Hike #1185; Easton/Glendon/Palmer

Hike #1185; Easton/Glendon/Palmer

12/19/18 Glendon/Easton/Palmer with Scott Helbing (Tea Biscuit), Amanda Lance, Jennifer Tull, and Justin Gurbisz

This next hike would be a point to point, nearly a loop, in the Easton PA area again. This time we’d do an almost loop between Weyerbacher near Glendon and the K Mart in Palmer near Easton. I’d do some stuff we knew and loved, and some I’d never done before.

Lehigh Canal lock

I wanted to get another bottle of Blasphemy from the brewery, so rather than make it a full loop, I just made it a point to point that would start there.
We met at the K Mart off of 25th Street and shuttled in my van up to Weyerbacker and went in for our drinks.
Tea Biscuit and I each got some stuff. The new batch of Insanity, which is their barleywine, Blithering Idiot, aged in oak barrels. This year is different than previous years in that the abv is now 13.5% up from the last one which was 11.1%. I got one of those, one bottle of Finally Legal, and one Tiny Belgian Style Imperial Stout in addition to my Blasphemy bottle.

A train going by the chutes

Tea Biscuit mentioned to the guy selling to us that he had purchased a back of Sunday Morning Breakfast Stout and that one of the caps was popped open when he bought it and that it wasn’t closed correctly. For that, the guy gave him another free bottle.
We were on our way, out of the brewery and down through the cemetery heading north toward the Lehigh. We cut through an apartment complex and then out toward the river. We got on the railroad tracks at a low spot in the side wall, and then cut over to the Lehigh Canal at Hugh Moore Park.

Hospital over by 33

We headed over to the canal, at former Lock #47 where there i s a bridge to get easily to the towpath and the other side. Of course, Justin walked across the narrow thing that replaced the upper lock gates.
This lock was originally a double lock for opposing traffic. Lehigh Canal didn’t have many of these. It’s uncommon on most canals, although just about all of them on the Erie Canal were double locks after it was enlarged. I went into a bit of an historic dissertation pointing to the former Easton and Northern Railroad bridge abandoned down stream. Originally, Locks 48 and 49 were over there, but when the railroad was built they were filled over and covered by the railroad. Then, the new unnumbered Outlet Lock was built, within sight from us. We could also see the remainder of the vault for the toll area on the canal to the right.
We headed to the left on the canal, then down hill on the paved pathway that took us closer to the ruins of the Glendon Ironworks. There are sections of this that can still be accessed, but even by this time it was getting too dark to get into it for any exploring.

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We headed over to the canal, at former Lock #47 where there i s a bridge to get easily to the towpath and the other side. Of course, Justin walked across the narrow thing that replaced the upper lock gates.
This lock was originally a double lock for opposing traffic. Lehigh Canal didn’t have many of these. It’s uncommon on most canals, although just about all of them on the Erie Canal were double locks after it was enlarged. I went into a bit of an historic dissertation pointing to the former Easton and Northern Railroad bridge abandoned down stream. Originally, Locks 48 and 49 were over there, but when the railroad was built they were filled over and covered by the railroad. Then, the new unnumbered Outlet Lock was built, within sight from us. We could also see the remainder of the vault for the toll area on the canal to the right.
We headed to the left on the canal, then down hill on the paved pathway that took us closer to the ruins of the Glendon Ironworks. There are sections of this that can still be accessed, but even by this time it was getting too dark to get into it for any exploring.
Amanda called around this time to join up, and we followed the path up to along the canal again, then back down and toward the main portion of the park and the old Glendon Bridge, which takes the D&L Trail across to the right of way of the old Central Railroad of New Jersey main line.
We had Amanda move her car to nearby Riverside Park because we figured there would be less problems with it there, and we continued walking on the CNJ line form the Glendon bridge to that parking lot where she joined with their dog, Waffles.
The rail bed is easy paved walking for a while here.

