Hike #1172; Easton and Morgan Hill
11/8/18 Easton Area Morgan Hill Loop with Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey , Dan Asnis, and Shane Blische
This next hike would be a loop around the Easton area. I’d talked to Justin somewhat recently about doing some stuff there again because it’s always enjoyable, and relatively easy since it’s getting darker so much earlier.
Old Easton and Northern line
This was a wonderful hike for me because it closed with me reflecting on so much during the day to follow.
There I was, hiking along, sipping beer, while trespassing on golf course paths after dark. The view from up there was just outstanding beyond words.
While technically unlawful, none of it was truly immoral. We weren’t hurting anyone, we were not littering or harassing. It was just simple enjoyment of a beautiful place.
I went over the experience in my mind while working out inventory at my job. There was a mess of stuff everywhere, which I chose to take on despite the reasons it had all happened.
We’d had issues with seasonal employees that had seriously undermined the integrity of the entire crew. It was no one’s intention to do so, but certain people and variables came together in such a way that the damage to our Summer workforce was irreparable.
Development path
I started thinking about what integrity really is.
It’s not all about being moral. That comes down to the classic argument of “rules of God” versus “rules of Man”. Integrity is something much deeper than an argument involving imposed regulations. It’s about standards, principles, and personal consistency.
One might say I’m immoral, or that I’m not behaving properly. However, I have consistency of character and can accurately be considered reliable. My values are obvious and strong, and cannot be corrupted.
On a rock
I don’t think of integrity as being the same as honesty, although honesty is key ingredient. The opposite of integrity would not be as simple as lying; it would be something more on the lines of hypocrisy.
A person of integrity is someone I can respect and love deeply. That is not to say they are unaltered in the face of negativity, but rather that they are transparent in their feelings and expression, fluent and articulate in self presentation. Even if a point is not clear, effort to communicate is obvious.
The world is full of people misrepresenting themselves, making excuses, and deviating from being as awesome as they could be. The negative situations at work were causing my co workers to call out sick or not work as hard because a problem employee undermined the overall morale, and we were unable to deal with the difficult situation efficiently or in a timely manner. I was able to help the situation through consideration of the human element and offering consideration.
Trail in Easton
Of course, institutional rules muddy the ability for things to go as easily as they could, but these rules again are not really applied to integrity. What is most special to me with most of the people that come together on these hikes, is that they do not misrepresent themselves. I feel that everyone is a true representation of themselves, not a facade to impress or impose something of a different nature. I know people who will behave very contradictory to other people based on how they feel they might be served, and seeing and knowing the difference induces disgust.
Sunset
We have something much better than that. Authentic, fun, trustworthy people who enjoy the company of characters.
I think integrity might be my favorite virtue.
For this hike, I looked at a route I’d never done before in part, and a few others I had. With the shorter days, some of the new stuff would have to be done closer to the start. I wanted to actually see some of it, after all.
We met at 4 PM at the Home Depot lot off of 25th Street at Palmer/Easton. The hike would be a loop, so we could just go from there rather than waste more time driving.
Trail
I was feeling very lively from the start. We walked north along the edge of the parking lot, and I immediately started pushing a shopping cart. I put my pack in it, and we went west along the north side of the Home Depot store. At the end, I pushed the cart up onto the grass, and steeply descended with it to the rail trail, which follows closely the former Lehigh Valley Railroad’s Easton and Northern line. We turned left to follow it to the south, and passed where the former Central Railroad of New Jersey came in and joined it. That is now a trail too, but the trail skirts to the north of where the actual grade would have come in, in an area that is now apartments or town houses.
Majestic Scenery...
When we reached Freemansburg Road, we turned to the right briefly. Shane offered to take the cart for a bit, and I took off running. I then ran across the road when traffic allowed, and onto a bit of a utility clearing to the left of Keane Street. There was a community garden in this swath, which I weaved around, and we stopped for everyone to catch up when we got to Burrows Street.
