Hike #1244; Bethlehem Musikfest Loop

Hike #1244; Bethlehem Musikfest Loop

8/10/19 Bethlehem/South Mountain Musikfest with Craig Craig, Joel Akers, ?, Ellie Zabeth, Will Z?, Michele Valerio, Steve Sanbeg, Alyssa Lidman, Kevin Kowalick, Kathryn Cataldo, Skyler Jermyn, Peeps (Ryan Short), Kralc Leahcim (Lerch), Red Sean Reardon, Brandan Jermyn, Jeffrey Di Bernard, Denise Saraceni Pangborn, Mr. Buckett (Jim Mathews), Shane Blische, Diane Reider, Robin Deitz, Chris Kroschinski (Cupcake), Jennifer Berndt, Jessica Anne, David Goldberg, Joseph ?, Justin Gurbisz, James Quinn, Daniel Trump, Ronnie Divirgilio, Doug DeGroff, Michael Krejsa, Anne ?, Rami ?, and Eric Pace

The March on Musikfest hike every year is something special. A great mix of craziness, interesting people and places make for an unforgettable annual event.

South Bethlehem Greenway

This was the fifteenth time I’ve organized this event, and I can say the past few years have become some of the best ones ever.
The March on Musikfest was actually a term coined by my friend Randy Melick, who was on the second annual event in 2006. There were only three participants on the first one in 2005, but the next year cemented what the crazy event would become.
I try every year to have something completely different than the previous year, and to always have something new added to the mix. It’s amazing that fifteen years later, we continue to explore more places while still revisiting some of the past favorites.

Shane up a signal

This time, I decided to make the hike a loop once again. I considered having a trip to the Museum of Industrial History again, but Mike Piersa wasn’t available in the morning, so I changed the route a bit first off in the morning, and it went great.
I wanted the route to hit some past favorite spots on South Mountain, but my inital plan was that it would be most mileage within the Walking Purchase Preserve. I sort of changed this right from the start, but the route turned out to be far better the way we did it anyway.

SKYLEERRRR!

We met at the Iqor building in South Bethlehem, which is one of the shuttle spots for Musikfest. We could then walk from there into town and back, or use a shuttle bus later if we wished.
Rather than walk directly into South Bethlehem as I has previously planned, we walked to the south and cut over Rt 412 to reach the former Bethlehem Branch of the Reading Railroad, which is now a rail trail down toward Hellertown. The thing isn’t fully connected yet, but it’s enough for what I wanted to do.
|There are certain hikes that attract more people than the rest of them, and the biggest ones of the year tend to be the anniversary hike in March, the Holiday NY City hike in December, and March on Musikfest in early August has become another major contender.

PEEEEPS!

I always see some familiar faces I’d not seen in some time when we do this event, but two in particular were back that I hadn’t seen in a very long time: Peeps and Skyler.
Peeps I had not seen for seven years. When he makes a trip back to New Jersey, he tries to make one of the hikes a priority, as does Skyler. Skyler is usually out once every year or two, but it had been probably 2 years since I’d seen him as well. The fact that the two of them knew each other from those earlier trips made it all that much cooler.
We started walking direct from Iqor across Rt 412, and got directly onto the old railroad bed.

Old Reading branch

It’s pretty cool to be walking this again as well, because we’ve seen it go through so many changes. I was hiking this years ago when it was still far from becoming an official trail. Most of it to the south of Hellertown still had rails in place on it, and we used to go out into the rail yard and climb trains. Now, most of the infrastructure is gone, but Shane still managed to find a signal to climb.
We continued past a washout spot, and I had wanted to go down to the Saucon Creek at an earlier spot, but it was looking like crap. We opted instead to continue ahead and go out where the official trail takes us out a bit to the south. It was further but would still take us less time.
Lerch wanted to climb this hill hole of a giant tower he’d done previously, but didn’t.

The group on Saucon Rail Trail

We turned to the right and out to the streets adjacent to Saucon Park, and Jeff pointed out where he and Denise used to live alongside the creek there.

Saucon Park suspension bridge

It’s a really nice spot, but he said it flooded like crazy so they had to get out of there.
We continued from here over toward the railroad overpass we had just been on, which is a very high arch above the Saucon Creek. When I pass through this area, I usually try to stop and take a dip in the creek there.
This time, they had placed boulders and such around the creek accesses to discourage people from swimming. It didn’t discourage me on this occasion, nor did it Red Sean and a couple of others. The water is always really cold and refreshing, which was great.

