Hike #714; High Point to Milford

 Hike #714; High Point NJ to Milford PA

7/21/13 High Point NJ to Milford PA with Jillane Becker, Stephen Argentina, Justin Gurbisz, Mark Norman, Steve Levy, Michael S., Theodore Wright, Marina Font, Ira Hays, Beth Dorton Dillenbeck, Barbara Chi, Sally ?, Daniel Yu, Chris "Cupcake" Kroschinski, Darlene Perez, and Bella ?.

The group in Montegue NJ

Our next hike would be another in the name of completing the entire perimeter of NJ, this time at the very top of the state. For some reason, I'd never gotten around to following that last section of the Delaware River between the Milford-Montegue Bridge and Port Jervis, and on to the trails of High Point State Park beyond.

I started getting ideas on how to do this after I got the updated Kittatinny Trails map series of the NY/NJ Trail Conference. It showed a woods road known as "Fire Road West" descending from the Shawangunk Ridge Trail from very close to the NJ/NJ state line, and descending to Rt 23 parallel with the same. This would be part of my route.

We met in the morning at the Grand Union in Milford PA, a regular meet spot for us that we keep using. We then shuttled as few cars as possible to High Point State Park.

To my surprise, the Appalachian Trail parking area at HPSP was moved from it's former location down hill. The old parking area was now some sort of park maintenance area where they were dumping gravel. I had to go into the park headquarters and ask where the AT lot was. They said it was down hill. Mark seemed to know where this was exactly, but I hadn't checked it out yet.

We headed down hill, and there was a paved parking area next to an abandoned building. A blue blazed side trail led from the lot to the AT. We started our hike here and headed up hill to the AT. Bella talked to Jillane and I near the beginning, and she seemed to have some weird ways of knowing things about us, from guessing that we were together to both of our exact ages. She wasn't ready for this hike, as she'd never hiked more than a mile before, but she still managed to do around seven or eight before she cut out.

We took the AT out to cross Rt 23, then ascended a bit to the Hawk Watch on the ridge for a break. There were great views from here as always. We then descended to the Monument Trail. We turned left on it and followed it out across the Skyline Drive in the park, and the Superintended, Rebecca pulled up to us. She asked people in the group what we were up to, and I walked up to tell her about our through hike. I hadn't seen her in a while, and she seemed surprised to see me. We chatted briefly, then headed down hill on the Monument Trail, which led to the edge of Lake Marcia. We followed the lake for a bit, and then crossed over the picnic area on the road, soon the route of the Kuser Trail into the Dryden-Kuser Natural Area, home to the highest elevation Atlantic Cedar Swamp. We turned left on part of the Kuser Trail on a slightly narrower path, and followed it to the Shawangunk Ridge Trail, and turned left. This section led up hill onto a secondary ridge, then SR Trail turns right. We continued down hill on this trail.

It is the least used trail in the park, and very nice as it makes it's way through the blueberries and huckleberries. Some of them were ready to eat, and were really tasty.

As we neared the state line, we came to a dry creek bed. I was looked for Fire Road West, but didn't really see it. There was one spot by the brook I thought might have been it, but it was obscured quite a lot by the blueberries. When we reached the state line boundary marker, I called for those ahead to come back. We had passed the road somewhere.
When we went back, I realized the road we were looking for was the one by the creek bed. The trail follows some of that old road route, and I saw where it turned away further back. Only a keen eye would notice that this road was the former road because it was so overgrown with only a foot path in it now.

The road was at first too tough to follow, so we stayed in the creek bed heading down hill. When it started getting to a deeper ravine area, and we could see another tributary was going to flow in, I bushwhacked to the right a bit until we found the more obvious roadway, and we followed that down hill. It became more and more obvious as it was like a shelf heading down along the ravine. The closer we got to Rt 23, the clearer it got.

When we finally reached 23, I knew there were abandoned houses just up hill from there, and wanted to see if anyone wanted to run up there to explore. Of course Justin did. Everyone else headed to the right, down hill to the village of State Line, and Justin and I ran up the road to the first road to the abandoned homes.

The first house was in very poor shape. A calender showed the year 2003 as last time it was occupied. Maybe a little later. I was told in the park offices that the people were squatters, and that they even had kids that the buses picked up for school although they weren't legally living there.