From there, I took off running to the east, then turned right fast down Williamson Street. I then cut off to the right through a field section to come out on Lieberman Terrace. This dead end road becomes a trail at the end, which goes slightly up hill to the edge of a retention pond.
Overgrown trail
The pavement of the trail didn’t last long, and I took over cart duties again. Pushing it through the gravel was a workout, not really any fun.
There were landscapers working on the other side of the pond that seemed to find my cart pushing through the gravel humorous.
We came out to Grandview Drive, and then turned to the left. Justin checked out some conduit thing that was dummy locked, and I went ahead to read the stupid signs entering the development.
The one of them read “Majestic scenery” with silhouettes of fields and a golf cart. Another, which Brittany liked, was “Dynamic Nightlife”. The overzealous adjectives describing the underwhelming terrain and feel of the development made it all the more humorous.
Shane took over with the cart for me as we came out into the development area again. We walked up the street and swung a left on Woodmont Circle. There were paths that went between the buildings that we should have used, but didn’t bother with it.
Near the end of the lot, I looked over the slope for a paved trail that was supposed to go in somewhere here, but didn’t find it. A woman walked by walking her little bulldog, which everyone stopped to pet. This might have offset them from getting in trouble for playing on some toddler’s little bike they found in a bike rack.
Pavilion
After walking a short distance further, to the left was a grassy path that led a short bit into the woods and onto a paved trail. I cut in there, to find the trail mostly overgrown on the sides, but still somewhat passable.
I laughed and carried on making cracks about the “majestic scenery” as we bullied through the branches encroaching on the trail. It’s kind of sad that this development doing so much to try to promote itself can’t even keep it’s simple paved walking trails completely open. We followed them out to an open grassy area, and then to a little pavilion.
Majestic scenery
From there, the trail went out into the open. It skirted the wood line, but the right side was always completely exposed to the grass lands and over to the other buildings. The autumn foliage in this area was particularly beautiful.
We continued around the outside, and then came to a Norway Maple tree. I showed everyone how to tell the difference between Norway Maples, Sugar Maples, and Black Maples, which are all quite similar. Shane then went up to climb the tree. He was followed soon by Brittany who went to the next branch down, and then Justin.
Foliage
They hung out in the tree for a bit, and Dan and I stayed lower.
Dan was doing pretty well keeping up, considering he hadn’t been out with us since he had his bad fall in the coal fields over the Summer. His scar on his head has healed so well that I could barely even tell it was there.
We continued on the paved trail, which emerged on a side road from Grandview Drive. We kept to the left across a grassy field, and then followed it to Grandview. We walked by a police officer in his car who didn’t say anything, and then headed out to the interection with Forest Line Road.
Majestic scenery path
We turned left on the road, and no one else was coming in any vehicles, so we quickly soon turned to the right onto an abandoned, never finished road connection to what would have been more development. People from the house to the right were using it as a supplemental driveway.
We headed up hill over grass skirting the yard to the left, and then ended up in a big grassy field. Heading straight led us to an area with tons of wood chips piled up. I think it’s a municipal area for disposing of sticks and such and they must make mulch of it.
Tree shane
The area had “paper streets’ that had never been built, so it must be some municipal land. We walked among the chips and tried to go down hill on what was shown as another road, but it was just woods. We came back up hill and went around the chip piles where my map showed that there was a street named “Lerch Street”, and even spelled the way our friend Lerch does. Kralc Leahcim would probably get a kick out of it, but he’s still imprisoned by his new job at the merciless grain flats of Kansas doing some kind of environmental remediation stuff.
"Lerch Street"
We continued out toward Mine Lane Road. Just before reaching the next back yard, we made a left turn, down hill into some woods so we wouldn’t be walking through a back yard.