Old bus ruins off of a trail at the hospital

We continued along the route heading west past the Chain Dam and then to the former junction where the branch went up to Palmer to join the Easton and Northern. We turned right here to head slightly up hill on that.
When we got to the Route 33 underpass, we asked everyone to hold off while Justin and I indulged ourselves with checking out the underside of the bridge. We had both gone across it underneath, and in the past I had actually done hikes over it, as well as one where that actually required crossing the entire river beneath it. Unfortunately, that’s no longer really possible for a big group because of the crazy fence work they’ve put in place in the way. They even welded some metal to the thing.
Justin and I made our way to the top, then I pulled myself up the girders to the underside of the bridge to see if anyone had cut any of it out. It’s now possible to climb around the outside of the chain link fences because someone has cut those, but the main route through the middle is impassable. I wouldn’t try to bring the group through that mess, hanging with a hundred foot drop down to a slope.
Justin explained that when he did it, he had to do this sketchy thing out along an I beam to get to the middle, which I’d never do. We headed back down the way we came up, sliding down the I beams and then down the rocky slope to the trail where we continued.
The next bit of the hike was some of the stuff I was excited about because I’d never done it before. There are trails out behind the St. Luke’s Hospital Anderson Campus. To get to them, there is a path that leads down from the rail trail to Hope Road (which is named for Hope Lock, which was a lock on the Lehigh Canal below). From there, there is a little stream along the road and a bit of a utility clearing or something to the left where we could climb up to the hospital campus and the trails.
Fortunately, the stream was completely dry. We were able to just walk over, and then climb the slope toward the trail. There were some briars in this section I was none too happy about, and I’m sure everyone else hated it more, but once we were up and to the left, it wasn’t all that far before we reached the trail with it’s crushed stone surface. It was kind of odd because it switched periodically from pavement to crushed stone, but it was overall nice.

The hospital from afar

We headed to the south side, and then to the west along the top of a slope high above the rail bed and canal. In the woods, there was the ruins of an old bus deteriorating almost beyond the point of recognition. The trail even had emergency call boxes. We followed it to it’s westernmost point, and it turned to the north a bit, closely parallel with Cramer’s Lane. The trail turns hard to the right and does a loop on a little hill, but doesn’t connect back down to the hospital. We turned onto Cramer’s Lane and continued to follow it to the north. There’s one house at the end of it, which looks to be huge because it had little candle type lights in every window, and there were a lot. It might be an old barn turned house, or just a giant old farm house.
I changed my planned route at this point because I was looking at my google maps and saw that there was a somewhat new paved development trail that went much of the distance I was intending to go just to the west of my planned route.

Blessings

We followed the road further north past a couple of old farm houses. It was unpaved most the way. When it came to it’s intersection with Star Drive, the road continued ahead, blocked off somewhat, as Cimino Lane. I’m not sure if it’s actually named that in both directions. I’m just going by Google. We followed that in the dark out toward Freemansburg Ave, which is four lanes and busy at this point, and turned to the left. We then crossed and headed over to Steak N’ Shake, a business I had never been to before, but looked interesting. I also went into a liquor store next door so Tea Biscuit and I could get some cheapo Laird’s.
It took them a while to make our burgers, but I have to say they were quite delicious. I definitly want to go back. Their fries were really narrow skinny things, but they were also very good. I put my bag on my head and pretended to be some kind of Pope blessing Justin, then had him wear it for a bit.
I got some vanilla Sprite, which is among the most delicious sodas I’ve ever had. I don’t typically buy soda, but when a place has those machines where you can do the flavor shots, the vanilla sprite is always the one I go for.
Amanda decided to Uber out at this point to get back to her car, and she’d return for Waffles.

Cardinal Justin of the Sprite Denomination

The rest of us headed down hill to the paved trail, which was directly behind the place and a bit lower (but not without leaving my empty drink bottle on their drive through window for them to find, much to my amusement).
We headed north on the trail, which was only recently built along with the development that had just gone in to our right.
The trail randomly ended at the end of the development, which I was prepared for. We turned to the right and skirted the property where it looks like the path will be eventually extended, and then cut through a few weeds into some sort of corporate park. We skirted the backs of these buildings heading north, passed through lines of trees, and then reached a sort of waterway or retention pond.
It was mowed and grassy at this point, but I didn’t want to go out and around to the right. I knew it was very close to reach the next mowed area as per the aerial images, so I tried to go through. It was not happy.
I fought through the weeds, and soon reached the grassy area on the other side. Tea Biscuit, Justin, and Jenny went around to the right to find another way in. I turned left on the grass, down hill next to a wet area, and then to a paved trail at Bethlehem Township Community Center. From there, we headed to the north on the trail out to Meyer Lane.
At the park entrance gate, Amanda showed up, and I got my group shot before Tea Biscuit decided to cut out. Too bad, because there was still so much more fun to be had.
The entire remainder of the hike that was left was almost all my weird stuff I’d come up with. We cut to the left behind a business and then came out to Falmer Drive. We turned left on this only briefly past another business, and when the chain link fence to that one ended, which had buses and trucks or something parked in it, there was a space with some evergreens between the end of their fence and the next business’s fence. We went through here and it took us out directly into an old cemetery just off of William Penn Highway.
We crossed the cemetery, but on the way found an open hole. It turns out this was a grave that had sank in. It’s an old cemetery that certain had only wooden coffins, no vaults, and those collapse over time. It was obviously something like this because the corner was visible in it. I didn’t look too hard, but it was already flagged to be filled back in. I really didn’t care to see any heads or body parts or anything.