Saucon Park bridge

We had been kicked out by cops one year, and we saw them riding around this time, but none of them stopped us, despite the majority of the group milling about on the road while the few of us were getting wet.
From here, we started walking back into Saucon Park, along the Saucon Creek to the south.
Saucon Park opened July 4, 1919, with a speech by Mayor Archibald Johnston. The park is 90 acres following the Saucon Creek. Within the first year of it’s opening, over 10,000 people visited the park. It has a great designed park type of feel, like the Olmstead Bros. designs.

Saucon Valley

We got to the suspension foot bridge over the creek and crossed that, because it’s such a cool structure to use.
From there, we turned to the left and followed the road through Saucon Valley past a couple of farms.
My plan was to get up onto South Mountain from this side. I had done it before, years ago, in several different ways. I just wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to go up the way I had done in the past. Fortunately, Jeff and Denise ride or walk through all of this a lot since they’re local, and so I turned leadership over to Jeff for a bit.

Walking

The road walk section was pretty, and there was a lady going by asking us what we were walking for as if it was for a cause. We were just walking I responded.
Jeff took us to an access on the right after old farm buildings that took us up into some ball fields above the creek section of the park. We went almost directly across the ball fields, and then across William Street onto a trail into the woods of South Mountain. The trail goes up just a bit and then hits an old woods road along the slope.

Just walking

We started heading up hill on a foot path that turned away from the main woods road route. I had done some of this stuff before, but I’m not sure the way we went was the same I did.

Yum!

On the way, I opened a couple of beers that Craig had given me a long while back, on my birthday, but I was saving them until he could attend so he could try them too. The best of the two was an interesting barleywine ale.
We waited up at all intersections, first where the trail turned up hill from the woods road, and then again after we ascended for a while and came to a power line crossing. I think that’s another way we could get into this area that I might use on a future trip out there.
From the power line, we continued up hill on a trail that weaved through more woods.

Red fun

The trail switched back to the right once out in the woods again, and then emerged on another intersecting power line close to the top of the mountain. From there, there was an excellent view to the south into the Saucon Valley. We took a little break here and let everyone catch up from the climb. It was really a great little spot.
From here, we made our way up the slope just a bit more and into the access roads to part of the Lehigh University Campus. In fact, all of the trails up there are part of the Lehigh University Campus, but they don’t want to acknowledge them.

View on South Mountain

Apparently the university is really afraid of liability, and even though they know the trails are all there, they don’t want to map them or even formalize them.

South Mountain view

We made our way to the very top of this part of South Mountain, to Iaccoca Hall. This particular tall building was reportedly once a lab building for Bethlehem Steel, but it was donated to Lehigh University at some point. Bob Barnes, a guy who walks his dog daily at Spruce Run, told me he used to work there when he worked for Bethlehem Steel.

On South Mountain

I had been in the building before. On one of the Musikfest hikes years ago, Laura Cunningham told us about how we could go up and get the view from the top. We managed to get to the top level, which at the time had curtains and such over the windows, but we went in and enjoyed the view back then.
I figured it would be cool this time if I was able to get us up there to check out he view again.
We walked around to the front of the building, but all of the doors were locked. We then went around to the side door, which was also locked. Peeps then hit the handicapped button on the side of it, and the doors opened for us! We scurried on in.

Ham

I was amazed that there was no security. No one at any of the desks, all left unattended. There was no one in any of the halls. We went to the left and found our way to the stairs and the elevators. I wasn’t going to use the elevator; I started scaling the stairs, and Red Sean and a few others went with me up that way.
I think we still managed to get to the top before the majority of the group.
The stairs changed on the way to the top, and they might have had to stop and hit the elevator button again or something. I recall it having something weird about it.

South Mountain view

Once at the top, we were treated to amazing 360 degree views of the surrounding area. All of the curtains that obscured some of it that I remembered being up in here before were gone.

View from Iaccoca Hall

This was a truly amazing space.
We hung out up there and basically had our own private party for a good while. It was amazing that no one showed up and told us not to be there during this entire time.

