Hike #681; Bethlehem/Allentown

 Hike #681; Bethlehem/Allentown and Buckettfest

2/9/13 Bethlehem/Allentown Loop with Jason Itell, Megan Reid, Carol Van Gliezen, Oscar Alvaredo, Jio Vette, Dave "Captain Soup" Campbell, Jaque Melo, Jack Lowry, Susie Duncan, Shelly Janes, and Bobbi Landrock

The group in Bethlehem

Our next hike would be the annual Buckettfest hike, which we've had every February since 2008.

This time, I had a huge crew signed up for it, but the night before we had a good amount of snowfall, and so many cancelled out at the last minute. Still, we'd end up having 12 show up, though not all at once.

The original plan was to do a new point to point hike between Emmaus and Buckett's house, affectionately referred to as the Buckettorium.

With fewer people, and less interest in doing so much car shuttling, I opted to change the hike to a slightly longer loop. Jason and Megan showed up because they were originally signed up to do a longer hike with our friend Bijal at the Delaware Water Gap, but he had cancelled. Also at the beginning were Oscar and his girlfriend Jio, Captain Soup, and Jaque. We moved cars from Dunkin Donuts on Catasaqua Road to Buckett's house, and started walking from there.

I didn't realize it when I started, but I had chosen boots with a hole in the heel, so snow was getting right in. My feet were freezing from the start. Someone, Megan I think, gave me a plastic bag. It helped a bit, but it was tough. We crossed a small park called Clearview Park and then continued on streets to a convenience store where I asked if they had any duct tape. They did, and were good enough to let me use it to mend my shoe a bit. That held out for me for the rest of the hike.

From East Pennsylvania Avenue, we tried to climb up to and walk part of the old Lehigh and New England Railroad, now abandoned and badly overgrown, but we could barely move down it. We only got across the bridge over the road and we met by nearly impenetrable weeds. I'd tried hiking this back in 2006 I think it was, and we had to do the same thing this time as we did then, walk Columbia Street to the south.

We turned left on Sherman Street down to Union Blvd and turned right. We followed this for quite a while because the rail bed would be impassable mainly. There were some nice big old Sycamores lining the streets along the way.

When we reached the bridge over the old LNE right of way, we climbed down and followed it south. I'd done this on a Buckettfest hike once before, but not in the snow. This time was a bit tougher. We got to another bridge site, climbed down and then back up the other. I couldn't get directly up because there was too much to walk in.

We got to the near end of the rail bed, then turned down Liberty Street to a left on Bradford Street. Here, the new section of the D&L Trail was open, which I wanted to walk. It went up hill to a nice overlook into Allentown, then headed back down to the Hamilton Street Bridge, where it would pick up the canal towpath again. We climbed to cross the bridge into Allentown.

On the other side, we turned left and followed the former Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks to the south.  We soon left town and crossed a bridge over the Little Lehigh Creek. It was still active, but no trains coming by, and no one gave us a hard time walking the tracks. We continued on, and when the rail line got close to Constitution Drive, we made our way on a side path to it, via a driveway.

Constitution Drive is an excellent road to walk; I loved it the first time we'd done it somewhat recently, and the Walking Purchase Preserve was a ways down, still with so many trails we haven't done yet. Along the road, we passed by the old stone spring house built into the side of the wall, and we stopped to smash ice off of the rocks on the cliffs.

We continued on and soon reached the Walking Purchase Preserve parking area. I'd done stuff up on the hill before, but there was a lower route that went out along an old road into the Riverside tract. We followed this, in part because it would be easier. We then turned right on another trail. There were a few others through this piece of land, but most of them appeared to have large trees down over them. Still, they were nice, though hard to follow at times. They returned us to the woods road, which was only used occasionally by vehicles, apparently to reach some sort of ejector pit or water pumping station housed in a brick structure. Beyond that, it was an obvious road but not accessible by vehicle.

The road ended once again at the former LV railroad tracks. We had to cross them and continue on the trails on the other side. The route was not obvious, as this wasn't well maintained either. We eventually made our way up to the well maintained mountain biking trails further up, and followed them east.

At the other end, we were joined by Jack and Susie, and her dog Zip Line. We followed the back roads into South Bethlehem, passing through a parking garage and then along Brighton Street. We stopped in South Bethlehem for lunch at the pizza place, Lehigh Pizza, which is always great. They also sold beer to everyone's great happiness.

After lunch, we headed on to cross the Fahy Bridge, and we were joined by Shelly and Bobbi just before. The bridge was being worked on, so the regular walkway was closed, with concrete barriers blocking the edge of the road for a temporary walkway.

On the other side, we headed into the Lafayette College campus, with all of the old stone Moravian buildings. Carol was going to show us the grave of the father of the "Last of the  Mohicans", but there would have been too much snow there to see it.

We headed into town, then followed a weird path next to Hotel Bethlehem, and out past their parking area to the paved paths. We then headed down to Monocacy Creek and followed the pathways along it to the north.

We got on Monocacy Way, the trail along the creek to the north out to the Burnside Plantation, and then on toward Illicks Mill. We cut to the left before that, up a sledding hill and to the golf course off of Illicks Mill Road, and followed that west. We then made a right and a left from Schoenersville Road to Catasaqua Road out toward Buckett's house.

When we arrived, Jason, Megan, Oscar, Jio, and Susie opted not to stay for the party. A few others showed up, but it was actually the most mellow "Buckettfest" since the first one in 2008, which is fine. No one even ended up spending the night. I suppose it has a lot to do with the snow, and the fact that it was not posted on Facebook, but oh well.

We had a lot of food and drink, sang some songs in the basement, and hid large women's undergarments around the house.

The low key Buckettfest is not disheartening to me. It's nice to have a mellow time now and again. What is really cool is that people still showed up for the hike despite the bad weather. Some of my best friends I'd met through the hikes were present, and the newer members like Oscar and Carol have a contagious passion that pushes them to attend despite the bad weather conditions.

If such a good group shows up for a cold winter hike in the snow, how many are going to show up on the lovely days during the Spring and Summer? Time will tell.