Hike #747; Harrisburg Area Loop

Hike #747; Harrisburg Area Loop

1/12/14 Harrisburg Loop with Jillane Becker

Along Capital Area Greenbelt

My next trip would be just Jillane and I around the Harrisburg area, mostly on the Capital Area Greenbelt. I'd been wanting to do this trail, although it's unconnected with my other hikes, for a while, and it will be very easy to connect it from where I've been. I also had long been trying to do a getaway weekend with just the two of us. I didn't know what was going to happen, and so I consulted my good friend Stephen Argentina to substitute for me for a regular group hike that Sunday. I coached him on a route that I thought would be good through the Watchung Reservation, and sent him links to maps. I let him know that I wanted to go away with Jillane, and if it didn't happen I'd show up, but hopefully all would go as planned.

I was happy to be on my way soon after work on Friday. One of the reasons for doing this trip was the State Farm Show in Harrisburg, which we'd attended the previous year. It's always interesting to see this event, which has been going on I believe for 98 years at this point, and dates back even further to colonial days in some form.

Our plan was to attend the farm show Saturday, which we did, have a look around Harrisburg, and then hike all day Sunday, which had always worked out well for us in the past.

The show was not exactly our scene this time, with a lot of people and tons of vendors everywhere. Last year we talked to more people, different spots, but this year was disappointing in comparison, even though we got around more of the show than the last time. I ended up buying a new hand saw. Beforehand we visited two great thrift stores, and after we went to the State Museum, which was a really nice time. We had enough time before closing to explore all of the floors of the museum, which was very enjoyable. After the museum we went to a small burrito place in town called Neato burrito where we had maybe the best burritos we'd ever had. I also tried a really good taco place across the street.

The next morning, we headed to Veterans Park on Emerton Ave, where we picked up the spur section of the Capital Area Greenbelt, which otherwise is a loop. We'd try to do a fifteen mile loop, but as usual things don't always go as planned and we ended up doing about 17.

We didn't get the greatest sleep; this weekend would definitely have some interesting incidents. Around ten at night at our motel room, a guy was fighting with his wife or girlfriend loudly. It would continue, then stop, start again, and start anew. At about 3:30 in the morning they were right outside of our room, and Jillane woke me up. Apparently this guy was slamming the girl into his car. After I called up front, the police showed in what seemed like an instant. Someone else had probably called first I guess. The guy drove off in his car before the police could get him. The hotel would not comp us for the night due to the disturbance, which is pretty bad (reminds me I have to write a review).

We followed the trail down hill from Veterans Park. It was fine at first, all paved, but as we got down into the the little valley along Asylum Brook, the pavement was covered in a layer of ice that made it difficult walking without falling. There was a side trail to the right that appears to follow a sanitary sewer line into a development. I was originally planning on parking in that way, but we switched to the Veterans park just out of convenience driving.

The trail continued down hill, and we passed a bird watcher, who commented that usually there are at least a few birds in there, but it was very silent today.

The trail took us across Locust Lane and climbed higher above Asylum Run. There was a nice little classroom area of stools to the right of the trail, and a kiosk and "teaching area to the left". "Stop" was painted onto the pavement, with little stop signs for cyclists using the Greenbelt. We continued on, and soon passed by an interesting looking old building to the right. We assumed it at first to be some sort of school, but then we saw more of them. Jillane mentioned that it looked more like one of those old state hospital campuses like Greystone in NJ. She was absolutely right, and I brought up the fact that the creek we were walking on was called Asylum Run. This must have been, or is, an asylum of some sort. The creek was below us to the left, and I could see old hydrants out in the middle of the woods for no apparent reason. We continued on and the trail paralleld Pine Drive, heading down hill, and crossed Asylum Run on a bridge next to the road bridge. At the intersection with Sycamore Drive, we intersected the main loop of the Capital Area Greenbelt. We could have taken a left or a right, either way would have been good. We both agreed that the southern portion of the route looked to be more natural, and better for our purposes this time. We turned left, parallel with the road as it now headed up hill. The road was closed up ahead, and gates were adorned with "no trespassing" signs, but the Capital Area Greenbelt signs were right beside them. We just continued on, and then exited again next to another gate. Two police officers were talking to each other at the end of the gated section, and I greeted them as I walked by, citing that it was a nice day for a walk. They smiled and agreed. "Hello, young lady" they said as Jillane walked by as well. People are for the most part very friendly in the area which was nice.