In Iacocca Hall

We really looked like a bunch of crazies. Peeps even wore a kilt for this hike.
Once we’d had enough fun, we headed back down. Many of us used the stairs, while other raced down in the elevator. There was a vending machine inside that some decided to try to get some food and drink in before continuing.
While we waited for everyone to come out, there was the giant metal ball sculpture outside. Lerch and Justin wanted to climb it, and I pleaded with them not to because it would break. Kyle Zalinsky had already climbed it once back in 2009 and he broke it.

They did not heed my warnings, ran down, climbed it, and bent it up. Fortunately, as soon as they noticed, they got down and came back up. In their defense, if there is any, the thing does look like a jungle gym, and there are no signs saying “do not climb”.
We made our way from here down hill to the left on Mountain Drive South. Some of the group was already walking to the east on another road because they didn’t listen to me say that they wouldn’t be able to find their way if they didn’t follow.

View in Iacocca Hall

No matter, we were soon on the correct route. At the intersection at the bottom of this bit of Mountain Drive South, we kept to the right, heading slightly down hill a bit. This took us to the intersection of Upper Sayre Park Drive. We turned left on this.

Millenial Arch

The next point of interest I wanted to visit was what was introduced to me many years ago as the “Mystic Garden”, an art garden on the slope of South Mountain.

Tree scultpure

It was Laura Cunningham that first showed me this place when she started hiking with us I believe, back in 2008. It was immediately an odd hit with the group.

In the garden

We walked out the road a bit, and then there was a trail off in the woods to the left that had not been there on my previous visits. This would allow us to cut a bit of a corner rather than go up the road further.
The trail took us over a little plank bridge, and then up and over a more substantial wooden bridge. I wondered who would be putting such a thing together. Usually when it’s just the mountain biking groups, they don’t do such outlandish work that almost looks like it was prefabricated.
Whatever the case, the trail took us right to the woods road to the garden.
Since the last time I was there, it looked much more abandoned than I’d ever seen it. It was more grown over, and some of the sculptures were crumbling, while other smaller ones had vanished altogether. The shed that was on site, presumably for supplies, was now no longer there at all. Skyler didn’t seem to remember the place, although he had hiked with me to it before at least on one other occasion.

Millenium Arch

In all of the years of going to this place, I’ve never really shared the history of the garden, which is now pretty much abandoned and not well known any more.

Skyler in Mystic Garden, 2009

The story of this place dates back to 1999. At that time, Lehigh University offered a course called “Raw Vision: Creativity and Ecstasy in a World of Shamans, Mystics, and Outsider Artists”.
It sounds like an interesting art class, but it gets more interesting.
It wasn’t an art class.
The program was started by Professor Norman Girardot from the Department of Religious Studies.
Girardot considered this to be a practical way for his students to reflect on the nature of spirituality and mysticism. They were mentored and tutored by an Outsider Artist known as “Mr. Imagination”, and collaborated with local businesses and schools.

Skyler in the throne, 2019

They formed their own sort of Outsider Art group, and created this art park as their expression of “Raw Vision”.
The class was taught for eight sessions, and each added something to the park’s collection.
The site has gone by many names, from “Mystic Garden” as I’ve come to know it, “Stolfo Sculpture Garden” on official campus maps, or simply “Art Enclave”.
The Lehigh Millenium Folk Arch is the first thing that comes into view as we entered. This archway has all sorts of stuff stuck to it. Circuit boards, faces, just lots of interesting things. There’s a face on a block, a tree that looks like it’s drunken Jenga, a throne with faces, and a pyramid.
Immediately everyone had to start climbing on things. Some things, like this, never change. Clearly, everyone loved the site immediately.
We wandered around and checked out pretty much everything out there.

Art garden

In the past, I had headed through the woods up hill to the next road to the north. I started heading that way looking for where to go, but I couldn’t find what I’d used in the past. Before getting into the mess too much, I decided we’d head back to that new trail we had taken in to the road, because it continued on the other side. That never existed on any of my previous visits, so it seemed like a pretty good idea to check it out. It was, after all, new stuff.
We headed up the trail steeply at first, and then it meandered pleasantly along the slope of the South Mountain, rather far away from most of the buildings and such.

