Hike #1047; Chatsworth to Batsto

Hike #1047; Chatsworth to Batsto

6/15/17 Chatsworth to Batsto with Brandan Jermyn, James Quinn, Amy Davis, Snoop Dougie K (Doug Kiovsky), Celeste Fondaco Martin, Susan L Duncan, and Lance R Beden with FlipFlop Duncan (Zip Line).

Our next hike would be another Thursday point to point thing, this time back to New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.
Like so many of the other hikes as of late, I decided to return to some more of the stuff in series I’d started and not gotten back to for a good long while. In this case it was the Batona Trail, the Central Railroad of NJ through the Pine Barrens, and also a bit of Franklin Parker Preserve. I didn’t want to do one hike based in the same theme, so I did a sample of each.

One of the earliest photos of Buzby's store

I’d been talking to Snoop Dougie K, and we were discussing the fate of Buzby’s General store in Chatsworth. We had stopped there on our last hike in the area, a loop we did to the northeast of Chatsworth. We found out the store was soon to close.
The lady who runs it, R. Marilyn Schmidt, bought the place in 1997 (the same year I started doing these hikes) after years of it being vacant and falling apart.
The store was originally built in 1865 by Benjamin O. Wade who was the first proprietor. It was sold in 1894 to Willis Jefferson Buzby, and the store remained in the Buzby family until 1972.
I wished I’d had a chance to meet and talk to Mrs. Schmidt. Our group would have been the kind that’d appreciate what she had to say.

Historic view of Buzby's Store

We went right to Buzby’s from our meeting point/end point, Batsto Village in Wharton State Forest. I had put together a route that would start with some back roads, pass through Franklin Parker Preserve, then pick up the Central Railroad of NJ tracks to Carranza.

Apparently 1965 image of the store

From Carranza, the ramainder of the hike would be the Batona Trail south to Batsto Village.
I had done portions of these before. The CNJ line I had followed a bit to the south of Wharton State Forest, and I’d followed it from Atsion all the way to (only recently) parallel with Brendan T. Byrne State Forest.

Buzby's Store

I realized I had never quite completed the Batona Trail, and was only doing little bits of it here and there. It seemed like 2017 might be the year to finish the thing. We had gotten back to it with the loop hike between Chatsworth and Brendan Byrne State Forest, and then another loop in northern Brendan Byrne.

Historic image at Buzby's

This time, we’d have the trail completed all the way to the next part I’d done before, Batsto Village. I’d hiked the section to Carranza many many years ago. With the completion of this hike, we could probably finish the remainder of the trail in only one hike.

CNJ line in Chatsworth

We started walking from Chatsworth along the highway out to the entrance to Franklin Parker Preserve. The property was a former cranberry farm purchased by New Jersey Conservation Foundation in 2003.

Franklin Parker Map

There are over twenty one miles of trails within Franklin Parker Preserve. The only part I had ever really done was on the previous hike, where we wandered a little of the red trail and the old CNJ railroad tracks, and then followed the new section of the Batona Trail that had been rerouted through it.
This time, we’d do a bit more. We walked Rt 532 past Chatsworth Lake, which was pretty, and then came to the trail head to the left. We waited here briefly, and Susie and Lance met us there. They had spotted a car at their early out in Carranza. Once together, we headed out into the Franklin Parker green trail, and then co-aligned red and green trails.
The trail was a woods road that took us across the former CNJ tracks at an old “watch for train” sign. These tracks were the “path of the BLue Comet”, and there was a wreck within the preserve at one point just to the east of Chatsworth, which I described in my previous journal on the area.

Chatsworth Lake

The views of the wetlands were outstanding walking through. It was pretty hot out there, so it was good to be getting this part of the hike out of the way at the beginning. We walked on through for a bit, and we came to an observation platform to the left of the trail. The interesting structure was built onto the old block building that must have been one of the pack houses from the days that it was a working cranberry bog.
There were continuous expansive views throughout the area. I’d love to go back and do another full hike around the perimeter of this preserve, which would probably be fifteen.

Franklin Parker Preserve scene

The red trail came in and joined the green one on the woods roads from the right. We continued past the tower after taking in a bit of the view, and we noted there were some blueberries growing along some of the sunny sections.

Red trail bridge

I thought maybe this meant we’d continue to see blueberries all day, but such was not the case. It was only in this one open area that we had any of them, but they were celicious while they lasted.
The trail continued to the right, into a more closed in area, and the red trail went to the right.