The trail continued to follow the abandoned roadway away from the police, and we passed what appeared to be another old handsome brick building that had fallen into awful disrepair. It was behind a chain link fence, and the grounds were used for dog training with lots of jumping things and such. The abandoned road appeared more grown over with weeds as the trail made it's way on higher ground directly to the right of it. There was a somewhat obscured view to the west where we could see some hills and ridges beyond the Susquehanna. The trail soon picked up a cemetery road and turned right. We were able to cut a short corner here in East Harrisburg Cemetery, then came out to Herr Street. I was hungry, and so went across the street to a little convenience store for I think a fast break bar or something. I forget what I was eating.

The trail followed Parkway Drive down hill a bit, and passed one nice old house on the right side. It was cluttered with stuff, but was not dirty, just very busy looking. The rest of the homes in the area were very new looking. The road went down hill, then back up to Jonestown at an intersection. We could see down the road far to the right, leading directly to the Capital building, quite a neat site. The trail went directly across into Reservoir Park. Up to this point, there were good signs with arrows on them pointing us in the right direction, but this section must have been a part of the Greenbelt for longer, as it had an older, rustier sign with no arrows. We assumed it meant that the trail went along the road. Jillane stayed on the road, but I wanted to check out the view from up hill. the top of the hill was the home of the National Civil War Museum, which I would like to one day go back to visit, but we wouldn't really have the time to go through it this time.

I went up hill, and there was a very nice amphitheater. The view in the backdrop was an outstanding one of the Susquehanna River, where I could see it's gaps of the Blue Mountain and Second Mountain toward Duncannon. More of the town could be seen to the south, and more of the ridge to the northeast. I went up to a handsome fountain area with statues around, then turned left along the crest of the hill to catch up with Jillane. I could see her turning the corner on the road, but then saw yet another path going steeply up the hill to the right, to the crest of what I was most of the way up. It looked as though kids had recently been sledding down it because it was a muddy mess and for me to get footing to get up. I couldn't resist seeing the view.

It was breathtaking from the top. The view was still there of the gaps to the north, but to the south and east I could see the bridges crossing the Susquehanna at Harrisburg, including the Pennsylvania Railroad's handsome concrete arches, four tracks wide, and the former Reading Railroad line just to the north of it. Road bridges were also in view, and further to the south I could see the foot hills of the Pennsylvania Highlands, and above me were cumulus clouds just beginning to open up and show striations from the sun.

I turned along the crest of the flat topped hill, which was strangely holding water like a grassy pond. I ended up getting my feet wet trying to get through. The east end of the hill had concrete steps descending, which took me to Concert Drive at the intersection with Market Drive, where I met back up with Jillane. I went steeply down a section of hill and we followed Market Drive out to Market Street and turned left. This was not the Capital Area Greenbelt. That trail turned off to the left further back onto Parkway Drive, and we didn't quite catch it. Honestly, that shouldn't even be the route. The way I went was most scenic and certainly the most interesting way for people to experience this region. Even after turning onto Market Street, we passed several very interesting homes. Nowhere to be found were new cookie cutter homes. All of them dated back to probably 1940s and eariler, ranging from brick and federal style, formal looking structures, variations on A Frames, Art Deco, Cape Cod, and Arts and Crafts style. Each building was well kept and evoked the prestige of an exalted University campus.

