Hike #1389; South Easton to Riegelsville

Hike #1389: 1/27/21 South Easton to Riegelsville with Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Audrey, and Serious Sean Dougherty

This next one was another point to point, this time between Easton and Riegelsville again.
I had done variations of this before, and it was just a good choice due to the ease of it to cover it mostly in the dark.

I always like to start these trips with a visit to Weyerbacher. I seem to recall on this one that they had some of the all new Tiny Spice sold in a crowler. I had not had it before, and I figured it wouldn't be as good as some of the other special stuff they sold.
I was a huge fan of Blasphemy, which is the Belgian style quadruple ale aged in whiskey barrels. Tiny Spice was the Tiny Belgian Style imperial stout aged in the same. 

I sampled some of it in the bar, and I was blown away. It was absolutely great. 

I had to get a crowler of it. I think I actually got a couple of them so I would have one for another time.

As usual, I didn't want to just cover the same ground I had done before. I'd done variations of this before, but there had to be at least something new.
This came in the form of more of the golf course on Morgan Hill.
From the brewery where we could leave a car, rather than going down and getting on the Lehigh Canal immediately like I'd done on most of the other trip, this time we would make our way uphill after following Line Street and then turning right on Morgan Hill Road to cross Rt 78.
As we moved ahead, the TNT Fireworks Super Center was on the left. The rest of the group decided they were going to go in and maybe buy some fireworks.

I think they each came out with something. I didn't know what everyone had gotten while we were there, nor did I care all that much, because I really just wanted to do the hiking part. It was admittedly funny that they were all giddy and having such a good time so early on.

We turned left on Cedarville Road, and eventually the path of the Morgan Hill golf course comes parallel with the road. Rather than continue any further than we had to, we headed straight up to the path. This was a bit of a climb with a little bit of ice to contend with.
When we actually got on the golf course path, totally in the dark at this point, it was an icy mess. There were times that the pavement shone through the surface ice, but when it didn't, we were slipping and falling a lot.
It was slow going heading uphill on that. I found that on the steepest sections of this, it was easier to get off of the path and into the crunchy, snowy grass parallel with the paths.
Everyone kept asking if we should set off fireworks yet, and I tried to stall them to doing it when we got to the top or at least away from the houses. We head to go uphill at this point, so I didn't want trouble that early.
We headed uphill and got off of the pathway route at some point, then headed to the east to another pathway that took us toward Turnberry Drive.
I didn't think it was a good idea to set them off just yet either, because we were still pretty close to the roads as well as homes.

The views this time were absolutely outstanding. The lights are always amazing. We can tell the difference between the new LED lights along the Rt 78 corridor, and what might be incandescent ones still illuminating Rt 22 on the other side in the distance.

We continued on the path to the east a bit, and we ascended to Turnberry Drive.
We turned left at a water tower, and then we decided to just walk Turnberry Drive for a bit rather than the off road stuff I had originally planned because it was just too tiring in the conditions.

Despite being in heavily residential areas while heading downhill, Justin started setting off bottle rocket things toward me!
I was in the front of the group heading downhill, and I had just cracked my Tiny Spice crowler open and was just lost in how amazing it was.
A couple of the thing came pretty close to hitting me, and I tried to hurry ahead even more as not to get hit with one of them.
At about the time we passed the intersection with Homestead Lane, I heard a lady's voice shouting out from behind us because they were shooting these things off.

I hurried ahead to where I couldn't hear the it or see the bottle rockets any more, and then turned slightly to the west into a darker section of the road.
At the bottom, there was a guard gate to come up into the development.
A security vehicle pulled up and started waiting at the gates when they were just barely out of sight.
I moved slightly uphill again from where I had descended to, and I called the others to cease with the bottle rockets, and keep lights off. When they reached where I was, we all headed directly down into the woods from Turnberry, and bushwhacked the remainder of the distance to Cedarville Road again. 

When we got close to the east side of the Cedar Park community, we cut through some weeds into the rear lawns of the buildings off of Knollwood Drive.
We continued downhill, and I think we went out to the street to reach the north side parallel with Rt 78.

A paved trail left the end of Knollwood heading to the east.
We passed through an open mowed area, and then the trail entered the woods and descended just a bit.
It came to an abrupt end, like they considered building it further in the past but never did.
From there, we were pretty close to Rt 78.
We climbed down to the edge of the highway, and made our way along the guide rail to the underpass at Cedarvale Road.
I had wanted to climb up to the road, but the west side of the overpass was basically inaccessible to us.
I thought we might have to go all the way back, which would have sucked, but then Justin found a way up by going under the bridge and then up.

We climbed up to Cedarvale Road, and then crossed 78 on the bridge.
This was a time of huge relief for me. I knew that now that we were on the road and heading downhill, it wouldn't be long before we were on the Delaware Canal and it was going to be smooth walking the rest of the way back to Riegelsville.
It was quite smelly as we went downhill on Cedarville past the sewage treatment plant, which had some very odd looking lights on it.
When we got to the intersection with Rt 622, we turned right only briefly, and then crossed a foot bridge on a sort of weir structure to reach the tow path.
We weaved around the bends in the Delaware, and the views of the Rt 78 bridge over it were outstanding in the clear night with the available ambient light. I took some photos of it, and one of them was apparently used by the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission annual newsletter. One of the representatives saw the photo online and was impressed by it.
I believe they set off one of the fireworks displays on a secluded section of the towpath as we walked, down below Rt 611.
Justin and Brittany walked fast and far ahead of Sean and I who had some great discussions while sipping our Weyerbachers for the remainder of the night.
I ended up telling him that Jillane was pregnant, which really no one knew yet at that time, and expressed my worry and excitement about the future. His positive attitude and asssurance that everything was going to work out alright was very therapeutic for me at that time. Even then, he was already willing to take over the night hikes, because I knew those would eventually have to end for me once the baby came.
We got back to Riegelsville in really pretty good time, and then crossed the Bel Del Railroad bridge over the Musconetcong River before descending to the boat launch lot on the Hunterdon side. We used to park in the lot on the Warren side, but that had recently been signed with no parking or trespassing.

This was really a fun and exciting night that evolved between being madcap crazy fun and deep conversation, the likes of which don't typically work well together anywhere but on our hikes.