Hike #1043; Allamuchy to Hacketstown

Hike #1043; Allamuchy to Hackettstown

 6/1/17 Allamuchy to Hackettstown with Kralc Leahcim (Lerch), Celeste Fondaco Martin, Sue Bennett, Justin Gurbisz, Eric Gregorich, Jul ?, and Dan Asnis

This next hike would be a point to point trip between Allamuchy and Hackettstown, which strung together some more parks that most would never consider putting together.

Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad bed

We met at our end point in Hackettstown/Mansfield, at the Weis Market and shuttled with mine and one other car up to Alphano, at the Allamuchy Township Municipal Building.
The old Lehigh and Hudson River Railroad used to go just down hill from this point, and the township had put a connector trail in from across the street on Alphano Road right down to the rail grade. I had not used this on a hike in the past, so I figured it would be a good opportunity to add something new.
I am always trying to put something new into the hikes that I’ve never done, even if the section is all stuff I’ve been doing for years. So this was our first bit.

Historic LHR Railway map

The Lehigh and Hudson River Railway was active starting in the 1880, and it was torn out in 1986 through Warren County. All of it is still in place just south of Sparta on across the NY line.

LHR historic image by J. Dzbioko

It’s one of those lines that it’s amazing it was torn out, because it fit so well into the northeast corridor. It kind of lost it’s status with the burning of the Poughkeepsie Bridge.

LHR grade at Alphano

We headed down the new trail to the railroad bed. This, as planned, is going to be part of Warren Highlands Trail if I ever get around to extending it that far.
We hung a left on the rail bed and soon were passing by the ball fields and such. We then crossed a lovely wide section with no trees growing all the around at the Alphano sod farms. It’s one of the prettiest spots on the entire old rail line. We followed this out across the next road and then through more state park land passing by some sort of superfund site we used to have to sneak past several years back.

Alphano, 6/1/2K

I didn’t realize it at the time, but we were walking this right of way exactly seventeen years to the day from the first time I ever did a regular hike over it. It looks quite a bit different.
The bridge is now much more overgrown with trees and such.

Alphano; 6/1/17

This area near the superfund site was always this sort of bad spot to go through. Now, the whole right of way is state park land so it’s no longer a problem, but we used to be stealthy.

Climbing through weeds in 2000

Now they even have a park gate at the road crossing before it, Young’s Island Road.
ATVs were still using the rail bed a bit, so we were able to walk through it without too much trouble. I pointed out to everyone where we used to have to crawl through the weeds and beside the chain link fence parallel as not to be seen, and how near the facility itself, there was always a guy in the guard shack, which is very obviously unoccupied now.
We crossed over the bridge to Post Island area, with the long trench of water stretching out over the sod farms to the left. In the past, to connect off of the rail bed we would go to the south here, across some fields, and on out to the Strawberry Hill preserve, but I had a better idea.
We remained on the railroad bed just a little further to the west, which went from being out in the open to a nice shady section. I told everyone how we used to walk through there and there was a camper and all sorts of signs about gun on trees, so we kept quiet going through there. Now, all of that is gone too.

LHR bed

There were some nice views through the trees to the north, to the farm lands and barns.
We continued on the rail bed only as far as Nykun Lane, where we would hang a left. We re-grouped at the former rail crossing, and Justin or someone found one of those giant puff ball mushrooms. I took a giant bite out of it, and it actually tasted rather good.
I don’t think Justin cared much for the taste of the mushroom himself. I think only he and I tasted it, and everyone else thought we were crazy or going to die (puff balls are fine).

Justin doesn't love the mushroom

Puff Ball mushrooms are really an interesting mushroom because they have no cap, and they have no seed sporing gills beneath. They also have no visible stalk or stem. Spores of the puffball are produced internally, and when rain or whatever comes and breaks it, the spores escape.
These were Giant Puffballs, which are very difficult to mistake with any other mushroom, and in this early stage with the white flesh, are a rather good tasting mushroom. I’d say they are probably the safest wild mushroom we can eat in New Jersey.

Yummy giant buffball, photo by Lerch

We continued up the road past an historic farm house to Alphano Road where we turned to the left. We followed the road for a bit to a spot on Google maps that reads simply “DUMP.

