Hike #1169; Elk Neck

Hike #1169; Elk Neck

10/28/18 Elk Neck with Jennifer Berndt, Craig Craig, Stephen Argentina, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Jennifer Tull, Joe Tag, Irina Kulikovskaya, James Quinn, and Valerie Wall Thorpe

Our next hike would be a point to point spur of the moment change of plans trip. I had planned to go to Connecticut to do a piece of the Metacomet Trail I was missing, but then a bad nor'easter was upon us, and it was looking bad.

Informal trail at the start...

I started frantically looking at forecasts for where might still be good, and among the good spots I found eastern Maryland and Delaware. I then started going over routes I had wanted to hike. There were a ton. Mason Dixon Trail, White Clay Creek area still has a ton more, everything around Wilmington, the list goes on and on.
I didn’t want to do more Mason Dixon Trail because although I have yet to finish a bit of it, I would be doing some of that again as part of the 911 National Memorial Trail.

Black snake

It might be a couple of years before I get to that bit, but still, I don’t really need to be doing it twice. I’ll already have to do a couple sections twice as it is.
In looking at this, I checked where the previous section of the Mason Dixon Trail had led us off, in Elk Neck State Forest. I was missing a section between there and Parryville. Where we had started that last hike, we walked a side trail from a parking lot on the south side of the state forest to the Mason Dixon, known as Elk Neck Lighthouse Trail.

Angry snake

The trail interested me, but confused me. It was nowhere near the light house, which sits at Turkey Point, all the way at the end of the large peninsula.

Mad snake

The trail appeared to end at the southern end of the state forest, but it make sense that it must have gone through, or was intended to. Looking at inset maps, there was another section of this trail in a disconnected piece of Elk Neck State Forest to the south.
I started looking at a route I’d considered a couple of years back that would take us all the way to the south side of the peninsula, using some of this trail, but a lot of back roads and then the trails of Elk Neck State Park, another public land on the very south side of the peninsula where the lighthouse is.

Old dredge spoil?

It would be the perfect thing to fill in the space with! I started making the necessary plans, which is tough at last minute. Jen was able to help with scheduling while I was at work.
We met in the morning at a little convenience store on the north side of Elk Neck, west side of the little town of Elkton. They had no restrooms or reasonable food, and so we shuttled over to the nearby Wawa. I figured it was too hard to try to direct everyone to a state forest parking area I didn’t know how to describe. This was an easier area.

Old dredge spoil lands

We all caravan-ed to the starting point of the hike, and from there got Carolyn and Jenny to meet at the end point where James and I would leave our cars. We would then be able to shuttle everyone back when we got to the end comfortably. It’s a weird place to get to, and driving out of the way is a lot farther than walking, because we had to head up to the town of North East first. It took us a lot longer than I was anticipating to get going.

Old sand road

Once we got back to the parking area, which was where the Elk Neck Lighthouse Trail came through, we would not just follow that trail. It heads to the southeast a bit. This trail is said to be fourteen miles long, but the way we did it would be a little longer. I really don’t know where the Lighthouse Trail goes once it leaves the forest to the south side. We didn’t try to follow that section of it because I was afraid we would lose it and then have a real problem. Instead, I came up with a more creative, strange route that would get us there.

Washed out sand

We headed out to Irishtown Road from the trail parking area, where there is apparently one of the maintenance buildings. This was where I had started the previous Mason Dixon Trail hike.
Instead of getting on the trails, we took an access lane out to Irishtown Road and turned to the right, heading to the west.
We weren’t on the road all that long, just down hill for a bit until we got to some sort of utility clearing on the left. We turned into the woods here, around a gate, and through some rather nice woods. The route was used by ATVs we could tell, but not even them that often.

Gov't land? I doubt it there...

This section was all golf course lands. We could see the green through the trees to the right. Things were going fast and smooth for a little while. I was really very happy about where we were headed.
The utility clearing got to be less clear, with trees fallen over it we had to go over or under. It then became not clear at all, and we had to take to a path going off to the left. Soon, we got to where that clearing would have gone off to he north, into a development next to the golf club. From there, we turned off trail.

Wandering the woods...

