Hike #675; Clark's Landing to New Gretna

 Hike #675; Clark's Landing to New Gretna

1/5/13 Clark's Landing to New Gretna with Dave "Captain Soup" Campbell, Jaque Melo, Brandan Jermyn, Gregg Hudis, Teun Ott, Rob Creamer, and Amanda ?.

The group at Clark's Landing off of Hay Road.

Our next hike would be the next in the series to hike the entire perimeter of NJ. There have been I think about 56 hikes that fit into this series that we have done so far. While many of them were not only perimeter hikes, they had at least portions that were necessary to connect all of the state's boundaries.

I posted this one because I considered it to be one of the "boring" ones, in south Jersey, with a lot of road walking that was necessary, and because it was cold and there was the good possibility of snow cover slowing us down. Snow ended up not being a problem, because we saw pretty much none.

After meeting in New Gretna where we'd left off last time, we shuttled south to Clark's Landing, a hidden boat access point off of Clarks Landing Road. The Clarks Landing Preserve is a non profit land just to the south of the site which I'll try to use the next trip.

We walked the sand road from the wide Mullica River at this point. The view at this site was spectacular, with an amazing little beach. Someone had been there the night before with a camp fire which was still smoking. I worried that if we finished late, we would have a problem with hoodlums (we didn't). We followed the sand road out to Clarks Landing Road, and turned right heading north.

The road was long, but little used, which made it pleasant. Pine Barrens surrounded us, which was typical, and we continued for some time on the road. Rob had forgotten his phone, so he ran back to his car to get it. The rest of us continued, passed by a nice memorial to a girl who had apparently died along the road, then continued to an obscure ATV path to the right. Looking at this on Google Earth as well as Bing Bird's Eye maps helped me find hidden sand roads. Sure enough, the obscure path led us on to wider pathways which paralleled Clarks Landing Road, and saved us some annoying road walking.

The path remained nice for a bit, but got less pronounced. We then came to a missing bridge site. We had to ford the stream as best we could, which wasn't too tough. Everyone made it alright. We continued on the path out to the sand San Fransisco Road, which led us back out to Clarks Landing Road.

We crossed one stream on this road, and it was quite lovely. It had some sort of wood stuff built in it to the south, but I have no clue what it would have been for.

We followed this road over wet lands to Egg Harbor-Green Bank Road and turned right. We didn't go for long before turning on Lower Bank Road. Most of this road was straight as an arrow and boring as hell. It seemed to go on forever. I kept myself entertained by trying to periodically hug Captain Soup. The Bear Creek Reserve was on the left side, with only one sand road leading out to views over the river, but we didn't bother with it. We continued on the road, which soon became prettier with the wetlands on both sides. We then could see the water tower and bridge approaching the village of Lower Bank. The bridge was excellent with views up and down the wide Mullica. There were abandoned camp buildings below the bridge on the west side, which were pretty cool. We crossed and got on the beach on the Lower Bank side, and began walking it to the north. Unfortunately, it became posted private land too soon to really enjoy much.

We followed Lower Bank Road past some lovely old homes on the waterfront, which didn't seem to  have to much damage, though the docks on the river were in terrible disrepair, or gone altogether. Lower Bank Road stayed on the shore with some nice big trees for a bit, then turned inland to the northeast. There was one more spot with some nice river views.

As we headed to the inland town, we saw more pretty old homes, and some enormous White Oak trees lining the left side. They had broad tops and were quite impressive. I stopped and talked to three guys in the residential area about what we were up to, and they seemed genuinely interested and impressed with our endeavor. I referred them to the Metrotrails website.

I caught up with the others, where Lower Bank Road ended at Rt 542. We all turned right for a short distance and turned into the Lower Bank Tavern for lunch. We were making great time since it was mostly all roads, so a good hearty lunch sounded nice. I had a great mushroom and swiss burger. I forget what they called it, but it was good. We ended up having quite a nice time, talking about languages and dialects. We had a good diversity among us that day...Captain Soup and I have I'd say pretty common American sound to us, as well as Rob, Teun has his Dutch accent, Jaque the Portuguese, Gregg has some New York accent, and Amanda is hispanic, with the Colombian accent. It was a really interesting talk, and a nice relaxing break in the monotony of roads. At some point, some of the burly tree men in the bar were talking about us, and someone said "yeah, those people aren't from around here". It probably didn't help that I kept trying to hug Captain Soup and sit on his lap.

We left the bar and continued on 542 east. I took a side trip into the woods to explore some abandoned buildings. I also found some abandoned cars. At least two of them were Oldsmobiles. This appeared to be part of Swan Bay Wildlife Management Area. The property has very little usable area I guess, with only one woods road headed south that we could see.

We continued on the road for what seemed like an eternity, because it was totally straight with just woods. Wharton State Forest was on the left, but there was no good parallel path. We continued on to Wading River, a tiny hamlet with a few homes, then crossed over the namesake river on another lovely bridge. This one had walkways on both sides, with a counterweight for lift on top. We had great views up and down the river, and Atlantic City could be seen to the south. We hung out on the bridge waiting for everyone to catch up.

Next, we turned right heading south on Hammonton Road. Wading River WMA was on the right, but we couldn't get into much of it because it was open by permit only to people with disabilities to hunt. Maybe it was Children with disabilities. It would have been nice to walk on through, it was a lovely piece of property with roads looping out onto the Wading River.

We headed down the road a short distance to Mink Path, or as it was labeled, West Minkpath Road. Mink Path is mostly an abandoned road that connects Hammonton Road with North Maple Ave north of New Gretna. At first, it was a drivable road, with one house on it. Much of the road paralleled or passed through some of Bass River State Forest. It became worse and worse as we continued. No car could get through, and even some ATVs would have problems. I rather enjoyed it, although it got terribly wet. Streams backed up to the north side and the bit of fill used for the road impounded the water to where it flowed over and made large puddles. Still we made it through. It smelled rather awful.

Once we got to the other end of the road, shortly past a utility right of way, there was a stop sign that read "Your GPS is wrong" under it, indicating it was not a through road. Apparently many get stuck trying to go back there. I'd imagine it annoys the people living at that last house something terrible. The woods to the north were filled with tons of kids toys. I wondered if the storm surge during Sandy reached back this far and dispersed them there? I can think of little more that would make sense.When we reached Maple, we turned right heading back into New Gretna. It felt really good to get this hike "out of the way", but I was also glad I did it for the good experience. I explained to the three guys I'd met in Lower Bank that these places are by no one's definition "destinations" themselves, but that it's the sum of the parts that make the hike all worth it, and this was a perfect example.