul saw me coming from out there, toward the railroad bridge site, and then waded out when I was near there to reach the parking area where we had started. I think we had to wait there for a bit for the others to come and pick me up, or maybe Paul took me or something. I'm not sure. I ended up falling asleep in the car!
It was a pretty great day, and I knew I needed to repeat this hike again because there were still details I wanted to see more.