Hike #1406; Four Mile Circle Area

 Hike #1406: 4/10/21 Four Mile Circle Area Loop with Serious Sean Dougherty, Diane Reider, Jennifer Berndt, Professor John DiFiore, Jennifer Tull, Justin Gurbisz, Kirk Rohn, Carolyn Gockel Gordon, Lisa Tuccillo, Susie Duncan (and Flipflop), Dr. Mike Krejsa, and David Goldberg

This next trip would be a big loop bringing us back to New Jersey's Pine Barrens. I had not done Pine Barrens so much in any way other than the railroad beds in a long while, so I figured it was time we had better get back out there and do some more exploring.

I had come up with an interesting look based on the last trip we did down there. We had finished the Batona Trail, the long distance Pine Barrens trail that connects Brendan Byrne State Forest with Wharton State Forest further to the west, around sixty miles long, and looped with some of the other trails there on that occasion.
When I was planning that hike, I realized there were a lot more lands all around this that looked really interesting. I started putting this hike together to incorporate those.
The main preserve on my radar on this one was the Michael Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve, which is owned by the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

The preserve is named for Michael Huber, who was a trustee for the Conservation Foundation until his death in 2009.
I worked out a great loop that would incorporate both the east and west ends of this great 1227 acre preserve, as well as portions of the adjacent state forest, with a lunch stop mid way at Four Mile Circle, one of the few little settlements (if you even want to call it that) existing in the middle of the Pine Barrens.
We met at the parking area along Sooy Place Road. From that point, the white trail goes into the woods to make access to the rest of the trail system.

We started walking through the pleasant woods, and then made the first lef ton the blue trail off into the deeper woods while white stayed on more of a woods road.
While walking this trail, somehow I got turned off of it onto an abandoned, earlier route of the green trail.
The green trail, as per the map, does not start until further north along the north side of Burrs Mills Brook.
Apparently, when this trail opened up, the green trail used to go all the way through from the blue trail.
There were definitely blazes on this route, but it started getting pretty bad.

The sloppy stuff was doable. We got our feet muddy pretty quickly, and we were obviously still on the green trail.
I just figured all of the trails down there would probably be like this. It's what I'd come to expect of most of the preserves owned by non profits. They never seem to have their act together when it comes to managing lands, and when they do have a land manager, there is never any oversight, like the nature conservancy properties we had dealt with down that way.

I could deal with the muck and mess, but the briars and such were really difficult to deal with.

Even though we could see about where the trail was supposed to go, following it was just not happening. We had to kind of fan out, search for blazes, and push through whatever way was going to work.
After a little bit of time, we came upon the Burrs Mills Brook.
The entire property is full of lots of tributaries of the Rancocas Creek, the main one being the Burrs Mills Brook, and parallel with us was the Island Spring that fed into it.
It was around this area that I realized we had been following a closed trail. I got in the brook because I figured we would have to wade it.

The bridge that once carried the green trail over the Burrs Mills Brook was amazingly still there, just upstream from where we emerged on the brook. Some of the group tried bullying through to use the bridge to get across. I was happy to just wade over without thorns.

Directly on the other side, the good, open part of the green trail was still there and in good shape.
What a relief that we would not have to bushwhack back thorugh this at the end of the day, and that we would be done with this mess now.
This was by far the worst part of the entire hike, and everything else was relaxing in comparison.
We had a pretty long break because it took everyone quite a while to get their shoes back on after wading across at this point.
Somehow I believe Kirk managed to get across on a weird tree branch without getting wet.

Once everyone was back together, we continued thorugh the Atlantic White Cedar, Pitch Pine and Scrub Oak forests heading upstream along the creek.
This is all prime breeding habitat for the Prairie Warbler for which the preserve is named. They come back to this area after wintering in the West Indies.
We continued on the lovely green trail through the woods from here, and eventually came to the intersection with the white trail. We turned left briefly and crossed the Four Mil Spring.

We then went left, or more straight, on the red tral which continued as a sort of old woods road to the west. As the trail approached the Tar Kiln Spring, it turned hard to the right and headed north. Just another short bit of distance this way, a side trail led to the right to Spung.

This became the topic of conversation for a while. What is a spung? The map did say that it was a shallow clay lined pool, but it really sounded weird. We followed the dead end trail to the site.

The term is found throughout the world; it is a name applied to a Scottish purse, or to a dance one does when too drunk or high to wipe their own arse let alone move with any kind of rhythm.

