Hike #687; Phillipsburg/Easton

 Hike #687; Phillipsburg/Easton

3/8/13 Phillipsburg/Easton Loop with Frank Meloi, Dan Lurie, Sue Olivar, Bonnie Peters, Lynne ?, and Steph Szela

On Marble Hill

Our next hike would be another evening trek, once again in the Phillipsburg/Easton area, since I had more work to do at Marble Hill. I ended up unable to reblaze more of the Warren Highlands Trail like I wanted due to wet conditions, and I'd end up returning to do it the next day instead. Still, we had a really good hike.

We started at Belvidere Road, where we could easily get away with parking after dark, across from the Lopatcong Township Park where my red blazed Lopatcong Connector Trail begins. We wandered across the park and up hill onto the trail, passing the new trail head kiosk.

While starting out, I got a phone call from a girl at Centenary College, Stephanie, who read about my hikes in the hackettstown paper. I had forgotten than my hikes were still posted there, and have been for years. I remembered being surprised when Laurie Ellicott first saw them there and she came out, but that was back in 2006 or something. When Steph found out we were doing a hike, she hurried to meet us right away. I gave her the directions and she was off.

We wandered through my new Warren Highlands Trail system like we usually do, and along the way passed Dana Hovey. He is a friend to my friends Megan and Gave Franklin, and they had just shown him the place after I showed it to them. I met him just after I opened the last wooded section of Warren Highlands Trail on the state property. This time, I chatted with him about the next project, cutting the trail parallel with Marble Hill Road rather than having the trail do the road walk. To my surprise, in the next few days, Hovey would construct the trail for me quite perfectly as a volunteer.

We continued to the overlook, then along the Mine Trail. This would be Frank's first time in a mine in a few years, which was happy, although it's not a very big mine. While taking our break at the mine, Steph arrived having followed the directions I had given her.

We all continued down to the Warren Highlands Trail, then along the Delaware River downstream. I showed everyone the pump house and the giant hollowed Silver Maple, and then took them to the giant pipe. This is alway such a hit, there's no way I couldn't include it.

Everyone got through okay, then we continued on the Warren Highlands Trail route south and climbed the Rt 22 bridge. I gave everyone the Getters Island history lesson as I had done so many times in the past (sorry, I'm not going to reiterate every time I write a journal on the same area), and we headed into Easton, along Bushkill Drive, and up into Lafayette College.As before, we descended to the Easton Artison Trail, and followed it out to 13th Street, turned left, then right on Bushkill Street out to 17th Street where we descended to Wood Ave. We followed it to the Wilson Bike Path, which crossed Wood Ave again and then headed to Northampton Street, crossed, and turned off the trail to visit Wendy's. It's just not the same without the Taco Bell there, but at least this time we could see they were building the new one since our last visit.

After having food, we returned to the trail and headed south. We passed the Walgreens, then came to the "end" of the trail. The rail right of way had a lot of crap on it, and I had thought it would be opened as a trail at that point, but not yet. We then turned right to follow 25th street south for a bit, then front street to Stewart Street. This took us by some sort of offices, and the really awesome old mansion building that we'd passed during one of the Summer hikes.

From the road below the mansion, we took the paved path down to the pathway on the former CNJ railroad right of way. It had been cleared to the east of here since our last visit, and so we followed it to Glendon Hill Road where the machines were parked for the work, and turned right to cross the old Glendon Bridge. There was now a walkway along the right side of the bridge into Hugh Moore Park. In the past, this was closed completely to everyone, but we always went anyway.

We turned left off of the road and got to the old Lehigh Canal and followed the towpath all the way to the guard lock onto the Lehigh, and then I accidentally took a wrong turn and ended up on an old rail grade above the towpath. We ended up having to bushwhack down to the towpath and then continue back to Rt 611. We took the highway then across the Lehigh and to the tobacco store where we got drinks, then wandered into the middle of town. We walked through the alley next to Mother's Bar and Grill, which was full of all sorts of hoodlums, and then back to the free bridge into P Burg.

Since we'd done enough extra stuff (the rail trail wasn't opened), it worked out that Steph's car was parked closer than the rest of our cars, so she'd be able to give us a ride back. The problem was that there were seven of us, but only five seats in the car. We only had to go a short distance up the road, and I suggested riding in the trunk, as I've done so many times in my life (and continue to do). So Frank and I piled into the trunk and rode back to the cars, while I shouted out directions using my gps since I couldn't see the road. Quite an entertaining way to end yet another good night!