Tree fun
We gradually went down, and soon got into a major thicket of bamboo. We had some loud gun shots we could hear throughout the area because we were just above the cliff where the police do the firing and such. This spot where we went down had a more gentle grade.
We continued along and kept to the right until we came to a little clearing. I think there was a bench. We were then able to get right out to Mine Lane.
There was a trail heading down hill to the left, which we considered using, but I didn’t want to take the chance with it getting dark. It’d be a sure thing going the road the short distance to the grade down to the Lehigh, but the other way could be problematic.
It was a good thing we did what we did, because no sooner did we get on the road, there was a house just below. We’d have ended up in the back yard and had to climb back up hill only to come back down again.
Tree fun
We headed to the right angle turn in the road, where there is a trail that leads down to the left, descending to the Lehigh River. The road turns and changes names to “Chain Dam Road”, named for the dam across the Lehigh directly below.
The dam was associated with the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company originally. It provided slack water for the Lehigh Canal. The river was canalized with a towpath along side from time to time, and Chain Dam was where the canal switched from the south side of the Lehigh to the north. The towpath as most know it crossed the Island Park amusement park area and emerged near the present day boat launch near Route 33, but originally there was a chain ferry where boats and mules loaded on would cross and continue. The chain ferry was taken out of service early on in favor of the towpath bridge that was built up stream, but the name survived for the dam even to the current replacement one.
As I understand, the path we were following was originally the trolley right of way.
We headed rather steeply down hill, and soon came to the Chain Dam. The original dam is just up stream of where the one exists today. The original had broken at some point.
Tree fun
We turned left to follow the path along the river out to Riverview Park. There was someone walking ahead of us on the path, who was probably rather freaked out by someone else being out there.
We continued across the grass to the north toward the firing range, and then got on the right of way of the former Central Railroad of New Jersey, which is now the D&L Trail route. That took us across the park road, across Lehigh Drive, and then beneath 25th Street on the new Glendon Bridge. We continued through the dark out to Glendon Hill Road, and then turned right to cross the old Glendon Bridge over the Lehigh into Hugh Moore Park.
I didn’t know whether we should go this way or not. The old Glendon Bridge road out to Main Street in Glendon is closed off to traffic now, and has fences so that pedestrians can’t even use it. We’ve crossed it before, but never in the dark. It’s not totally easy for everyone.
The bridge has wings of fence that hang over the side to keep people from trying to cross. Of course, people will do it though because there’s no reasonable closer crossing. The new Glendon Bridge is quite a ways up to the west.
Historic image of Glendon Ironworks
We got across to the island, and then headed onto the abandoned and now grassed over road to the old bridge, which spans the Lehigh Canal. I knew we could get around the first spot, but I wasn’t sure if they’d added anything to the other side, so had Justin go over to check it out first.
He and Shane came back and said if we could get around this first one, that one wasn’t as bad, but that it was “interesting”. I was most concerned about Dan being comfortable doing it. He ended up having no trouble with the first one, and Justin said if he could do that, the second one wouldn’t be bad.
Historic South Easton view in Glendon
We all got across, and I swung around the Glendon side on the fence there. Brittany went to the other side and had a really easy time, so Dan went to that side and also had no problem.
From there, we turned barely to the right (after almost going the wrong way), and went up hill on High Street.
We turned hard left, and then a hard right where Heil Park is just off to the left. We cut between two houses, skirted the park, and then emerged onto Line Street.
Weyerbacher Stop
Just a block away from here was the Weyerbacher Brewery, our next stop. We went in and had a seat, and I ordered a flight of four of my favorite drinks, as well as the new Weyerbacher 23. This was a coffee stout, which I’m not as much a fan of, but it wasn’t bad.
Shane had a glass of the 23, and I got a bottle of Finally Legal, which is a slightly changed, rebranded Weyerbacher 21. I let everyone taste stuff from my flight, and we then moved on. I got myself a bottle of the Blasphemy, which isn’t out all that often, to save probably for the anniversary hike in March.