Blueberries in Franklin Parker

We followed the red trail into the woods for a bit. It actually paralleled the green trail just barely into the woods on a foot path within the woods. It passed by some ruins of former pack houses just barely into the undergrowth from where we turned off.

Franklin Parker Preserve

We didn’t follow the red trail all the way to cut back over to the green again. Instead, we turned right through some woods off trail, and very soon reached the tracks of the former Central Railroad of NJ. We couldn’t have picked it up sooner because there are two bridges missing over trenches within the preserve.

Franklin Parker Preserve

We turned left to follow the tracks heading to the southwest. There were some pretty large trees growing through them as we walked, and at times even next to the tracks got a bit grown over.

Franklin Parker Preserve

Some of the group opted to just walk a parallel ATV path as soon as it appeared to the left of the tracks, but I remained a purist and continued to walk the tracks even if it got a little weedy.

CNJ tracks

When the woods road started to turn off, the rest of the group came back down to the tracks with me. It wasn’t so bad after a short while. It was actually pretty easy.
We passed a couple of wetlands to the north, one of them being Featherbed Branch, which is a branch of the Wading River.

CNJ tracks

Another was the Tulpehocken Creek, and there was a larger body of water on maps known as “Ore Spung”. Flip Flop/Zip Line took a dip in one of these, but I opted to wait for something better.
We came upon one weird spot where the rails were bent all out funny. Apparently this happens from extreme temperatures which can cause the rails to bend. I’d never heard of that, so it was kind of interesting to find out about. I think there might have been two places like that.
We had a few laughs about things, like Lance telling us about “borrowing” an earth mover he’d never had experience driving to get his car unstuck years ago.

Bent rail

We also talked about some beers because Susie had recently bought Lance some ten dollar per bottle something minute IPA from I think ti was Dogfish Head. It’s supposed to be amazing aged.
It didn’t take long before we reached Carranza Road, which was surprisingly just a sand road. The end of the pavement was visible to us to the north.

Carranza Memorial

This was the site where Captain Emilio Carranza Rodriguez died in a plane crash during a good will flight from America and Mexico in July of 1928. He was known as the “Mexican Lindberg”, and was setting records in flight.

Carranza Memorial

Flying must have been particularly more dangerous back in 1928. The crash was not Carranza’s first. On another occasion, he crashed and disfigured his face, which had to be re-assembled with platinum bolts.

Batona Trail

Susie and Lance came with us to the memorial, before cutting out. We got a group shot on the tracks before going to that point. The Carranza Memorial is just up Carranza Road from where the Batona Trail crosses over the railroad tracks.
We made our way back the way we came and got on the southbound Batona Trail further into Wharton State Forest. It was overall pleasant and easy walking.
The trail weaved around through the woods, crossed some sand roads here and there. I was happy to see that it had standard blazing for the turns now.

Hooray standard blazing

I held back and chatted with Doug for a while about our time at Hunterdon Parks and how dysfunctional it had become. More of the really great people who work there are very soon to retire, and we have some concerns about what will happen with the parks.
Things went by pretty fast and easy, with nothing really note worthy until we got to Quaker Bridge. It was pretty hot, and this was the perfect little swim spot.
I had promoted the hike that we crossed no paved roads the entire time. This was true, but just as we reached the road at Quaker Bridge, some idiot lady sped up the hill and nearly hit Benny, Celeste’s dog.

Quaker Bridge

We had a really nice break at Quaker Bridge. I don’t recall if another car even went over it while we were out there. We just relaxed in the water for a bit, and were really in no hurry to get out.
When we finally did move on and started walking south along the Batsto River, it didn’t take long before we found yet another swimming spot that just looked far too good for us to pass by. We went back down hill to the river and got back in yet again.
We enjoyed this swim, and it would be the last one for this particular trip.

Swimming hole

We continued south a bit longer and eventually reached where the trail is co-aligned with the Batsto Lake Loop.
There were some dwarfed pines in the area and a little bit more elevation; not much, but we did go up and down a bit. The trail turned away from the lake area and started heading to the east. It was in this area we reached the connector trail that leads from Batona Trail back to Batsto Lake and village parking area.
We emerged at a sidewalk and line of trees. It felt great to be done; we did a whopping twenty some miles rather than fifteen, which felt great.

Batsto

I felt pretty awake, and we were done with a lot of daylight left. It was really a great, relaxing trip, more of exactly what I needed.
The trip made me feel more confident that we’ll have no problem doing the entire remainder of the trail as a day hike. Hopefully I’ll finally get to completing the Batona Trail by fall.