The neighborhood seemed more relative to that as we passed an old Harrisburg High School, formerly known as the John Harris High School. The school had the more modern, sprawled out look we've come to expect of newer school structures, with with columns and and some detailing. It was built in an odd Italian Renaissance style as explained on a nearby historic marker. If this were not enough to catch the eye, the end of Market Street had a peculiar house through which there was a culvert and street that led to a nearby cemetery! Why, I imagine in retrospect, would a trail take a route like the one it does in lieu of this interesting and lovely neighborhood?

Regardless, we turned left at the end of the road to reach Parkway Blvd's current terminus. To the right, the Capital Area Greenbelt continued following the now closed section of Parkway Blvd. The entrance to this side was planted with natural grasses, wildlflowers, and trees, with each marked as such by use of wooden routed signage.

We began following the old road down hill. This section was quite lovely, and we barely passed anyone the entire way through. A sanitary sewer line seemed to follow many sections of the trail, including this one, following a small creek. There were side trails used by mountain bikers on the opposite side of the creek, even when the trail crossed these more narrow paths crossed and continued. I figured I could do this same hike over gain simply following the paths running parallel.

Also along the way were a lot of video game reference graffiti things. Starting with near the state hospital property, there was a Fire Flower from Super Mario Bros. painted on the trail. Further on, there were the ghosts from Pac Man, and alligators that I think are from Frogger. Very strange. They appeared everywhere from the uplands mentioned before to man holes in the middle of creeks, to later on concrete walls along the Susquehanna.

We took a short break at one point where one of the side trails broke off over the top of an old pipeline bridge. I checked it out, and it took me to a very nice foot bridge over a tributary. I would certainly need to come back to do more exploring. I wandered the trail for a bit while Jillane ate some of her leftover amazing burrito from the night before.

We continued along the trail southward, and actually saw a few other patrons along the way. We also saw probably the best cell tower I'd ever seen, made to look like a tree. Usually they look rather ridicules, but this one really did look like a tree.

The trail took us out in a small park in Paxtang, off of Derry Street. The trail turned left on Derry Street and followed it to a right on Paxtang Ave. The little town area was nice, and had an old theater that was converted into an exercise place. We turned right on Paxtang, on a sidewalk that took us deep into a cut beneath the active railroad tracks. On the other side, parallel now with the Spring Creek, we passed a lovely old stone spring house sitting partially in the creek. The trail made a very nice turn from here onto a long foot bridge beneath Interstate 83 and Spring Creek. The bridge shook a lot when we jumped on it.

The trail then went up hill and beside an old building to the right. It turned right on Parkview Lane, then crossed over Paxton Street to follow another old roadway through some sort of a cut. I would guess that this was once the route of a trolley line or something. The trail came out past a parking area, and continued on a high slope above Spring Creek, with another trail down below in the flood plane, a foot or mountain bike path. There was an interesting gas line or pipeline bridge that crossed high above the creek here as well.

We soon emerged in Five Senses Gardens where we took a little break. There was a blue blazed trail following the aforementioned mountain biking trail along the creek headed up stream, and several places where large rocks and dredging had been done for stream restoration. Informative signs showed the process by which this was done, and the removal of an old dam on the creek. Additionally, there was a large cat sculpture, a cut log that showed the exact age of a tree as well as the historic events that happened each year along the way, and a rock meditation garden. We wandered through their little side trail, then crossed over Harrisburg Street to continue on the greenway, which still followed an unused road.

There were two young guys picking up trash from the woods in the area. They missed some white notebook paper which I pick up for them to put in the bag, and told them they were doing a good job. I figure they were probably working for the juvenile detention center that we'd seen nearby, and there was a guy parked in the trail parking lot just sitting there. He was probably the one that's supposed to be supervising them. Lazy thing.

We continued on the trail headed downstream, and crossed over one nice old stone bridge. There was a black cat there that we tried to make friends with, but it didn't want to get close.

