Hike #1224; Pennridge to Nockamixon

Hike #1224; Pennridge to Nockamixon

5/26/19 Perkasie to Haycock/Nockamixon with James Quinn, Cory Salvesen, Linda Salvesen (and Banjo), Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Red Sean Reardon, Ellie Zabeth, Peggy ?, and Kim Walsh

This next hike would be a point to point between Pennridge/Perkasie PA to Lake Nockamixon. I had done a hike with Justin up there last year and realized the boat launches were twenty four hours, and we could get away with parking.

Mood's Covered Bridge

With that, I wanted to plan a hike that would work along with it. I looked at the end point of Haycock Boat Launch, and planned out several possible routes ending there from different directions.
The one that looked best was to start near Perkasie, at the Giant Food Store on Blooming Glen Road, and make our way back. I put together a few aspects of the different hikes I’d done through the area previously, and then some new stuff for what looked like would be a pretty interesting route. We shuttled with as few cars as we could from the meet point to the Giant. We had two ladies from Philadelphia sign up for it because they thought it would be shorter.

View near Mood's Bridge

Two of them ended up leaving; Meetup somehow changed the duration of my hike from being 7 or 8 hours down to only two or three as it’s default. I never do that, but sometimes the editing process of it makes it go back to that. Unfortunately, they decided to leave rather than hike it.
Once we arrived there, we headed south from the parking area along paved pathways to the parking lot along the Bucks County Community College, where there is a paved trail that follows the East Branch of the Perkiomen Creek for a ways.

Scenic retention pond

Blooming Grove Road is the route used b Mood's Covered Bridge located just out of Perkasie, Pennsylvania, spanning the East Branch of the Perkiomen Creek. The original Town Truss style covered bridge here was constructed in 1874. It was closed in 2004 after being damaged by a truck. Soon after, six teenagers doused the bridge with gasoline and set it ablaze. It was completely destroyed.
A replica of the original bridge was constructed on the same site and dedicated in 2008, this time coated in fire retardant material.

Willard H. Markey Centennial Park

We discussed this a bit, and Kim told us about how they made the kids who burned it do all sorts of community work to fix it up.
We turned to followed the paved trail heading to the east. Carolyn was running late, but caught up with us here.
When we reached where one of the paved side trails ascended to the right into a housing development, we turned left to follow that gradually up hill.
We emerged onto Campus Drive and turned left for a bit, and soon came to another trail that turned to the right between houses into another little park area.

Lovely view on Three Mile Run Road

This took us by a playground area and to some grass where we could turn to the left out to North 5th Street. We crossed, and then entered the Pennridge School properties. We passed a retention pond and walked around the school to the fields in the back where we started to ascend a hill along a tree line. I suppose this is what is meant when we refer to “Pennridge” geologically.
At the end of the school field, I announced that this would probably be the worst part of the entire hike. We entered woods off trail and started to climb. I had done this on a couple of hikes prior, going back to 2007 or so. The off trail route leads out to Ridge Road adjacent to Willard H. Markey Centennial Park. Along the way, we passed over a couple of old woods roads.

Abandoned former Rock Road

I pointed out the possibilities of former buildings and roads as we reached Ridge, and then crossed directly into Markey Park. A paved trail passes between a line of tree plantings just to the north of here, and we turned left to follow that.
The trail cut next to the north, and then to the west to emerge along a few houses on Schoolhouse Road. We followed that a short distance to the right to Three Mile Run Road, a very nice back road with only very light traffic that would lead us out to Nockamixon.

The sun going down over Nockamixon

Thankfully it was less busy than even I thought. The road had some really nice old stone houses all along the way, and a surprising amount of government property surrounding it, but no more parallel trail. Maybe one of these days they will make a connection.
While walking, Red Sean got out his giant hookah to smoke tobacco out of it. I found it rather surprising that he wanted to walk right down the public road smoking out of it and drawing attention, but it made for an interesting time for sure.

We eventually came out to Rt 313, Dublin Pike, just south of the upstream end of Lake Nockamixon. Three Mile Run Road continued through light residential area ahead, and started to move closer to the reservoir. We could see where the abandoned former connection to Rock Road came out to Three Mile Run Road. Just a little past that was the Three Mile Run Boat Launch, where we headed over to the water to take in the views. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and there was a lovely old farm house right on the water’s edge, probably one of only few spared from the lake.

DCNR office

Lake Nockamixon was first proposed in 1958 for a recreational lake, to be named Lake Tohickon, after it’s main tributary. The name was changed to the Native American word “Nockamixon”, meaning “place of soft soil”, and the state park opened in 1973.
We stopped at the restrooms but then had to make our way back out to Three Mile Run Road because there was no trail connecting through from this point to the south side trail system. We passed the DCNR office on the way, in a historic stone building I don’t know the history to.

