Hike #1402; Doylestown to Perkasie

Hike #1402: 3/27/21 Doylestown to Perkasie with Justin Gurbisz, Professor John DiFiore, Brittany Weider, Shane Blische, and Dave Goldberg

This hike was another point to point, this time to tie together some of what we had done with the Neshaminy series with the Perkiomen Creek valley.

From the area of William Neis Park, where we had parked for hiking in this area before, we walked up parallel with Lime Kiln Road on the paved trail.
That took us out to Hospital Road, and we continued to follow Limekiln Road from there across Rt 611 and parallel with some apartments and residences.
We made our way across the Pine Run and then turned left on Pine Run Road.
This small road is quite pleasant, and takes us steeply uphill to Old Limekiln Road across Ferry Road.
My plan for the start of this hike was to take some of the more back woods trails of Peace Valley Park through the uplands, and then take more of the prominent trails again until we turn away from the park altogether on the way to Perkasie.
We headed up the road, and started looking for where the trails break off into the woods to the right.

I had been looking at the maps of the trails through this area for a while, and I'd followed a few of the foot paths, but that was on the north side. It was kind of messy, but some of them were really nice. On the south side, there were a ton more trails I had figured would be really good. The problem was, we walked up and down the road in the area where the map said the trail should break off, and we weren't finding anything at all. I figured it had to be there, but it was just crappy woods with a whole lot of briars and such. I eventually decided I would start bushwhacking in and figured we would soon come to the edge of the loop that maybe didn't reach the road any more.

As we made our way into the woods, there were some old foundations of an old farmstead, which was pretty cool. Just a little bit back into the woods beyond the old farmstead was a small old farm pond, almost invisible through the brush. The trail map shows that this was supposed to be a trail around the outside of it, but it wasn't maintained at all. I tried to just keep following where the map said the trail should be.

Trying to follow where the trail was supposed to be proved just too difficult. There were private fields off to the right of us, but I didn't want to encroach, so I just started following least resistant path.

I found myself weaving back and forth and headed a bit downhill. There were muddy springs in these woods that made the going even harder.
Way back in the middle of nowhere, we did come across a double seated farm implement with grasses growing all over it.
I didn't want to come out in someone's back yard, and the first trail we were following was supposed to come out between private properties. I think where I ended up coming out was to the north of the one private house on Lime Kiln Road.

I got out to Lime Kiln Road first and started walking downhill toward Lake Galena a bit. Even Lime Kiln Road was not even being well maintained.

There were trees fallen over the utility wires on this road, which looked to have been there for quite some time. A little further down the road on the right was an abandoned house, I assume owned by the county park system. The others bullied their way out of the woods, and we headed down toward the house. Justin and Brittany went ot check it out while the rest of us took care of our wounds out on the road for a little bit.

The road beyond the point we were at was also now abandoned, and barely accessed.

We continued walking along the Limekiln Road to the north just a bit, watching the woods to see if we could see where the trail was supposed to go back in.

There was no sign of any trail. I decided we were not going to attempt any mroe crazy bushwhacking at this point and instead ust headed north to the shore of Lake Galena. Lake Galena was created when Bucks County dammed the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek in 1972.

Before the lake, it was once the site of the Village of New Galena. This was predominantly an agricultural Community, although there was some mining of galena, the most important mineral of lead.

Peace Valley Park was created around the lake as a county park in 1974. We continued east and got our group shot at a little wildlife observation blind just off the trail. Pretty soon, the trail picked up an old paved road that now partially goes under the lake. We followed this to the east, to Chapman Road. We turned left and crossed the finger of the reservoir on the old road, which led over toward the Peace Valley Nature Center.

To the east of the nature center, there is a whole lot of stuff to see in the park. Fortunately, the trail system over there is in much better shape than those on the south side.

I had been wanting to try to see more of the park on that side ever since the previous trips we did through to Peace Valley Park, and one of the prominent points to hit was the Pooh Tree.