But here in the Pine Barrens, it is a "deflation hollow" or blowout associated with permafrost thawing when the Wisconsin Glacier receded and water table rose. Spungs are hydrologically isolated. They have no exchange with ground water and thus rely on precipitation to fill.
They're also interesting bird habitat.A high chair is situated next to the Spung for viewing.

We turned back around from Spung and headed back toward the red trail.
On the way, we spotted a deer stand a bit off the trail, so we went off to check it out. This was a permanent structure up in the tree, so of course we had to climb it and have a look.

We made our way from here back to the red trail and turned right, heading northeast.
We followed the red trail to where it turned hard right on the now long abandoned Mile Road.
Mile Road is the main trail spine that goes all the way through the Prairie Warbler Preserve. It is red blazed here only, and then becomes the white blazed trail further to the south.
To the north of here, it leaves the preserve and makes its way out to and across Route 70.
We crossed over the highway and continued on the sandy old road on the other side. We were now in Brendan Byrne State Forest.
This was originally called Lebanon State Forest, named for an historic old glass works within the forest, but was then renamed for the former governor.

We continued on Mile Road to the north and crossed over paved Magnolia Road. We then continued on the road on the other side. After a bit of woods, we crossed Shinns Road. We continued straight a bit more, and then turned right on Upper Mill Road.

When we got to 4 Mile Road, we went straight across and the road was paved. This was the next worst part of the hike.

We continued south for a bit, and then there was a dirt road that went to the right eventually. It led out to a foundation, where I have been told it used to be a state camping area that was closed. It was really close to the edge of Deep Hollow Pond. The road was paved, but covered mostly in pine needles.

I waded into Deep Hollow Pond and continued right across to the other side. It felt quite refreshing.

Once everyone had had a break, we got on the Batona Trail and started following it westbound. 

In these woods, there was evidence of a recent forest fire with charred land on the one side of the trail. There were fire lines dug across the trail as we continued through the woods. 

We continued across Rt 70 again on the trail, and then through more woods to cross Shinns Road again. Not too long after that, we made our way to the Lebanon Fire Tower.

The 80 foot tall tower was built on the site of the original Four Mile Tower, which was a flimzy wooden structure constructed on near the same site in 1910. We climbed the tower and could see Philadelphia in the distance because it was so clear, as well as to Apple Pie Hill in the distance.

Once we had had our fill of the view here, we headed out to Rt 72 and followed it a little bit to the east where we would stop for lunch at Billy Boy's Four Mile Tavern. I had wanted to hit up this hole in the wall tavern because I think we had done Mayo's Halfway House the last time we were in the area, and I wanted to try to hit both of the oddball middle of nowhere bars.

We had a nice lunch stop, seated outside of the place in the sun. I forget what kind of beer I had, but I also had a cheeseburger as I recall, which was quite good.

Once we were done, we headed back down the road and attempted to re-enter the Prairie Warbler Preserve from the north side. I think the way to get there from 72 was Slab Crossway Road to Johnson Road.

We continued through woods on the red trail when we got to that, and crossed Four Mile Spring. There were some impressive beaver dams adjacent ot the trail in the springs we passed.

We came to the intersection with the green trail, and the red and green continued together to the right. We continued to the left on just the green, and there was apparently another spung on the right side, but I don't remember seeing it. We paralleled the Gum Spring for a bit.

We found a couple of oddball chairs inexplicably hammered to a tree out in this area somewhere, and Sean tried to sit in one, but it ended up falling off  o the tree.
The green trail soon intersected with the white trail again, which follows the abandoned Mile Road we had been on much earlier.
This was a much wider and more pleasant way to get out than the way we started out for sure. The group somehow got really far ahead of me. I was still having some heel issues from the injury I'd sustained a few weeks before, but it was slowly improving.

It wasn't all that much longer and we were across the South Branch of the Burr Mill Stream.

We turned onto the blue trail just before the end, and meandered through that as the last bit of the hike. It was a somewhat wider trail and very easy, and it was the perfect cool down for the end of the day.

There is still so much more to do out in this area, and I could easily come up with an almost completely different version of a hike out of the same spot.
The Pine Barrens themselves are huge. I burn out on it pretty quickly, but returning and covering some new ground here and there is always a welcome thing. There's just too much other stuff to do eating away at me. I'll have to make a point of getting back there again soon.