The first house had a collapsing porch area. We had to climb onto it to get into the house. There was junk all over the place, but not much of any value or real interest. We exited and made our way along a driveway in the front of it, then bushwhacked parallel with 23 on the overgrown road to the next two houses. These were also in very poor shape. The first one was easy to walk into the front of. We went through every room, and this one had an interesting bathroom with a weird towel hung over the far side like a tapestry. We went through some stuff on the floor but didn't find anything of any value until we went to the basement.

In the basement, there was this giant lamp that was probably only one foot short of Justin's height when standing up. Justin is a thin guy, but holding this lamp up would make anyone look small. Justin named this "The Ostrich of Lamps", and went on to say he'd get it to sit it in the middle of the living room. "Mind my lamp" he said I could tell to my visitors if I were to take it. Later, Jillane mentioned we should have just carried it out to the road to pick up later. I nearly smacked myself in the head for not realizing this obviousness.

The third house was about the same size as the second, and had to be entered from the right side. Nothing of particular interest in here either, other than the fact that abandoned houses are cool.

We made our way back out to 23 heading north, and the cars came barreling at us at high speed, and very close. Not the best section of highway to walk. Other former home sites were visible to the left of the highway, one of which had a concrete stair case with railing descending.

When we reached the village of State Line, we found the group lounging at picnic benches at the Dairy Queen, an excellent location choice. Bella opted to cut out here, calling a taxi, but we were soon joined by Cupcake and Darlene. I was glad to introduce he and Justin, being involved in similar exploring.

I got some chocolate milk and junk food at a gas station and we continued on. I was originally planning a bushwhack over a section of small ridge by the state line, but with this big group I figured it's probably not the best idea. We instead headed further along the highway into Port Jervis, then turned left onto South Maple Ave, which was the former route of Old Mine Road, a section I'd not yet walked. We followed the road under Interstate 84 and over the state line where it became Rt 521, River Road, and still the former Old Mine Road route.

We continued along the road until we reached the abandoned Rockview Country Club. The overgrown golf course was as the regional superintendent put it "melting into the landscape". We couldn't even tell it was a golf course unless we looked with that knowledge. The former sand traps were now growing over with hardier weeds while the rest of it appeared as warm season grasses.

There was a macadam parking lot, with the abandoned club house on the side. It seemed all locked up. We headed down hill also to check out an abandoned barn on the same property, in pretty good shape. One area of the club house was open so a few of us went in to have a look around. Amazing building with lovely bar counter tops, but the drop ceiling is deteriorating to the floor, and people have already vandalized so much of it. Such a shame.

The barn was in great shape. It was structurally sound and wide open to wander in to. No one seems to have vandalized this section at all. We made our way through all of this, then along an access road out more golf course land and back to the former Old Mine Road heading south.

I was hoping early on to get out onto Mashipatcong Island, but unfortunately all of the access roads were marked with no trespassing signs. We finally headed out by way of the last access road and reached a bridge to the island, but by that time we wanted to be off of it, so we headed parallel with the small channel of the Delaware up stream. There were a couple of overgrown fields we passed through, then came to the back of a house with a manicured lawn. We thought someone lived there, but then when we bushwhacked out to the road to stay away from it, we saw that the road accesses were without mail boxes and rather overgrown themselves. It makes me wonder if they're ranger residences, or if they're abandoned but kept up to a certain degree.

Regardless, we continued back to the road, and stopped by something that said "Blessings" fruit stand. A nice old gentleman was running the fruit stand as his retirement job. He said that he had ten acres he farmed as a part time job, and one of the people in our group said they had eight acres and it was full time! He had some nice orchards nearby.

We asked if we could refill water. I had already drank more than a gallon, some of the most I'd ever drank on a single hike, and was very thirsty. He ended up bringing back a five gallon bucket of water. I didn't care at this point that there were a few things floating in it, and refilled my gallon jug again. Everyone bought some stuff from him, including a lot of tasty black berries. I think he just appreciated both the business and the company. He said usually he did okay on weekends there, but recently the road ahead was closed and so business was hurting.