Abandoned
From here, we headed out to Center Street, and then turned to the right on Carter Street. We followed that out to Belmont Street and then headed to the east to the Turkey Hill mini mart where we stopped for a snack break. I got a thing of orange juice, and we were on our way heading south on Morgan Hill Road.
There was an abandoned house we had to check out on the way, which looked pretty cool. There was no electric, no cars around, but someone had been staying inside on the top floor. We probably scared the crap out of them.
We then continued across Route 78 on the bridge, and turned left on the other side across the grassy fields associated with one of those fireworks stores.
Route 78
We reached Cedarville Road and turned to the left, which runs parallel with Route 78 for a time. When we got to the intersection with Congressional Drive, We turned to the left along a golf cart path, which merged with the sidewalk. When the sidewalk continued along the road and broke off to the right, we continued to the left to following the course gradually up hill to the left.
The up hill actually wasn’t as difficult as I had suspected it would be. The path weaved around a little bit to the east and west, and then made a hard turn to the right.
Heading up Morgan Hill
We started getting some good views of the Easton area almost right away, as soon as we could see above the trees below us.
As we made the sharp corner, we were up even higher, and could see much farther. The view was amazing with all of the lights. We continued out toward Congressional Drive again, and could see it below us as we made another hard turn to the left, and climbed slightly higher. We continued to gain elevation until we were just barely below some of the high end homes overlooking from the top of Morgan Hill. We could see all of Easton, toward Phillipsburg, and even down the Lehigh Valley to what was probably Martin Tower in Bethlehem.
View down Lehigh Valley
I had wanted to see down this way for a long time. My dad lives on top of Morgan Hill, and in the Winter he has an amazing view from the front of his house, but this was un-obscured.
The path continued to climb just a bit more with an even great view of Easton.
Brittany pointed out that we could probably see the top of the Route 22 bridge from there. There is a hill between Morgan Hill and center city Easton between us, but we could certainly see at least some of College Hill from this point.
View from Morgan Hill
I decided right then that we would have to revisit this amazing view on a future hike, and that we would do it by heading down hill rather than up that time. I just need to figure out exactly where would work best for such a hike. I’ll probably have to involve the Delaware Canal somehow to make it work out right.
We headed south past the buildings, and then crossed over Turnberry Drive heading south. We skirted some more buildings, and then got to a rather secluded spot. My goal was to get out to Moyers Lane, and then follow it out to Morgan Hill Road. We got close to it but then headed slightly north again on the paved path. When I realized we missed it, we cut across the grass to another section of the path, and that took us out to a maintenance area with a barn. We went across that and were soon on Moyers Lane. We turned right and followed that out to Morgan Hill Road.
I looked at the old houses in the area and wondered if I had family that lived in any of them. I’ve traced descendents from two branches of my family to the area. My maternal grandmother’s mother was born on Morgan Hill, and on my grandfather’s side, I am descended from the Hutchinsons who have descendents from Germany that settled on Morgan Hill in the 1730s. It would be interesting to see a complete family tree.
We turned left on Morgan Hill Road briefly, and then went right on Morvale Road heading down hill. This was a rather pleasant route to walk. I had hiked part of Morvale once in the past for the HIke #400 party trip, which we started at my brother Tea Biscuit’s house. We bushwhacked down from it to Morvale directly.
This time, we stayed on Morvale to a left on Wottring Mill Road. This came very close to the odd Glendon Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad.
The Glendon Branch broke off down in Glendon on a very steep grade, and then headed up almost to Wottring Mill, spun back around, and paralleled Morvale Road before crossing it. Route 78 obliterated some of it as well as probably the land fill. It then ended up over at Line Street not very far from where we were before at Weyerbacher.