Collapsed coffin

We continued across William Penn Highway past the old church on the corner, and crossed over Church Road which came in at a diagonal. We then turned to the left to walk across the lands of Notre Dame High School.
We cut across the parking lots and then turned to the right beyond a building. We then walked north past some bleachers and around. There was a high fence we didn’t see a way to get over for their football fields, and steps to the back of the boxes atop the bleachers. I decided to check it out.
The things were all left open, so Justin and I had a look around. It seemed odd that the lights were all left on while they were out of use.
We had to turn back and go around the fence the other way, then saw a car and a wide open double door to a maintenance area. Someone was still there, so we hurried by and went out to the fields.
Once we were around the back, we followed the football field fence, and when there was a clearing to the north, cut through into the Green Pond Country Club.
I love night hiking on golf courses, so this was great. We weaved around generally heading north northeast. We passed through a swath of trees, reached the east side, and continued to the north side where we cut out of the course and into some adjacent farm fields.
We headed north passing through lines of trees in the plowed fields until we could see Green Pond Road, and then cut to the right through a few weeds into the lands of the Calvary Baptist Church. We continued east, parallel with Green Pond Road, to the intersection with Country Club Road.
We followed the road to the north, and passed Hope Lock Farm. This is quite a long ways from the canal, so I wondered why it had that name.
We continued north a little bit further past the last private house to reach Louise Moore County Park. I had seen this park for such a long time and always wanted to incorporate it into a hike, but just never got around to it. This was a good opportunity to finally get it done, although I’d still like to go through during the day time.
We cut through to the right at a split rail fence. There were no signs saying that it was a park, so I’m sure Justin and Jenny probably through I was just going randomly through someone’s yard. We continued through the grass heading further out closer to Route 33 and turned to the north. We passed beneath a pavilion and generally remained on the grass heading past some tennis courts. We continued through grass past picnic areas to the northernmost end of the park, where there was a cut through into the Brown-Dub automobile dealership. We cut straight through their lot and headed slightly to the right.
We skirted the edge of the lot near the end where there was a fence, continued past the end of it, and then headed up to Hecktown Road, which we turned right on to cross Rt 33. On the other side, we crossed Commerce Park Drive, and then soon turned right on an abandoned section of road that comes into Commerce Park Drive just a little further south. I had done a hike on this with Justin a while back just before meeting the Lurie posse.
We passed ORE Rentals, a building we had gone into while it was under construction on the last trip, and continued toward the end of the road. To the right, there is a sort of road or trail that continues down and then weaves it’s way through undeveloped but somewhat disturbed former fields to come out on Farmersville Road. This time though, I tried something a little different by heading straight where the thing curves on a mowed pathway.

Puss Puss card

That way took us out to Newton Street. I was originally planning to go left and try to get into Briarcliff Park to head out through some open space we’d not used, but that was too much out of the way at this point. We turned right briefly and then left on Crestview Ave. That took us to Farmersville Road where we jogged right briefly, then left onto John Street. A short walk on John Street led to the edge of the Northampton Memorial Shrine cemetery. We walked across this for a bit, and then came out through a line of trees to the First Baptist Church of Easton.
We followed the driveway for that down hill to Greenwood Avenue where we turned right. This was one of the worst road walk sections of the hike because it dragged a bit.
I had two ideas from this point to the end. The first was to cut to the left before we reached the Rt 22 overpass and follow park lands as well as backs of businesses and such to get back toward 25th Street and then the K Mart. The other was to just cross and follow mostly stuff we’d done before parallel with Rt 22 at the Easton Area High School lands.
We opted for the latter, because it was really a better greenway. We used a formal trail along the edge of a retention pond on the west side, which we hadn’t really followed the previous time out, and then cut away from that to the left to closer to Rt 22. That led us out to 25th Street almost directly across from the K Mart to finish the hike. Justin then took me back up to my car across at Weyerbacker.
It’s amazing just how much off the wall stuff we can still do right in the Easton area. I still have a ton more trips I’d like to do all around there before the close of Winter. I could do an Easton hike every week and never get tired of it I’ll bet. Still, I think maybe I’ll try to make them every other week regardless.

HAM