Because it was made by the mountain bikers, it meandered a little too much. With this huge group, I could see people when they got ahead of me long after they’d made corners, and the people behind me could also see places they could cut corners. This actually worked out well because it served to keep the group a bit more together.
When there were questions as to where we should be going, I stopped to let everyone regroup.
We just kept on this trail system, and it meandered around until it finally came out directly behind a radio station building on Mountain Drive North.

Ham

We headed out and turned to the right on the road for a bit. This is really close to the South Mountain Park, which I could probably use on a future trip as well, but I’ll need to figure out where more of these trails go.
We walked the road just a little ways to the access to the Star of Bethlehem. The Star Tower is lit up around Christmas time, and for events I suppose. It has an outstanding view of the city, which is sadly vacant with the missing Martin Tower, the only skyscraper that existed in Bethlehem. It was demolished just a short time before this.

The view at the star

From here, after taking in the view and climbing around on piles of gravel, another path led down to the left into the woods. This one seemed to dissipate quickly, but I knew there was another one down there. We went off trail just a little bit, and hit an old woods road I had used on a different hike.
Once everyone had caught up, we turned to the left to follow the woods road. Lerch fell behind a bit, but I figured he was fine.
The rest of us continued, and then I was surprised to find that the road took us right out to Mountain Drive North, the same road we had turned in to the star on. I was a bit dumbfounded at first, but then figured out where we were going after looking at some maps.

The star

Lerch was not with us when we got there, and so we paused for a few moments. He was moving along fine, and actually was just recently trying to get Skyler to give him a piggy back ride, but then he disappeared.
I ran back to find him, and he was just walking slowly and talking on his cell phone.
We headed back out to the road and headed to the right, to the west. This took us out to Rt 378 at the Kwik Pik Division Office. We turned right across the lot, and then followed the old road route, which paralleled the other one, Koehler Drive.
When this road came back to 378, we turned right briefly, and then left onto Frederick Street, which took us very steeply down hill into the Fountain Hill area.

Zombie Response

Along this route, we found an old cop car, only it was adorned with signage that read “Zombie Response Team”. It was for sale too.
We went back and forth to the left and right heading down hill until we eventually came to Lynn Street. This took us out to Stanley Avenue Recreation Area where a path went in and we had a little break.
There was all sorts of playground equipment there, so we were all over the swings and such, and Red Sean and I were swinging on this fun thing up the hill that went faster than everything else in circles.
A paved path led up hill from this recreation area to the Dodson Street little league fields; Dodson was where I wanted to end up, and that path went there, but then someone said something about stopping by the Wawa which was only a couple of blocks away.

Invasion

People were getting hungry, so I agreed to it. It was indeed only a short distance, and our huge group invaded the place. I had one of those amazing chicken quesadillas, which are better than most anyplace else the way they make them.
We sat outside up against the shady part of the wall and enjoyed our slop before moving on.
Dodson Street was literally within a block, but a steep climb up. We managed to get to the top, to Dodson Street Park. There were some power lines up there, and I didn’t see where the official trails headed in from here to the Walking Purchase Preserve. It was pretty hot out and everyone was about ready to get in the Lehigh, so I wanted to truncate as much as I could to get us there.

Goofing off

My original plan was to do a lot of mileage in Walking Purchase Preserve, but we discovered so much other stuff this time that it took up a lot of the mileage I wanted to do anyway.
When I didn’t see a good way of getting in any other way, we cut to the left and headed down hill on the power line clearing.
We came to the intersection with a second power line, at which point Lerch and Peeps were already a bit further down hill and had found the official trail route in the shade. We should all have gone down and gotten on that, but most of us had already made the left turn then on the power line. It was still something I hadn’t done, so it was fine.

Just ridiculous.

We took the power line out to Cardinal Drive, and then turned to the right down hill. This brought us to the Lehigh River and the crossing of the former Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks at Constitution Drive.
The road used to go through to the right, but now it’s a trail in the preserve. We turned to the right to follow this for a bit. Lerch and Shane went ahead and got in the water at a crap spot that the rest of us didn’t want to. It was only a tiny distance to a better one, and we were soon all in the river cooling off.
This was a great little break, and much needed. At this point, it was going to be easy going back into Bethlehem for Musikfest, and we could enjoy some river spots along the way.