Dump rest

There is barely any information on this park anywhere. There is the parking area that reads “Dump” on the google maps, but nothing else. There’s not a trail map any more, but I think there used to be one along side the road. Where we went in, we didn’t see any this time.
The trails all had names to them, but I can’t remember any of them right now. Somewhere I took a photo of the map that used to be up, which had all of the trail names on them. Only a few of the signs that name them are still up, so it really doesn’t matter. We crossed Alphano Road and started going up hill on an old woods road.

Steps on Strawberry Hill

When we got to a trail turnoff to the left, which actually had steps, we followed it. The trail beyond was pretty overgrown. No one has done anything on this property in probably years. It’s sad because it could really make part of a great greenway if anyone followed the route I had put together for this hike.
Once we were near the top of the hill, we made a left turn to follow along the ridge line. I’m not even sure what this “ridge” is called, if anything at all. Strawberry Hill I guess is it, but that seems like just a very local thing.

Old Farm Sanctuary view

We turned left near the top, which was another old woods road route. It was kind of overgrown, but still easy enough to walk. It wasn’t a problem.
We continued to where the road started to go down hill. I cut off of the road and started bushwhacking to the right from here. I had forgotten that if we continued down hill on the road for a just a little bit, there is an unmarked path that goes up hill to the right into the Old Farm Sanctuary, my next planned leg of this trip. Fortunately, the bushwhack wasn’t terrible either.

Broski bench

Old Farm Sanctuary is a 151 acre sanctuary of the NJ Audubon Society donated by Florence Remley and Frank Stramaglia. It has a trail system, but it’s in pretty poor condition.
There is no official connection between the Independence Township land and the Old Farm Sanctuary, but when I noticed how close together they were, I tried to do a hike on it, back in May of 2013. I had already been scouting the trails with the idea of doing this a while before.
We crested the little ridge, and then followed through light undergrowth to the east until we reached the rock outcroppings. The largest one was where the Overlook Trail ended. There was now a nice bench at the site, so someone had at least been out to this site on the property. We had a nice extended break here, where we could see all of the nice farm lands as well as Mount Rascal, which was the only major hill standing in our way to get to Hackettstown. The lighting was rather perfect while we were up there to enjoy the view.
After a good break, we made our way along the trail, which went to the left into woods.

Old Farm Map. Note the Overlook Trail and Short Loop are mistakenly switched

The trail remained on ridge top for a bit, and eventually we came to one of the side trails to the right, which made up part of the “long loop” in the sanctuary. We headed steeply down, and could see the trail today did not exactly follow the switch backs as built. The metal trail markers for Audubon Society were in bad shape and falling off.

View in Old Farm Sanctuary

Eventually, we picked up the actual route of the trail again, which descended for a bit to the left. We had one more questionable spot where a big tree had fallen, but we got past it.

Long Loop Trail

We eventually reached the bottom, which was the edge of forgotten former farm fields. One of the trails further on uses the abandoned former route of Ryan Road, but we didn’t go that far. We turned to the right to reach the Red Cedar Trail, which emerges at a trail head off of Petersburg Road.
We continued through light woods, which soon gave way to a very swampy area. There was no going through this without getting our feet at least a little wet, but we managed. The grass was also rather high there, and so this was a really bad tick spot.

Red Cedar Trail

I thought for sure this time we might actually beat my daily record for ticks. The most I’d ever gotten was in the mid 2000s when I got about forty three in the South Branch Reservation. This was a close second with over thirty of them. I counted them as I took them and threw them off of me, and I may have missed count with a few earlier on.
The trail made it’s way through some woods and then along a major tributary to the Pequest River known as Bacon Run. It soon entered better woods again and crossed a couple of little bridges over the tributary.

Red Cedar Trail, Old Farm

As we got nearer to the road, we found a side trail that led to a private house, and there was a mowed out nice picnic area with two benches. We paused here for a while to take a rest, and to pick more of the countless ticks off of us.
From there, it was only a short walk on a much wider trail out to Petersburg Road. We turned to the left here into the hamlet known as Petersburg. The little settlement was once known as Cat Swamp, and also Caddington. It was never much of anything; it had a church and a school I believe. Most of the substantial towns were along the Pequest itself.