It wasn’t particularly easy. I watched my phone GPS closely, but there wasn’t a lot of points of reference to use to get us through. I was trying to head either south or west. One or the other would do, because we would hit a landmark either way. We passed through a scrubby wetland, hit a couple of woods roads, and were continuing to the southwest. One of the woods roads we hit had a foot path going off to the left, so we followed that.

Elk Neck Lighthouse Trail blazes

We headed up hill rather steeply, and then down the other side. I started noticing when we hit the next full size woods road that we were heading a bit more to the east than I wanted to. We needed to go south. The sun was too high in the sky to make a judgement, and so I asked James to check on his phone for compass reading. His was showing that south was to the left, and so we followed that. I kept my phone open so that I could see where we were, but soon realized we were headed back to the north! We got close to the clearing we were first following from the road, so we had to turn around again. I was confused.
We walked the other direction, and it was telling us we were going more the correct way. Craig pulled out a good old trusty compass which confirmed that this was correct.

Light House Trail

We walked on further, and there was an obvious pond visible on the aerial images. Just before, it, we would reach a wider woods road with a white surfacing on the maps, so that prominent land mark would be easy to find.
Once we were on it, I turned to the right, which seemed like it should be the right way, but next thing you know, my aerials were showing that we were on the east of the pond.
I was flabbergasted. How could I come from the north, reach the road around the pond, turn right, and then end up on the east side? It made no sense. I looked at my phone and backtracked, and things for a moment looked good.
Then, all of a sudden, we were in the wrong area again, heading back to the north!
None of this was making sense to me. I went back, and Stephen and Joe I think it was were saying that we should go up hill to the right, or left the way I had just come from. I didn’t think that could possibly be right, because we should have been heading down hill to a pond.

Chicken of the Woods?

They were right. The pond was up hill. I was rather blown away by it. It was not at all what I expected.
We climbed very steeply up the bank, and then reached the woods road around the pond to the right. We were then headed in the correct direction.
After a short bit, I realized that this pond, so high up above everything else, was not just a pond. It was a dredge spoil. I recognized the area as such soon after passing a little view into it through the trees, because I’d hiked so many of them on the New Jersey perimeter.

The lighthouse trail

Dredge spoils are giant retention ponds, not so unlike ones we see at developments or next to shopping malls, but instead of catching rain, silt water is brought to them.
Dredge Spoils are just what they sound like. Dredged material put in a basin to settle out. We see them around areas that have dredged ship channels often. Of course, the Chesapeake Bay, to which Elk Neck juts out, is surrounded by such ship channels.
This particular dredge spoil has not been used in many years. I would say it has been out of service at least since the 1960s, judging by the size of the trees growing around it.

Lighthouse Trail

The area was like a wildlife refuge now. A lot of dredge spoils in New Jersey are now parks, and some are in Maryland as well. In fact, this particular one was shown as having a trail system on it on google maps.
When all of the crap, which is almost certainly contaminated, settles off, it’s really not all that gross. I’ve walked active dredge spoils like Kilkohook, and it’s a muddy gross mess.
Because we were in such deep woods, for a bit I forgot we were even on a peninsula. The hike was getting more and more interesting to me.
We continued along the north side to the west side of the dredge spoil, and there was a busted ass old boat sitting off to the right. I immediately spotted a black snake on it.
The snake looked like it was dead. It was not moving at all, and it’s eyes were totally white.

Dead end along Lighthouse Trail

Stephen went to touch it with a stick, and all of a sudden it bent back quickly. It was only basking there, but it was rather cold out for the snake to be out still.
It really had no problem moving, and then it started coiling back to strike very slowly. As it did this, it opened up it’s mouth very wide, and just looked like the most menacing thing ever.
We stood back and just watched it until the rest of the group caught up. We then continued on to the next intersection of woods roads. We cut to the left, and passed through some woods before emerging in a large open area with a sandy surface. This I believe was another dredge spoil site that’s been defunct for longer. A lot of junk was dumped around here.

Elk Neck Rd

We were getting pretty close to Shady Beach Road, our next road crossing, so we cut to the left parallel with it for a bit on another sandy road. This took us up hill past some eroded washouts, and then we cut to the right on another ATV path. This sort of petered out, but the woods were sparse in terms of undergrowth, so we just walked on through. These woods had large scoops of earth missing from them, which made me wonder if they were some sort of mines, but I really don’t know. We continued until we came out to Shady Beach Road, and then turned to the left on it for a bit.

