Hike #1403; South Brunswick to Belle Mead

Hike #1403: 3/30/21 South Brunswick to Belle Mead with Jennifer Berndt, Jennifer Tull, Shayna Michaels, Brittany Weider, Kirk Rohn, Violet Chen, Susie Duncan (and Flip Flop), and Serious Sean Dougherty

This next hike would be a point to point night hike, this time between Play Bowls at a shopping Center on Rt 206 in Belle Mead NJ, and the Somerset Plazar off of Rt 27 in South Brunswick area.

This would end up being a really cool route that I sort of concocted, slapping together all sorts of different trails through the area with short road walks in between.

We met at Playa Bowls, and hten shuttled to the start point in my van and one other vehicle I think.
We started walking right from the shopping center, around the back of the stores.
A path went from almost directly behind the Dollar General into an apartment development.
We followed along the left side of this development and went behind apartment buildings on Daniel Drive.
At the far corner of these buildings, we cut into woods somewhat off trail and onto a path into Delar Park. 
We continued on the paved trail from this park out to Beekman Road, then cut across Rachel Ct to another paved path at the end of the parking area for the next couple buildings.

There is a small tributary to the Six Mile Run in that swath of woods, over which a pedestrian bridge passes, but it was completely closed off an quite a mess.

The underside of this bridge was rusted out somethin terrible, and below that was some sort of utility in a large pipe.
Some of the group opted to cling to the outside of the bridge and cross that way, while others of us just decided to wade or hope acoss below. I chose to just wade the thing.
Once we were past this unexpected problem, we followed the paved trail on the other side to the right.
When the trail turned to the left at an open retention pond area, we continued straight along the retention ponds to come out to Amesthyst Way. We turned left there and headed out to the last building, then turned to the right out to South Middlebush Road. 

Just ahead and on the left is the start of the trail into the Franklin Park Nature Preserve.
I had been seeing this trail head for years and never incorporated it into anything.

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It's a spot where seasonally there is a farm stand set up at the trail head, at the intersection of S. Middlebush and Old Vliet Road.
We headed onto the trail through a succession study area. Fields here are transitioning to young forest with Eastern Red Cedar and such taking over. It's really quite a pleasant route.

We followed the trail parallel with Old Vliet Road, and it eventually turned left along a farm access road.
After a little bridge, the trail turned right away from the farm road, into the woods and to the west.
We got kind of close to some houses, and there was an enormous tree house in the first one we came to.

We turned away from the homes and through more successional fields, then down a bit to the edge of the Ten Mile Run.

This was quite a very pretty little area. The Ten Mile Run has some natural rock cliffs along it that I would not have expected to find this far south in NJ.
We followed along the stream downstream a bit, past the most prominent outcrop, and then came to a crossing site where it was shallow with some stone hops.
We crossed over, and the trail split in two. I opted to go for the one to the right, which weaved uphill and on top of those rock outcrops. That turned out to be sort of a loop I believe, and I didn't want to try to keep going that way, so we turned back and went the other way, uphill further and away from the river.

We ended up on the Yellow Trail in Bunker Hill Natural Area next, and we headed uphill to more successional fields. We skirted the edge with a lot of young birch trees.

We continued along this and entered more woods to the right. This trail weaved us around a bit more, and then took us out to cross over Bunker Hill Road.
We passed through a pleasant narrow swath of woods approaching the Woodfield Estates development.
There was a lot of cut wood and good clear trail skirting behind some houses heading to the west.
The trail eventually came out at a really oddball spot between houses I think at the cul de sac of Calder Court.
We turned right from the end of this on Winding Way.

After a short distance down Winding Way, we turned right into what Google Maps calls Princeton Highlands Park, out a driveway that said it was closed at the entrance, but the trails were open.

I really don't know how they could claim the area was closed when the other side of this park area is fully open and doesn't include any such signs like we found on this side.
We made our way out the road and then paused when we got to the ball field area, where the Native Grassland Preserve trail system starts.
I wanted to wait a little bit of time here because Serious Sean was to join up with us, and I figured I would give him the opportunity to catch up with us.
I gave him the address and approximate location, and he was on his way.

Unfortunately, what ended up happening this time was that he plugged an address in, and it was the wrong one. There are so many different roads with almost the same name through the entire area, and then there is New Brunswick, North Brunswick, South Brunswick, East Brunswick, and just about anyone could get lost, including a mail man who's job it is to find places (Sean).

But true to form, he figured out where he needed to go, and I just told him we would head into the woods just a bit. I didn't want to be out in the open too much just in case someone in the development decided to try to give us a hard time or something.
The trail went down to the right and skirted the edge of a retaining wall that held up ball fields, then turned to the left into the woods at the end of the clearing.
The trail was alright through there, but it soon came to a missing bridge as I recall. We had to go down to the right and then back up the other side in order to continue through, and then the woods road was pretty obvious where we needed to go.

We followed this road uphill a bit, and then the road gave way to a more prominent road that was a lead in to the Ridings Way road and development to the south.
We continued straight on the more prominent path, and then a fork led to the left, toward a water tower further up the hill.
This seemed like a good spot for a break to wait for Sean. I had given him directions on how to meet us from where he would park, in the development near the entrance to the Princeton Highlands Park, and he could get to us. If we made too many turns, it would be a bit harder to find.