We crossed 19th Street, and eventually reached Rt 230, passing by some nice giant Sycamore trees along the way. At Rt 230, the trail turned left to parallel Rt 23 northbound for a bit. There was a high retaining wall along the opposite side of the road that all sorts of conspiracy theory propaganda painted all over it, something we'd never seen the likes of before. The first one we saw said something about looking up "KKK and the truth about hip-hop movement". It gave a website, which I didn't have, but I remembered the text enough to give it a look. It basically leads to a site that talks about how hip hop music is hurting black progress and that the KKK are no longer needed as a result.

As we walked on, more propaganda adorned the walls across from us. It said things about global warming being an excuse to interfere in other countries' affairs, and things about how foreign nations are making depopulation plans. I some of this stuff out, and it's at least interesting to some degree, like this one here:

http://home.iae.nl/users/lightnet/world/depopulation.htm

The trail continued on across another road, and rails became visible in the crossing. We now knew for sure that this section at least was an old railroad line. It led us through a cut, and then out to a very low through style girder bridge over the Paxtang Creek, a gross body of nearly still, opaque brown water. Another abutment was right next to the existing bridge, which meant maybe another track once crossed here as well. We passed beneath an active rail line and through style truss bridge, beneath which a nicely made set of stone steps and foot path led off to the left. I walked it for a short bit, but then came back and we continued on the main trail. Above us to the right was a restaurant place, and a concession stand at the site of an old train station. We decided to take a break here.

Jillane used the structure to add some layers without the wind making her colder, and she had some more of her leftover burrito. We continued on the trail from here, which then made a sharp curve to the left heading back in the direction we came. I figured out this way that the path beneath the rail bridge I was looking at was a shortcut for this corner. We continued ahead on the trail, which then crossed over more active tracks on a through style bridge with high walls. The trail split on the other side, and to the left it led down to an old coal loading area. This trail simply returned to the main trail ahead. We went straight rather than take this detour, and reached the Susquehanna River in Phoenix Park.

We turned right on the trail heading up stream along the Susquehanna past a probation building, then toward the underpass beneath Rt 83. The pathway as I understand descends here and goes right along the waters of the Susquehanna, but the river level was very very high. In fact, the Lock Street Dam was just above the bridge, and it could not be seen at all due to an ice jam. Ice had washed to the 83 bridge and held up the river quite a lot, including inundating the dam to where it's no longer visible. The walkway was then under water. Fortunately, there is a walkway up the top of the slope for the most part, which for our purposes was better this time because we like admiring the historic architecture.

We continued north a little bit and soon got to the lovely concrete arch bridge of the former Pennsylvania Railroad still in service. Next to it on the upstream side were the piers, on the far side, of the never completed rail line that was to be it's competitor. The line was nearly complete and ready for track, and the plan was abandoned. This was part of the "South Pennsylvania Railroad" and many other names, a project planned in part by Vanderbilt to end the Pennsylvania Railroad Company's monopoly on freight across the state. Financial drama ensued and the rail line stopped construction with only short sections ever seeing trackage. The piers now remain for what would have been a bridge on the west side of the Susquehanna. I assume the others were blasted out because of problems with ice jams similar to what we saw with the interstate highway bridge.

Just north of here was the crossing for the former Reading Railroad, which is no longer active. I'd love to walk across that bridge. The next bridge we crossed was the vehicular Market Street Bridge. I actually wanted to cross one of these bridges over the Susquehanna, but we held off this time. We had a ways to go and it'd certainly be after dark when we got done already.

We moved on past some historic homes that governors had in the past lived in. There were interpretive signs all along the waterfront at every building of significance, which we did take the time to look at. The actually greenbelt route apparently continued below us, but we couldn't do it because it was still under water. As we approached the old Walnut Street Bridge, which is also known as the People's Bridge constructed in 1889, we decided we actually did need to walk along part of this one. It was too cool not to. We didn't go all the way across, but what we did see was the incredible ice jam that went all the way across the river to the north, no doubt owing to all of the piers of the bridges together. We read that this was the oldest bridge spanning the Susquehanna, but I found out later that it truly does not cross the whole river. Three spans of the bridge on the other side of City Island, which the bridge crosses, are missing, probably from when it was closed in 1972 to automobile traffic.