We saw what he meant ahead; as we walked on we reached giant hole in the middle of the road. I thought it was a sink hole at first, but then a guy coming up to check out the hole on the other side said "No, that's from Tennessee Gas". I was immediately surprised and angered. I was fighting against this expansion back in 2010 when I worked for the Northern Region Office of state parks. The expansion is directly related to the controvercial hydraulic fracturing that's going on in northeast PA where they extract natural gases from the Marcellus Shale. Not only is it polluting drinking water supplies because of chemicals they use in the process, it is causing a lot of environmental damage with the expansion of the lines necessary to carry it. This was just another example of the damage it causes. In this case, the line purged a sink hole that caused the collapse of the entire road.

We continued from here down the road parallel with the Delaware until we reached a dirt side road to the car top boat launch across from Milford PA. The dirt road was quite nice, but seemed to go on forever. When we finally reached the water, we went for a great, much needed swim.

While we were in the water, we overheard some fat guy trying to convince the group to just swim across the river from this point. He was saying "You can walk a mile and a half that way...or...do the river, and you're DONE". They all kept arguing that they had packs to carry, and we were  hiking, and the guy kept saying "See those houses? See that road? That's Milford THERE. That's it! You could be there!" He was in utter disbelief that we would walk from this point. It was entertaining.

We headed from here back along the road to the first place we could cut into a corn field. We then followed the corn field parallel with the river heading down stream. A lot of the group seemed to get a kick out of this. I had hiked through corn fields on countless hikes over the years, but for many this was a first time. It was neat to see how they reacted to this "new" thing. I think most everyone enjoyed it.

At the end of the fields, we had to bushwhack through some weeds and cross a small tributary with some difficulty. There were slopes of mud on the other side, and lots more weeds with thorns. We managed to get through, and then on the other side made our way down to the Delaware where there was a reasonable path at first, then an open area directly across the river from Milford Beach. We could see the new Milford Montegue Bridge plainly at this point. It was tough walking along the shore through this part, but we managed, and then climbed up to the old roadways on the other side, to the former east end of the original Milford Montegue Bridge. A piece of a pier was still on the PA side, and the pier and roadway still existed on the NJ side heading away from it. Just up hill from the old paved road was another dirt road, which may or may not have been an earlier ferry road or something. The old roadway still had double painted lines visible in the middle when not covered with leaves or moss.

We continued on the old road out to the former Old Mine Road, and then followed it to the wide grassy area approaching the current bridge. Stephen ran like a maniac out across the fields and threw his backpack. Commentary on the part of the group ensued..."What is he doing? He took off running! He just threw his pack. Does he realize he'll have to go back for it? What is he doing? Is he peeing? He looks like he's relieving himself. No! He's seated. What is he doing? Oh wait...he's getting up, he's going back for his pack"

We got to the bridge and crossed, with great views of the Delaware. On the other side, we followed Rt 309 briefly to the Old Bridge Road, which becomes abandoned and leads to the abandoned Mott Street Bridge. We headed to there and I took a dip in the Sawkill Creek.

When we were all convened, Stephen and I would run back to his cousin's car and head back to pick up other drivers, then bring them back to shuttle more so not everyone would have to continue walking. We took off running. Stephen has me beat in the sprint department, but I can run for longer. We both ran together though just about to the parking lot before we both stopped.

While we were running Justin of course climbed all over the trusses of the bridge again, which I found out later through many photos. I got back to the group and just let everyone handle the shuttling, and Jillane, Cupcake, Darlene, and I got a ride back with Justin. Everyone else handled their car shuttles independently and it worked out just fine. Although we were tempted, we did not go back for the Ostrich Lamp.

This was another really hot hike like the previous week, but I really enjoyed it. There were a lot of good experiences, and I'd completed the northern piece of the perimeter of NJ series. I have now hiked the state line from Trenton to the tri state corner, and east as far as Ringwood. I have also hiked from Rockleigh to the Hudson, and south along the NJ border almost to Cape May. I had only seven more hikes to complete the entire eastern shore of the state as follows:
-Brigantine
-Atlantic City Loop
-Southern Long Beach Island

-Margate City to Corson's Inlet
-Corson's Inlet to Stone Harbor
-Stone Harbor to Cape May North
-Bottom of Cape May

...and I would be completing one of these sections in a week! It's an amazing feeling to accomplish so much continuous distance, and I will be the first person to ever hike NJ's entire perimeter!