We sat around and relaxed for a bit and it wasn't too long before Sean made his way up out of the woods and onto the roadway with his signature "OI OI OI" sound. 
Susie and Flip Flop (Zip Line) had to cut out and she made her way out another trail just before he joined.
When Sean showed up, he arrived with two crowlers from the Jersey Cyclone Brewing Company. He handed off one to me right away, which was some sort of Imperial Stout or something. I don't remember exactly which one it was or if it's something that's still available, but this was quite amazing and I sipped on it for almost the entire remainder of the hike!

He had also picked up a some sort of IPA, and that was delicious too.
We made our way along the trail near the water tower and then took some other trails toward the west.
The area we were passing into next were the fields of what used to be called the Griggstown Nature Grassland Preserve. It had more recently been renamed the John Clyde Memorial Native Grassland Preserve.
We hit the edges of the fields, and then followed the GPS on my phone that took us out to the parking area just as it was getting too dark to see anything.

We followed the access road out of the place to the northwest, and soon came to Canal Road.
We turned right here just a bit, then turned left onto the Griggstown Causeway over the Delaware and Raritan Canal.
We turned left onto the towpath briefly, then right again onto a side trail that led over a little bridge over some wetland, then into another state parking lot along the Griggstown Causeway.
We continued out along that road to cross the Millstone River.
We turned left on the other side onto Millstone River Road for a ways. This was the worst part of the entire hike, and by far the longest road walk, but it honestly seemed to blow by in the dark when we could skirt wide grassy swaths beside the edges.

Actually, the road walk was only a mile. Just after we passed the intersection with Boysonberry Lane, we turned to the right into the corner of a field and followed a somewhat mowed edge of it to the west. 

Out in this field, near the very center of the south side, is am old cemetery.
We wandered off into it to have a good look around.
The walled in old cemetery is probably somewhat unknown, as is the fact that the fields we were walking on are all public land.
After the cemetery, we headed to the west to the next tree line. We turned right there, continued north along the trees, then cut through that line at the first access point.
On the other side, we turned right again for a while, until we got to a good point that we could walk directly to the intersection of Dead Tree Run Road and Summit Road.
This worked out perfectly, and we walked onto Summit Road only for a couple of blocks. At the end, a trail turns into the fields slightly to the left.
We went pretty much straight across the fields, and then at the other tree line, turned to the right.
At the end of the field, we entered woods and got on a long section of amazing boardwalk.
This boardwalk section lasted for about 0.3 mile, which is a pretty good long distance. It was a little beat up, and had closed signs on the ends of it to keep people off, but it was the night.

We continued along the walkway, which eventually ended, and the trail continued with a crushed stone surface to the north. We followed closely parallel with the Pike Run, which was well off to our left.

The trail emerged on Dead Tree Run Road, adjacent to the historic Mill Pond Bridge, also known as Bridgepoint Bridge, built in 1822, at the historic little milling settlement of Bridgepoint.

It is a fixed Stone Segmental, triple deck arch span over the Pike Run in the old Dutch settlement of Bridgepoint, Montgomery Twp, Somerset County NJ.

The bridge is over the dammed slack water of the former Opie Brothers Mill Pond. It is part of a National Historic District that includes the mill and raceway, schoolhouse, wheelwright shop, and general store along Dead Tree Run Road. Truly a step back in time.

Recent flooding caused significant damages, but the bridge was repaired and is in good condition. The trail we were on is referred to the Canal Link Trail even though it doesn't really formally connect with the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath. It just basically links to the property. From Bridgepoint, we were following the Belle Mead-Montgomery Greenway. The paved path continued north, then right across Mill Pond Road. Several paved paths go everywhere through this area, but we turned to the left along Mill Pond Soccer Complex, then back across Mill Pond Road and parallel with it to the north. The trail then turned left away from Mill Pond Road, through woods, across a little tributary to Pike Run, then across the Pike Run itself. On the other side, we came out in the Montgomery Veterans Park.

In this park, the paved trail skirted parking lots to the left, but we went straight onto the playground.
This is among my favorite playgrounds we have ever come across on a hike. It had zip lines in it that were so incredibly fun, we just had to hang out there for a while.
We finished off the booze I had, and then we were going on the IPA that Sean was carrying. He went down the slide and played with a big fire truck toy we found there.
We just had a great time in this area.
We continued on from here along the paved trail to the north, which went across the fields and came out on Harlingen Road. We turned rigth there, through the actual veterans memorial, and then followed Harlingen Road to Estates Blvd along the sidewalks.
Another segment of trail broke off to the right after we headed down hill a bit, and crossed over the Pike Run. It then headed through woods to the west.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I had hiked through here over a decade prior trying to trace the former Mercer and Somerset Railroad, which also crossed the brook in this area. The development wasn't here yet, and we ended up getting in trouble with some workers I think at the treatment plant under construction, and Susie offered them donuts to butter them up, and we walked out the access road.

This time, the trail went on through to the west. We skirted some wide open areas, and then crossed the Cruser Brook on a super long foot bridge that was quite impressive.
The trail emerged at the Montgomery Dark Park and then came to Covert Drive, which goes behind the strip mall with Playa Bowls. Serious Sean set off some fireworks he was carrying at the end of the parking lot before we got done and back to our cars.
This was really a fantastic night hike and one of the most diverse, crazy routes we'd had in a while. I absolutely loved it.