Overlook of General Howe's Landing

This next part was probably the least favorite section for me. The road part was alright, and we made our right turn on a side road called Beaver Trail, which becomes Vanders Lane. It shows it like a through route that can be driven, and so I didn’t worry about it too much.
When we walked all the way down Beaver Trail and reached the last house, there was a gate and no trespassing signs. Cars were there, so someone was home. I wouldn’t chance walking through, blatantly ignoring the no trespassing signs and cause a problem.

Howe's Landing lookout

We all turned back for only a short distance, and then reached where some old trailers or buses or something were parked along a yard to the west. We followed along the edge of them, and then quietly past an out building. There were a lot of items out in the woods, probably some sort of contractors stuff, which we navigated past and then down to a small tributary flowing to the west, the head waters of Hance Point Creek. As I looked to the right, I noticed the neighbor’s house through the trees had a police car parked in it. I just wanted to get out of there before we had a problem.
I felt better once we were down a little lower along the creek, where we couldn’t obviously be seen. We crossed the creek and headed back up the other side, then continued on a southeast fashion through woods, which were not too dense that we couldn’t walk them.

Church along the way

We paused when we got to another woods road and took a break. I wanted to be done with this section badly. I scouted ahead of the others to be sure that the woods road to the east was not going to take us back to the house. It led to a fork, where we could turn to the right, so I had everyone follow me.
Another fork similarly turned one way that looked promising, but I followed it myself to something that looked like a back yard. We went back and followed the other path instead. It led to a hard bend, where the road turned to the north back toward the house we were trying to avoid. We then bushwhacked straight and slightly right up hill to get away from this spot. After a bit, we crossed a woods rod, probably the same one we had been following, further from where it left the house.

Historic marker

I turned to the right on the woods road, and it started coming out to a house. I turned back and decided it was only a short distance further up hill to get to Vander Lane, near the intersection with Beaver Trail, far from the previous house. The aerials did not show where houses were along it, but this was fortunately not one of the spots.
When we got to the road, which was unpaved at this point, I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. I didn’t know if there were private land signs where we would be exiting or not, and so wanted to avoid any trouble possible. We walked the road past at least three houses, and the signs I was worried at were just past the last one. Without stopping, we continued to the right on to the right on McKinneytown Road.

Historic church

I felt 100% better after getting through that messy part. My stress level was far lower for the rest of the hike because the potential for trespassing was low, or if so negligible.
We soon passed the ranger station at the north end of the Black Hill Tract of Elk Neck State Forest. Just past that on the road was the next bit of the Elk Neck Lighthouse Trail. The trail was marked with metal lighthouse logos, with double ones at turns, but not really often enough. I was totally happy to finally be on real trail.

An old school house

The gate along the road was a great spot to take a little break. I got a drink out and then started by having some cheese. I purchased a few sticks of them at the Wawa earlier. I should have brought some sort of cake or something for Joe because the day before was his birthday. Instead, he was generous and shared with us some delicious dark chocolate with nuts in it. I also ha an “All American” wrap thing from Wawa. I really don’t care for their selection of crap. Their breakfast things always have the sausage on french toast or the pork roll on a bagel. I just want a muffin with sausage or something, damn it.

0:00 / 1:51

While we walked the trail south from here, which was a nice and relaxing wide woods road bit, Stephen was going on about all sorts of entertaining stuff as usual. This time, he explained in some great detail why there should be a Hamburger Skyscraper.

A church along the road...

The trail continued on straight, but Lighthouse Trail turned to the right on a foot path after a bit. Fortunately I was watching the blazes closely and saw the turn off.
It felt like we were going back to the north again, but this was the topography playing games with my head once more.
We continued up and down a bit, and after not too long we emerged on a power line, which was slightly cleared, right next to Turkey Point Road, Rt 272 to the south end of the peninsula. I thought the trail went out to it, but then saw a turn blaze.

The duct tape made me believe

We turned and followed the power line clearing to the right. I saw the occasional light house blaze along it, which was always a relief. The Elk Neck State Forest trail map showed it coming out to the road and not going further.