The hollowed out old Sycamore tree inspires images of the world of the popular A. A. Milne characters of Winnie the Pooh written in the 1920s.
We managed to get there when there was no one else around, so we were able to climb inside the hollow tree and look up into the trunk.
The tree looks to be quite strong still, and in no danger of falling any time soon.
When a few more kids showed up on the trail, we exited the tree and made way for them to play in it.

We made our way in a somewhat loop through the woods to the east of Chapman Road, where the trails were pretty well maintained.

We made our way back to Chapman Road and crossed over directly to continue on the paved perimeter trail around the north side of Lake Galena.
The last time we were over in this area, we had followed the foot paths closer to the shore of the lake, and so we never did the paved route all the way around. I wanted to do that main trail this time just because it was another segment we hadn't done yet.
We continued along the north side of the lake through nice woods on the paved trail, and eventually came to parking areas on New Galena Road. Here, we turned off.

We followed along grassy edge pathways, and then eventually came to the intersection with Church Road where we turned to the right and started heading uphill.

At the top of the hill we crossed Upper Stump Road, and on the left side was the Hilltown Baptist Church. I recall it had a somewhat recent date on the church, but I don't recall what it was. The adjacent cemetery dates back to the early 1700s, but I suppose the church might not be the original.

I suppose the name of the little settlement there must have been Hilltop.
We continued on Upper Church Road a bit more, passed the first intersection with Broad Street on the right, then the second one on the left, and then at the intersection of Hillside Road, we reached our lunch stop: the Bishop Estate Vineyard and Winery.

They had a foot truck on site this time, and I got a splendid burrito there.
We had some wine; I enjoyed the sweet "El if I know" with an elephant on it.
After our stop, we headed further up Upper Church Road, and then turned right on Dublin Road. We passed some lovely old stone homes on the way to reach the Pearl S. Buck National Historic Landmark on the left side. The next leg of the hike would take us through this property.

Te property is known as the Green Hills Farm.
Author and humanitarian activist Pearl S Buck purchased the property in 1933, and live there through the 1960s.
The homestead is now a museum open for tours. The historic coursed fieldstone  farm house was built in 1825.
Buck won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "The Good Earth" in 1932. In 1938, she won the Nobel Prize for literature. She authored over three hundred books and other published works and strove for a better understanding between people.

    The estate was quite beautiful, and there were signs denoting it public open space.
We we walked down the entrance lane a bit, there was a pretty little pond to the right.

Then, to the left and to my great surprise, there was a trail that led right to the grave of Pearl S. Buck herself. It was well manicured and in a pleasant little accessible area.

My plan from here was to walk the length of the property to the north, past the mansion and grounds, and then come out the north entrance off of Rickerts Road.
After visiting the grave site, we walked the groups somewhat parallel with the road to the north, and passed another nice building that I believe it used as an event rental center. I do recall there being tents and such set up next to one of the buildings as we continued through. 

Unfortunately, we we got closer to the north side of the property, the road seemed to peter out and there wasn't a really good way through it. Maps showed like it was a through route. At one time it was.

We made our way toward the rear of the property on Forest Road, and then sort of found out where the road used to go through. It was blocked off, but we were able to get through.

I wanted to get out of there pretty quickly because the other side of the road was now used as a private driveway.
We hurried along as not to be seen, and emerged onto Rickert Road. We then continued straight across onto the still drivable section of Forest Road to the north.
A little ways up this road, we turned to the left into Forest Road Park on a paved entrance road.

Maps call this Forest Road Park, but I also had it labeled as Dumire Park. I'm not sure what it was.
We continued through the open fields, and then to the right around the section of the trail to the north. There was a bit of a mowed trail to the west off of the end of the pavement, and we followed that to an old farm access at the end. We followed that out to another road called Minsi Trail where we turned to the left briefly. We then turned right on Blooming Glen Road to the northwest.

I think from this point we walked Twinbrook Road to Callowhill Road, then a left hand turn on Rt 113 led to the intersection with Telegraph Road.
At this intersection, there was the Hawkeye Tavern on the one side, and on the other an old school house that ws now the HIckory Stick ice cream shop. We opted to stop at that one to have a little snack which was quite nice.
From here, we headed down Telegraph Road to the north for a bit. On the left side of the road, there was a trail system that weaves along and across Applewood Drive through a new development. 
The start of the trail takes on a rather pointless route, on and back off of Applewood, then across and into the community from there. It crossed Peachtree Drive and wove between small trees.