Shane gave us an historic dissertation on the Glendon Branch:
The Glendon Branch was a small line that came off the Lehigh Valley mainline in the village of Glendon. It made a 180 degree curve near Wottring Mill and Morvale Rds. outside of Glendon, gaining elevation to reach the top of Morgan Hill. The line terminated in South Easton where the line served a series of warehouses, a meat packing plant, a propane dealer and lumber yard. The line allegedly was in use into 1983 surprisingly! Most traces of this line are destroyed today save for the impressive 180 degree curve and some right of way on Morgan Hill at Holly St. In 1985, a substantial amount of the right of way was completely buried to make way for highway 78. Until a few years ago, rails were still evident at the Berger Rd. crossing in Glendon. The Glendon Branch was very interesting line, though there is not much information on it, nor photos of trains operating on the line.
We headed across the fields and reached a trail out of the Chrinergy Recreation Field. The trail took us down hill to Berger Road where we turned right and passed beneath Route 78 which is up on a high bridge. The Glendon Branch is out behind the houses here, the first of which I bought my 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra from many years ago.
The abandoned house
We passed by an abandoned house that burned down about nine years prior. We walked by it on the hike we did here in February of 2009. We then crossed over where the Glendon Branch crossed, and there was evidence of rails in the pavement, now covered over.
We turned to the right on Main Street to reach the new Glendon Bridge, and then crossed. On the other side, rather than climb down, we made the right turn that leads up hill to the Children’s Home of Easton.
The Children’s Home originally started out in the 1800s as the “Home of Friendless Children”, but was changed to a healthier sounding name. They were originally in town in a building constructed in 1887, but soon outgrew that.
Firmstone Estate House
In 1917, the 38 acre Firmstone Estate with it’s large stately mansion was purchased by Joseph P. Smith as a donation for the new Children’s Home location. The house was renovated for use as the school, and remains a lovely piece of architecture today.
Historic image of the Firmstone Mansion
After we went around the switchback on the access road, we turned to the right at the old mansion house, and up hill through grass to a line of trees. We cut through some of that mess and ended up on the south side of the Wilson Area Intermediate School. We turned right, skirted this property, and came out on 23rd Street. We continued north just a bit, then turned left back out toward 25th Street. We emerged near the corner of 25th Street and Hillside Ave, where we turned onto the rail trail that follows the former Easton and Northern Railroad again.
This section has been in place for some time, but they only had just put the pedestrian trail crossing signs up on 25th. When I was driving to meet up, a guy with a roller was actually working on the construction of this piece of trail. The surfacing only reached a certain point, near to but not quite touching 25th Street yet. We crossed over and continued on the trail west and north across Freemansburg Ave where we had turned off of it earlier.
Cart fun
We passed behind some buildings, and then turned to the right up an access road which took us out toward the Giant Supermarket, which is next to the Home Depot where we’d met.
As we got into the lot, there were shopping carts sitting around, so Shane and I each took one, and I think probably Justin too, and we started maniacally running through the parking lot pushing the things back toward where we were parked. I was surprised someone didn’t come out and say something about it. We look like a bunch of lunatics.
HAM
There’s a lot more stuff to look at in the Easton area. So many different residential areas have development paths connecting to just about everywhere. We can do half a dozen loop hikes and so many other things as well. If we’re connecting from Bethlehem, there’s even more and different ways to do it.
I see at least two other ways of going through the golf course at Morgan Hill, and a couple of ways to either make a loop or a point to point there. The Phillipsburg area too has stuff that can be used, and with the extension of the Morris Canal Greenway, we have even more still.
It doesn’t look like there’s going to be any shortage of stuff to do, I just hope we don’t have a really snowy Winter. This hike was really nice from the start, and I was hiking in a tee shirt for the first portion of it. I’m not looking forward to having to put on layers to be able to enjoy winter hikes, but if I must then I’ll have to do it.
As the year progresses to a close and the new one opens, I look forward to more wanderings in Easton, as well as P Burg, Flemington, Flanders, Hackettstown, and Washington.
HAM
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