Lehigh swim

We all got out of the water at this one, and continued on the woods road after an ejector pit building where it got to be less drivable.
There was a steep slope to the left, and below as an abandoned Jeep. It was riddled with bullet holes, and every window as smashed out. It was a mess, as if the river had already come up and pushed it further, as well as messed up the inside with a film of crap.
|Of course, everyone had to jump in it or climb on it. Lerch even went in and forced his way through the already broken windshield, which looked like it was some sick alien birth.

Fahy Bridge

The trails along the river led directly to yet another nice little swim spot where we all jumped back in again.
At this point, we were so close to the fest that some of the group decided to start walking back to catch some of it before they left, while the bulk of us remained behind swimming for a bit longer.
I realized at this point something quite special: even though people were going ahead to the end, no one had cut any of this hike short. No one had met up with the group late, no one had cut out early. All forty some of us finished the entire fifteen plus mile route. Not bad considering it was such a crazy party hike!

Lehigh Canal Lock

After hanging out there for a little while longer, we climbed back up via another path to the old road route and continued walking through the woods along the Lehigh. This took us out to Riverside Drive where we turned left, parallel with the former Lehigh Valley Railroad back toward South Bethlehem.
When we got to the underpass of the Hill to Hill Bridge, I brought up how this was originally the site of the covered bridge over the Lehigh. Bethlehem was merged into one city when the Hill to Hill Bridge was completed. The mouth of the covered bridge was just to the east and at the same grade as the railroad, but the Hill to Hill Bridge was something special. It had tons of on ramps which made it unlike any other bridge in the world, although now there are only two access points from either side.
From here, we made our way to Lehigh Pizza, which is a tradition. They really have good, Jersey worthy pizza there. I always like to get some specialty thing like a taco slice, and that’s exactly what I did. Craig treated me this time. I also had a Four Loco I think.

CNJ bridge

Some of the group left at this point to wander around the fest some more, while some of us waited. Lerch passed out at the table there, and Red Sean drew some sort of smiley faces or something on his shirtless body, which was now covered in tiny little cuts from his car windshield C-Section. One of the store workers told him he had to put a shirt on, so he just draped one over him. I think the guy just shrugged and walked away.
Those of us who were left continued from here along the streets to the Fahy Bridge I think it was, and then climbed down the steps to get on the Lehigh Canal. We walked the towpath out to Lock #42, which had a lift of 8.2 feet when the canal was in service, and crossed the foot bridge over the upper end. I believe I stopped and took a dip in the Monocacy Creek Aqueduct again, but I can’t remember 100%. By this point, I was pretty well drunk I believe.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm....

We made our way from this point up to the former Central Railroad of New Jersey tracks, and then turned left to cross the old railroad bridge over Monocacy Creek. We then walked between the old passenger station and freight station into the festival.
More of the group got back together as we turned to the right across Lehigh Street up Main Street. There were table sat out in this area, so we sat around and listened to some music for a bit.
Eric Pace met up with us in this area, and we meandered a bit more. As it started getting dark, there was a Beatles tribute band playing over near the Monocacy Creek near the Spring Street lot and the old Bethlehem Water Works. I ran and jumped back into the creek again to cool off, and then we all laid on the grass and relaxed for a while to listen to some music.

Relaxation

Eventually, people started wanting to move on out, and as soon as one wanted to go, pretty much everyone did. We made our way from here out across the foot bridge over the Monocacy, and then went up hill a bit to head back over to the bridges over the Lehigh.
I actually can’t remember what route we took. I would imagine that I would have suggested getting on the Lehigh Canal towpath out to the Minsi Trail bridge for simplicity, but we might have gone across the Fahy and then headed back toward Iquor. That part of it is somewhat a blur to me now.
The day was absolutely outstanding. I think the only thing we really missed on this one was Jack and Serious Sean playing guitar the entire way, but we still managed to have a great time.

I was dead tired, and ended up heading to my brother’s picnic party super late where I got some food. I pigged out on hot dogs and such and don’t know how I was still awake.
This was really a fantastic time. I was really happy with the number that showed up, the pace we kept, and that everyone actually made it through the entire thing.
I do wish some of the other great hikes that have been going on would be as popular as this one, but hopefully days like this will help people realize that it’s not really an isolated incident of fun, and that we can have these great times more regularly, if only we can make that commitment to do so. It doesn’t always have to be so madcap, but it certainly always is fun.

HAM