Rest on Red Cedar Trail

Independence Township actually took it’s name in 1782, the year of the treaty with Great Britain where they officially acknowledged American Independence from them. Before that, the area was known as “Lower Hardwick”, because it used to be part of the much larger Hardwick Township before.
Well known Loyalist James Moody used to pester the local residents in the area, getting them to swear allegience to the crown, so they were probably pretty happy to take on such a name I would think.

Free table

We turned right on another Petersburg Road which took us gradually up hill. This was the busiest road we’d have to walk for the trip. When we got to the top of the hill at Mount Rascal Road, Jul decided to cut out and get back home. It was getting dark at this point. She told me later that she couldn’t get an Uber or couldn’t figure it out, so instead got a taxi, but it was still cheap anyway and well worth it. The rest of us turned onto Mt. Rascal Road, passed a really big tree, and continued on. I sipped some of Weyerbacher’s 22nd Anniversary stuff, which I hadn’t tried yet as we walked. I also had Lerch’s drink, which was too much.
We followed Mt. Rascal Road to the old woods road entering the NJ Natural Lands Trust land. We entered here, and had to go around a couple of fallen trees passing through.
We paused I recall briefly when I thought someone might be ahead on an ATV or something. We then moved on to where there is a sort of ditch wash near the middle of the property. We turned left here, and descended gradually toward Hackettstown. It took us out as the woods road behind the water tower for the town, and we continued down hill to reach the new route of the Morris Canal Greenway.

Church window

I’d actually head out that way the following weekend with seven or so others to help develop the new trail across the property, on the berm side of the canal. I had cut a good section of it a year prior, but never got around to finishing it. This time, we were not going to try to get through because there were tons of Japanese Barberry. Instead, we kept to the back streets.
We followed Countryside Drive to the west to Hamilton Drive, and when we got to a church land, we crossed on the grass to get over to 4th Street.

1906 image of the Morris Canal approaching Buck Hill and present day Rt 46

We turned right on 4th and headed to the right, which had a pathway up to the former Morris Canal Towpath at the Hills at Independence. We reached it and turned left. This took us out to Canal Lane, built on the canal, and then out to Rt 46. We crossed here directly, skirted a back yard and came out on Harvey Street, where just up from us was the trail section at Florence Kuipers Park.

Historic image of Morris Canal in Hackettstown

The next section would be pleasant and easy because it was kept so nice and cleared. It remains totally flat for a good while, with only one spot where we had to go down and up at a washout spot with a wooden foot bridge.

Historic postcard image of the Morris Canal near Buck Hill

We continued on the trail to where Mrs. Cuff’s house used to be to the right. We then turned left on Buck Hill Road down hill to the new parking area off of Rockport Road.
I was both super tired and had drank too much. The combination of stress and fatigue pushed me a bit too far and I didn’t even bother to think what I was doing.

Tired M'ke photo by Lerch

Lerch and some of the others hurried ahead to the cars, but despite the fact that everyone probably thought I was inebriated and couldn’t find the way, I proved them wrong.
We turned right and paralleled one of the apartment places parallel with the tracks. From there, we turned to the left through their parking lot and then a grassy section immediately parallel. We headed to the south out to a road, then cut through to a second separate apartment complex. A paved trail went to the left here. We followed this out to near the south side, cut away from it, and walked a short distance near the place’s pool, then followed a short bit of road to a small trail into a tree line to the left. This took us to a field associated with Mansfield Village apartments. We turned right through this field, and then skirted multiple buildings through the complex. We went down steps at the multiple levels of the apartments, and when we reached the lower one, went left through the parking lot. This got us out Nikitin way, and right back to the Weis parking lot.
Sue got me back to my car, and I was in no shape to drive. I couldn’t stay awake for anything, and so I put my seat back and went to sleep. We were done relatively early as far as night hikes were concerned, but what I expected to be a quick power nap turned into a few hours.
My attitude regarding everything had turned into ignoring issues. Not a lot had changed, but I’d been training myself to become disinterested in it all. I’d distract myself in whatever way I could.
At the time, I didn’t know what I was going to do about work, the hikes, etc. Fortunately, despite really crummy schedules and doing more night hikes, people have continued to come out, but at the time I was majorly stressed that everything would fall apart.