Entering the park

There was an abandoned service station or something right across from where the trail hit the power line, and I’d have thought it ended. We kept going, up and down a bit, over a little brook, and then over Black Hill Road. We stopped to get a group shot with the dead end sign there.
We continued along the power line clearing for just a little bit longer, and then we saw a turn blaze where the Lighthouse Trail turned to the right and crossed Rt 272. There was a blaze on a utility pole on the other side showing that this was correct. We crossed, and then followed it left along Arrants Road on the other side.

Lighthouse Trail returns

The entrance to Rodney Scout Reservation was on the right. I didn’t see any more Lighthouse Trail blazes from this point, and now I know it went into camp by way of the main road. It must have.
We continued down Arrants Road, which was a nice walk because it’s not a busy road, and that took us back out on Rt 272 which we had to continue on to the south. This is the main thoroughfare so it was much busier.
We continued along the road, around the bend and up hill to the intersection with Old Elk Neck Road. This was a rather narrow and blind area to walk through.
At the top, and just slightly beyond, there was the Hart’s United Methodist Church, founded in 1794. It was an old building, but I’m not sure if it was the original one there or not.
We took a break at a giant open air sermon type of area for a little bit here.

Frog cellar

There was a great view across the street where we could see out to the Chesapeake Bay. An historic marker explained that this was an overlook of General Howe’s Landing from 1777.
General William Howe led his fifteen thousand British troops from three hundred vessels under the command of his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, up the Elk River to engage and defeat Washington’s army at the Battle of Brandywine seventeen days later, on September 11th. It was really a pretty amazing spot.

Lighthouse Trail

We continued walking the road from this point, and passed another boy scout camp access road to the right. I posed it to the group that we could end this road walking by cutting in there. I wasn’t sure what we would find, and in retrospect we should have done it, but the vote was to remain on the road for a bit longer.
We continued on, and soon passed by an abandoned house next to an old school house on the right. Just across the street a bit further was St. Mark’s Church, which also appeared to be abandoned.

Camp spot

I laughed at the sign in back of it, which was inviting, but it as held to the larger church sign by a lot of duct tape.
As we neared the top of the next hill, there were a few houses on the right. Just beyond was the start of the state park land where I thought we would be able to enter the woods. Unfortunately, the access road was not accessible because it was blocked off as part of someone’s driveway. We had to move on and use the next access point we would find. We then passed down hill through an area known as Timber Neck. There was soon an access road to the right known as Horseshoe Point Road.

Lighthouse trail

There were signs saying not to go that way, which didn’t bother me because my plan was to turn left at a clearing and reach the next trail in the state park more quickly anyway.
We took a break at the entrance, on a good set of wooden railings before continuing on.
Just as we finally started moving along, I was scanning the right side of the road and saw one of those light house blazes. The trail came out of the woods in the direction of the scout reservation. I’ve since found a guide for sale that might have it.

Scene at the state park, North East Beach

I’ll have to get a copy of it for the next trip out there. There will certainly be enough for an entire hike solely in the state park land, and probably another almost entirely different hike just on the lighthouse trail.
The trail on the other side didn’t seem to go anywhere. There was a bit of a clearing and a small building that must have been some sort of spring house. As we approached it, Stephen pointed out that there were tons of frogs in it. They were hopping around like crazy. We kept walking past it through muck.

On the trail

From the back of the spring house building, we made our way up into the clearing I was planning to go to to begin with. It turned out the lighthouse trail went up there anyway and the muck walk was completely unnecessary. It just wasn’t blazed very well.
As we walked the mowed path around a retention pond thing, I soon saw lighthouse blazes along the path to the right. We continued following them very gradually down hill past a nice little camp site area. Many other mowed trails went off in all directions.

On White Banks Trail

We continued down hill and soon reached the access road to North East Beach. There was a nice view out to the bay to the east here. We regrouped, and then headed straight across. The light house trail went straight ahead on the camp ground road. There were occasional blazes here and there, but from this point we had to follow signs for the White Banks Trail. That one and other ones were coblazed with white at places for the Lighthouse Trail, but we couldn’t really make sense of it. It just made sense to stay on White Banks.

View on White Banks Trail

The trail went right into the woods at the end of the cul de sac, and weaved around nicely. Things were really coming together for timing. Even if we couldn’t make it to the tip of the peninsula by dark, I was very happy to at least have gotten to the state park trails.