Elephant Trail

We then turned right on Sterner Mill Road, which becomes Park Road where it used to continue on the north side of the reservoir, and followed it to the right past the lake house venue where they have weddings and such. I forget what the deplorable conversation was that we were having, but we ended up talking gross stuff while walking by some sort of wedding going on.
We continued on Sterner Mill Road to Elephant Road and turned to the left. I’m not sure where the term “Elephant” came from as a settlement name, but probably from the Elephant Hotel just to the south.

Robert Keller House

We turned left on Elephant Road, and then at the next bend, continued straight where Elephant Trail follows the old road route into the state park.
This section was pleasant and easy for a while. There are a few different trails that pass through different sections of the lake’s south shore, and I chose to try to follow some of the more inland ones this time.
At first, there was only one choice, and that took us past the 1876 Robert Keller House in the Keller’s Church section.
The Church Trail is actually supposed to be the next section, but for some reason the house was at this point. We moved on, and continued onto a more back woods trail.

Nockamixon

Some sections were like woods roads, but eventually we were on paths that were far muddier than I had anticipated. We continued along the back of a camp area, and at one point came out close to a private field, but the trail still took us out to Stover Mill Road, which used to go through, and then beyond to Keller’s Church Road, which also used to continue.
The Church Trail section continues from Stover Mill Road out toward Keller Church Road and beyond to Ridge Road. Beyond that, Mink Trail continues to the east. Unfortunately, it was hard to get bearings on this.

Elephant Trail area

We weaved around on these trails, and it started to get dark. The ones that were farthest to the north were still too muddy, and the horse use on it made matters worse. I probably should have tried to stick to the trails closer to the waterfront than what we did. Somehow, in the area of Ridge Road, we got turned around and ended up back on one of the old roads that heads back out to Park Road to the south.
I made a judgement call in this area that we had to walk the road. Timing was not going well at this point, and I couldn’t chance us getting lost on too many more trails here.

Hanging out on Park Road

We made our way out to Park Road and started walking east. Park Road and Ridge Road are pretty much the same road at one point, but it switches because Ridge goes into what is now the lake.
We stopped and took a break along the road after a bit, as Peggy and Kim were going to get an Uber out to be done early. They’d never used it yet, but I helped walk them through it so they could get out. When their ride showed up, the rest of us continued on along the road.
We eventually got to over by the main dam, which we could barely see from the road. It’s a cool spot. We then moved on to the bridge over the Tohickon Creek. Just past, a trail leads into the woods to the left and up along the east side.

Red Sean sharing his tabacco hookah. It seriously was only tobacco.

We cut into the woods and started following the trail. I felt like we were good now; I’d followed these trails through before, and felt I knew the way pretty good.
After walking a bit and studying the aerials, I realized that we were NOT nearly where we were supposed to be.
This entire area had been redeveloped with crazy mountain biking trails. They weave all over the place and get maximum mileage out of a little bit of space. We were already on it for too long and I didn’t want to be out there forever. I chose instead to just bushwhack a short distance back out to Park Road when it weaved it’s way back close again. I felt bad for Cory and Linda, because we had gotten majorly lost on a mountain biking menagerie ones before on Allamuchy Mountain, and it wasn’t pretty!
Fortunately, Park Road got us to Fink Road, which was a lovely back road, and we were able to follow that north to Tower Road. From there, a good trail leads to the north and toward Mountain View Drive off of which we were parked.
At first, I couldn’t figure out where the damned trail went. We walked along the tree line and into woods, but it was nothing good. It turned out that the turn was just a little bit east of the parking area. I’d never walked it in this direction before, so it as a bit difficult.
We got on this route, a former road, and it took us to more of the mountain biking trails. I avoided any problems with this by heading to the water and simply following the line of the lake to the north.
When we got to a really nice spot, we stopped for a swim. This was directly across from the Haycock Boat Launch where we were parked. We really could have just swam it if we didn’t have stuff to carry.
We continued on the trail to the north, and it wasn’t all that long before we got to Rt 563, Mountain View Drive. We climbed up to the highway and crossed, then turned left into the access to the boat launch on the other side to reach our cars and end the hike.
This is definitely a great area for night hikes, and I could easily do other variations of this in the future. I would like to explore more of the south side trails, but need to figure out parking where we can pull it off, maybe have a finish at the south side boat launch and start elsewhere where the meandering trails could be out of the way earlier. I’d also like to do another that focuses on the north side trails, which are actually even nicer.
Maybe we’ll get to it one of these days....

HAM