Hike #450 10/25/9
10/25/9 Highlands Trail/North Hunterdon; Hawks Schoolhouse Road to Asbury with Amanda Rosenblatt, Kyle Zalinsky, "Chesco" Tetto, "DJ Ray" Cordts, Shep Glennon, Jack Lowry, Susan Duncan Dawson, Ron Lozowski, Mark "Bobo" Godfrey, and Jillane Becker.
Highlands Trail in western Sweet Hollow Preserve, Hunterdon NJ
My next hike would be mostly a repeat of the Highlands Trail hike from the Spring, intended to coincide with a celebration for it's completion at Jugtown Mountain. We began at the Hawk's Schoolhouse Road area of Musconetcong Gorge to head east to that point. Joining me this time were my brother Mark "Bobo" Godfrey, Amanda Rosenblatt, Chesco ?, Jack Lowry, Susan Dawson, Kyle Zalinsky, "DJ Ray" Cordts, Ron Lozowski and his two dogs, and Shep Glennon. I passed our Wal Mart smocks for a lot of the group to wear! We followed Staats Road to Schaaf Road on the HT (1) and turned into the Sweet Hollow Preserve where the corn was growing high (2).
Along Highlands Trail in eastern Sweet Hollow Preserve
We continued into the woods on the newly blazed section which was slightly rerouted since my last visit (2-6). We visited the abandoned Japanese garden house again (7-13) and Bobo found a nice chonch shell. We turned left on Sweet Hollow Road where Kyle stole some balloons, then turned off the road to the left (14-17) which led us to the next section of the HT (18). Jack was playing his Martin Backpacker guitar and we were all singing songs like War's "Why Can't We Be Friends" (20). We followed the section from Rt 579 and Turkey Hill Road to the Deerpath Farm Sanctuary of the Audobon Society and followed the HT over the hillside. Kyle climbed around on the old spring house (21-24). We turned and took a break under the Rt 78 underpass when we reached Tunnel Road (25-30).
Highlands Trail Hike, under Rt 78 near Deerpath Sanctuary
We then followed Tunnel Road out to Rt 173 and entered Jugtown Mountain Nature Preserve, and passed horses that I yelled spanish stuff at along the way. It was amazing that they ran right over (31). In Jugtown, there was a nice seasonal view we got from the HT, but we turned off it to take one of the side trails we did'nt take last time (32). We also took another trail into the site of some of the iron mining works with some ruins (33-35). When we reached the parking area, a lot of people were already there including HT supervisor Glenn Oleksak, Gary Hoagland of the NYNJTC, Susanne Wilder from the Musconetcong Mt Conservancy, my boss John Trontis of Hunterdon Parks, and lots of others (36-36a). Jack continued to play guitar and John came over and sang with us a bit. We ate plenty of good free food before the speakers started which included a Holland Township mayor, John, Susanne, and of course Glenn (37-47). After the speakers were done, we waited around for a little while, first for Bobo to get picked up by his dad, then for my girlfriend Jillane to show up. Kyle tried to eat a worm unsuccessfully (49). We continued on along the Highlands Trail and crossed over Mine Road into the east section of Jugtown Mountain Nature Preserve (50,51) and followed it out to the utility lines (52-54). We continued into the Tower Hill Reserve (55) and turned away from the Highlands Trail when we reached the field sections (56).
In Tower Hill Reserve
We headed along the southern to eastern perimeter of Tower Hill with a few nice views, and Kyle found a pumpkin (57-l64) which he ultimately ended up smashing on Mine Road when we got back to it on the north side (65).
Tower Hill Reserve
We followed Mine Road briefly and then turned left into a tract of land the parks department referred to as Dove's Landing. I'd been in part of it in the past, to an old iron mine, which was our destination this time. We started bushwhacking on through. DJ Ray almost did'nt come because Eric Pace was going to pick him up, but we convinced him to stay with us for a while. We hiked bushwhacking through the woods and soon came to a large field, which was not where we were supposed to be. We saw a land owner who talked to Kyle, and he was alright with us being there. We continued on to the edge of a field and everyone decided to take a break. We were now on private land and I was not about to stop for anything, so I continued on and Jillane, Amanda, Kyle, and Chesco stayed behind. My group soon got too close to houses and I had to make my way out to Iron Bridge Road while the others were still behind. Somebody said to one of us that we should be running, and made a threat about his dogs. The others soon caught up and hurried through, and apparently were sort of threatened by the landowner as well. I decided we had to skip the Dove's Landing mine, and just follow Iron Bridge Road south across the former Jersey Central Railroad tracks (66-75a). We continued down hill on Iron Bridge Road to it's end and turned left into Asbury along the Musconetcong River. I walked out into the water to get a nice picture (76). We followed the river out onto the bridge over it (77) where there was a little island with some ruins on it that Hunterdon County was looking at buying to turn into a picnic area. We climbed around on it, looked around, and I monkey barred my way under the bridge for a bit. We then hung out on the bridge singing songs for maybe an hour (78-86b). It was a great time, and then we all carpooled to get our cars and had dinner at Ernie and Dom's Pizza.
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