White Banks Trail

The trail led straight, then down slightly, then back up to a bit of an overlook. Through the trees, we could see out across the Chesapeake Bay, which looked amazing. When I looked up this park and saw the white sandy cliffs, I knew this place would be something special, and it would only get better from this point.
The trails weren’t really marked that great, but at least they had the trail name printed on each blaze on posts. If they didn’t we’d have been guessing a lot because multiple are the same colors.

Swamp view

We headed down hill for a bit, and reached a lovely little cove, then came to a woods road that went to the right down to the water. I saw a blaze in the other direction, so we just followed that the other way, heading gradually up hill. Somewhere in here we missed the turn on the White Banks Trail. We somehow ended up on a connector trail to Mauldin Mountain Loop Trail. I was going to just follow this and say screw it, but then I saw there was a start, denoting an overlook on the section we had skipped. I had to go back to see it.

Carolyn hamming it up

I made my way back down hill, and could see the side hill of the correct trail up hill to the left. I cut off and started bushwhacking on up to it, then turned left to follow it more up hill.
Some of the group started following me, and when I could see what a great view it was turning into, I called everyone to make their way toward me.
The white banks of sand were eroded all out below us, and prominent.

The White Banks

We could see off to the other shore, and the light to the southewest as the sun was starting to get lower in the sky made it look particularly amazing.

View on White Banks

We could see all the way down to the end of the peninsula where the lighthouse was, which still looked pretty far off, but I was happy that we made it just to this point.

White Banks

We had a nice long break here at this point, and then moved on along the trail.
The trail stayed more inland away from the cliffs at this point, but it was still a nice meandering route.
We weaved around and eventually crossed over Route 272 again, which made some more dramatic turns before reaching the end of Elk Neck.
The Lighthouse Trail blazes seemed to deviate somewhat from White Banks Trail in this area, but came back to it pretty shortly ahead. We passed a fallen tree with a giant root ball and continued slowly up hill, parallel with Rt 272, to emerge on a dead end road known as Rogues Harbor Road.

Big root ball

We laughed a bit at a sign saying not to ride the trail when wet and soft, and then turned to the right out to cross 272, to a little overlook spot on the other side.

I only ride dry and hard

After a little break, we had to walk 272 south. A small community bisects the park in this area, so it’s actually two separate tracks. The larger is the northern one from town, and the part with the lighthouse is on the southern end.
We wandered on through the development, and could see the sun was starting to set.
The lighthouse trail blazes started appearing again along the roadsides and such. We managed to get to the parking lot where James and I were parked before sunset, and we checked out another view to the right.

Lighthouse Trail

We waited for everyone to catch up, and then the plan was we could all leave our packs in our vehicles, and then walk the remaining distance to the southern end of Turkey Point with our backs free. The total distance of the trail, which is a lollipop loop, was just a mile and a half.
It was a wide road route heading down to it, first on the cliffs, and then a bit inland until it emerged at the lovely old Turkey Point Light House.
The 31.5 foot high lighthouse was built in 1833 of brick, and later covered in stucco.

Turkey Point Lighthouse

Next to the lighthouse was an oil house constructed in 1913. The last light house keeper was Fannie Mae Salter, who retired in 1945 at the age of 65. The site would have had a keeper’s house, stable, docks, and other buildings during it’s heyday. Most are gone.

Sunset

After looking around at all of the historic markers, we headed over to the one hundred foot high cliffs to watch the sun set. Everyone else slowly showed up and sat with us.
To the east, we could see the land around White Crystal Beach and West View Shores. To the west, Aberdeen Proving Ground is on the shore. We could see a couple of boats go by.
Earlier on, we saw what were probably seals in the water, and after that some other stuff moving that was probably silt or something.

Sunset on the Chesapeake

We had arrived just on time. This was the absolute perfect way to finish the hike.
It was an absolutely amazing place that really none of us had ever heard of until I happened to see it on a map from doing a different hike. It just goes to show that there are absolutely incredible places out there that only a handful of people aside from locals really know of.

The group at the end; photo by Carolyn

When we walk, we gain insight into the greatest network that has ever existed or ever will: nature.
It’s my mission to connect this network by way of my own recreational and social network. By sharing in this experience, we create a bond with nature and each other that nothing could ever break.

Sunset

HAM