We continued on to the north from here, passing countless historic structures lining the street along the Susquehanna. Some of them even dated back to the 1700s. Many governors homes and more were passed over and over. We could spend a whole day just reading all of the signs along the waterfront. We continued past the  Harvey Taylor Bridge, and then observed beautiful striations from the sun through the clouds to the west. It was getting cold and windy, and both of us were ready to get off of the waterfront. One of the last things we checked out was the "Sunken Gardens" where there used to be a building associated with loggers and such. The foundation of the building was partially incorporated into the present day gardens.

We wouldn't have time to do the entire Capitol Area Greenbelt, as we still had quite a bit left. My plan was to cut inland on a road that would take us over the railroad tracks and then head back to Veterans Park. I was so busy reading every sign that I didn't realize we needed to cut inland sooner. The last road that took us over the tracks was MacLay Street, and that was a ways back. Before it got dark, we opted to head inland on Radnor Street, right on 3rd Street, and immediately left on Polyclinic Ave which became Reels Lane, a street that did not fit in with the grid of the rest of the city. This one took us over to 6th Street much sooner, a main drag we'd use to head south

I didn't want to be in this neighborhood for long. It looked pretty tough. We went by a rough looking school, and then in one of the most depressed areas we'd passed through yet, with garbage strewn everywhere, we were horrified to see a dead dog and cat. The dog was on a heap of trash, collar still on. It's possible it was left out to freeze to death on the tree, or it died and was just discarded. It's really hard to say. The cat appeared to have been hit by a car. When we got to the next intersection, I took a picture of the street signs so we'd know where it was, and continued south on 6th Street. When we were far enough away, we called the city police to report it. A cop was going by when we talked to them, and figured he went looking a bit, but he called Jillane back and said he didn't see anything. I don't think he looked very hard, it was pretty obvious.

As we walked down 6th Street, a black man, while talking on his cell phone with someone, looked at Jillane and bellowed out "DAMN white girl!". That was worth laughing about for a while.

We reached MacLay Street, then turned left across a bridge over the railroad yards, which were a great many tracks wide. This was also how we got to the farm show the day before. We passed the farm show complex, then turned left beside it along Rt 22 which took us to the next piece of the Capital Area Greenbelt. It passed beneath 22 through an underpass with a turn in it. It's surprising that we didn't find any degenerates hiding in this passage since it has the corner where a walker could easily be overtaken by surprise. We continued on the Greenbelt As it followed along Asylum Creek again. There was a sign for the state hospital which assured us that our assumptions about the buildings were right on. The trail paralleled Sycamore Drive with a few ruins along the creek, and then we came to Pine Drive where we'd started on the loop section before. We turned left from here to retrace our steps back to Veterans Park.

It was dark by this time, and we didn't see anyone on the entire stretch of trail. A little bit of the ice that we struggled on before had melted away, making it somewhat easier. We had the car parked at the PA Game Commission building so we wouldn't get in trouble for parking in the park after dark, but I get the idea that it's not enforced really anyway.

Before heading out, we stopped and I got another great burrito from a different place. I was so stuck on them from the glory that was the previous night's. This one wasn't as great, but it was good.

The one last bit of craziness we faced was driving Rt 78 east. Jillane swerved out of the way narrowly missing a Cow standing in the middle of the fast lane! It was trying to get over the median in the middle, probably scared to death. We had to pull over and stop to call the police once more. We were both shaken up, and Jillane pointed out that if we'd hit that cow we'd probably be dead. There were tractor trailers right behind us who also swerved to miss the animal, and plenty more cars. I've been so close to death so many times now I suppose I shrug it off more quickly, and let myself say "well, I'm still here". Still, I was a little shaken, and Jillane definitely was. The entire way back I watched the traffic function on Google Maps which showed nothing slowing down at all, so we assume and hope the cow made it off of the highway unharmed. Nothing appeared in the newspapers about it either the next day.

Overall it was a strange but good weekend for us.