We came across Applewood Drive again with a pretty pond on the other side, and I think I decided against going farther on this trail syestem and instead take a short cut onto Walnut Street heading north.

We continued on this until we came to a trail leading to the left, part of the Pleasant Springs Greenway that leads into Perkasie on the small tributary to the Perkiomen Creek.

The trail turned into the woods to parallel the creek parallel with Perkasie Road intersection and continued downstream along the east side of the creek. It then crossed over the creek by way of a prefabricated foot bridge.
We continued down as far as Main Street where I decided we needed to head back over to Walnut Street and walk the road south. I had already walked this trail to the north from here anyway, and the main reason I wanted to go to the street was to get to the Free Will Brewing Company. We had stopped there the last time we hiked through, and I had one of the greatest brews I had ever had before, a barrel aged variety called Ella.

We headed out to the street and started walking north, and I went into Free Will to have a look around their refrigerator. Unfortunately, they did not have any of the Ella, which I haven't had since my first time. The one thing I did find was called Breakfast Epiphanies.

This was an imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels with cofee and maple sugar, which made it somewhat similar to the Ella, since that was aged in maple bourbon barrels, but it wasn't quite nearly as good. It was also in a smaller can than I am accustomed to.
Still, I got some to try, and it wasn't bad.
We continued down the street past some of the historic mill facilities, and then crossed over the Perkiomen Creek to the north side.
Down below us and to the right was the South Perkasie Covered Bridge in Pennridge Park.
Built in 1832, it is the third oldest town lattice style covered bridge in America. It used to span the Perkiomen Creek, but it ws moved onto land in the park where it would be safer about 1959.

Shane and Dave were not with us because they cut out at the winery a while back. They were in Perkasie, but there were there a little earlier than we had gotten there to go and see the railroad tunnel in town.
We continued straight across through town, because for some reason I wanted to see the tunnel as well, but I really don't know why at this point I added it onto this hike. It was really a lot of extra overkill after everything we had gone through over the course of this day.

While walking uphill through town, to the right of us was the old Liberty Bell Trolley line Perkasie Station, which is still in pretty nice shape.

This station was completed in 1912 on a section of the Liberty Bell Line between Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley that was rerouted due to derailments. The Lehigh Valley system was once regarded as the finest example of interurban trolley service in the nation.

Service was discontinued in favor of buses in 1951.

We continued through town to the north from there, and even though it wasn't around halloween, someone had set out a really creepy looking body tied up in garbage bags with duct tape on their porch.

We made our way all the way to the former Bethlehem Branch of the Reading Railroad, also known as the North Penn Branch, and the old station there. We made our way up to the tracks and started following them to the east a bit, toward the Perkasie Tunnel.
Again, I don't know why we bothered walking this way at this point in the hike. We had already gone enough, and I wasn't really into it. I was tired and chaffing, and yet we still walked up to the tunnel mouth anyway, only to turn around and walk all the way back again.
The sun was just about down, and it was nearly completely dark by the time we got to the tunnel. Maybe I had a then and now history compilation I wanted to get at the time. I don't know, but I couldn't get it anyway because it was just too dark.

We headed back down from the tunnel and into town, and I think we went in by way of the Perkasie Carousel or something. Another path that leads down toward the Perkiomen Creek.

We passed the 1907 Trinity Lutheran Church, which replaced the original 1902 structure.

Once we were along the creek, we crossed it on the 1930s Roebling pedestrian suspeension bridge in Lenape Park.We then came out to Perkasie Square Shopping Mall which I believe is where we ended the hike.

It was a really great day with so much interesting stuff, but we really tried to add too much extra stuff on the end. I was really exhausted after this one. I even feel exhausted trying to write the journal entry. When I am really excited about the hike, the memories keep me wanting to write more, but even bringing up the memory of this one has me feeling exhausted!