Hike #1434; Bushkill to Shawnee

Hike #1434: 8/29/21 Bushkill to Shawnee with Jennifer Berndt, Robin Deitz, Cindy Browning, and Phil ?

This next hike would be another point to point one, this time featuring again the McDade Trail on the Delaware River between Bushkill PA and Delaware Water Gap, but it wouldn't pan out as planned.

Sometimes we visit a place where we think it is going to be pretty easy, that we know where we are going, and there will be no problem, and then sometimes this doesn't work out the way we planned it at all. This was one of those days for sure.
For this one, we met at the the Delaware Water Gap and shuttled with as few vehicles as possible to Bushkill where we parked over on Creek Road where there is a pull in parking across from an abandoned house, and an access to the Bushkill Creek.
Cindy was running late, and so I told her she could just start heading up there and we would meet her somehow on Rt 209. We both cut held back in the same traffic leading up on the bridge over the Bushkill Creek, so we weren't very far apart.

The McDade Trail goes all the way through to the Hialeah Picnic Area, but I like doing my weird side trip stuff that gets us almost all the way through to the Delaware Water Gap. This time though, I also added some stuff to the beginning. I wanted to try to cover more of what is known as "The Hogback". This is the Pennsylvania side of the Walpack Bend, the most dramatic bend on the entire Delaware River. There is a ton of history out there, and it's great hiking, as long as we get it right. We didn't get it right, and it was still great.

We started this hike by walking Creek Road to the north just a little bit, to where the Delaware Valley Railroad used to cross. There is a gate and some pavement there, so it would throw most off on whether it was a railroad or not.

We walked up that, and it hadn't been mowed at all really. This was a huge difference from the first time I walked it back on 8/25/2. It was literally almost twenty years to the day that I first walked this.
Back then, the McDade Trail did not exist at all. It was proposed, but I don't even think any work had occurred yet. The purpose of that hike twenty years ago was to trace as best we could the historic route of the Delaware Valley Railroad.
This railroad broke off of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western main line in East Stroudsburg PA, and then headed to the east through the northern part of the Delaware Valley, but never actually got close to the river till Bushkill.

This line was developed in 1901, and there were plans to put a railroad through all the way to Matamoras PA and Port Jervis NY. 

Amazingly, those plans never came to pass, and the section of the Delaware River from Bushkill all the way to Matamoras was never pierced by railroad or canal at all. Only the roads had been developed through.

The Delaware Valley Railroad did well enough with the logging and tourism traffic for a time, but passenger service began to dwindle in the 1920s. All passenger service ended in 1929, and then freight continued nine years later. In 1938, it was ripped up.

As we walked this short bit of the right of way that had been turned into a trail, it was barely mowed, and the Japanese Knotweed had taken over much of it considerably.

The trail turns off to the right when it reaches what used to be Railway Avenue. This street in Bushkill used to be lined with houses leading back to the railroad tracks, but none of the buildings exist anymore. We followed this back out to Creek Road. We turned right there and crossed Little Bushkill Creek near its confluence with Big Bushkill.

The small stream flowed out from a very swamp area to the right, and the old railroad station used to be near the right side of it before it was removed. There is still a foundation out there today.

The views of the creek are far different today than they would have been prior to 1955. As I understand, following the great flood, the entire Bushkill Creek was dredged and in some case rerouted just below the Rt 209 crossing. However, nature takes care of itself, and the creek has very much reclaimed much of its original route, making the historic postcards seem comparable to how it looks now. The historic postcard of that site is from the 1910s. I also did another similar one using another 1908 card.

Just ahead of this point, on the left side of the road was the foundation wall of the Peters Mill, which stood right on the corner of Creek Road and what is now Route 209. I'm not sure exactly when this was demolished, but it's been gone for quite a long time.

Near the intersection, Rt 209 crosses the Big Bushkill Creek on the same site as the predecessor crossings.
The original bridge, for which I do not know the date of construction, was a wooden one. It was replaced in 1897 with a through pony truss bridge.
The pony truss served the site until it was replaced by the Route 209 bridge in 1936.
Because the current bridge was closed when we went through, I can only assume that the current bridge is getting either replaced or upgraded as well.
The McDade Trail goes out and crosses the bridge, and it's kind of an oddball place because there is no pedestrian lane or markings that it is also a trail crossing.

We turned left on Rt 209 for a short distance to what used to be the Turn Store and Tinsmith Shop in Bushkill, Pennsylvania, now Marlucas.

The building is two distinct sections from different time periods. The rear section was the original tinsmith shop dating back to 1837 reportedly, and the front section dates to about 1916, though some disagree.

It is named for local farming family, the Turns, who owned and operated the store.

It was Deli Depot in the 1990s, but the store fell into disrepair and closed in the early 2000s for a time.

It was reopened as Roost Deli, and now Marluca's.

Once the center of commerce in Bushkill, where roads came together along the Delaware, from the ferry, and from the mountains, and the railroad station basically stood directly behind the store. I had been going into that store for years; with my grandfather while hiking up there, and then when I started dating Cathy Fisher, we went in there to buy peroxide for her arm when she injured it.

We went into Marluca's to get some food. I think I might have gotten a breakfast sandwich, but I don't for sure remember.
I always would get the Joe Tea Energy at this place, the "Blow the Doors Off" energy iced tea and lemonade, which is great. Then it's good to hold beer after that.

I also set up a good then and now photo compilation inside the store, and showed it to the proprietor after I did it. He was appreciative of the history of the area and the property.
I had until this time been under the impression that the store was property of National Park Service, under some sort of lease, but it is not. It's basically a postage stamp size lot surrounded by national park lands, and the owner told me the national park people come in all the time and love it.

The settlement is quite beautiful. The Dutch Reformed Church of Bushkill is still standing on the other side of 209 near where the McDade Trail heads north. It was completed there in 1874. Unfortunately, not nearly the number of buildings are still standing that used to be there.

On the Pike County side of the bridge, almost across from Marluca's, used to be the Peters House, a sort of hotel house that sat along the Bushkill Creek, with manicured sidewalks, lawns, and buildings. There appears to be not a single trace of that still remaining.

After a lot of sitting around and everyone being patient while I ran around and got my then and now photos, we were on our way.
We walked across Rt 209, and then continued to the west on it, to the other side of the Bushkill Creek.
The McDade Trail continues to the west from there, but we turned off of it along the creek sort of, and got on a bit of an abandoned road that remained close to the creek.
This was my first mistake on this hike.
The road I had intended to follow that goes up and over Hogback Ridge breaks away from the McDade Trail much further up. The road we were taking would not go all the way through.

We continued walking anyway, and the old road petered out to nothing. Then, even the foot path we were trying to follow just sort of disappeared as we got much closer to the edge of Bushkill Creek.

We went by a pretty pond that might have at one time been a farm pond or something. 
We couldn't try to keep pushing along this, so we headed to the left, and I tried to keep under the tree canopy to keep us from going through brush.
It was a bit of a rough climb going up, but soon after the climb tapered off, we found our way to a bit of a woods road. I thought it might have been the Hogback Road, but I was wrong yet again. This was an old road, and probably a much older road than the Hogback Road I was looking for. This could have been the original one.

We continued walking, and I kept an eye on my phone GPS. It seemed like we were finally kind of starting to head in the direction I had intended to go.
We walked along, but then I think we missed the spot I wanted to hit and turned back.
There was another woods road heading downhill on a rather steep descent to hit the Delaware River. I recall reading somewhere that this road might have been the original ferry location across the river at the bend.
The thing I really wanted to see down on this area was the old Schoonover Cemetery.
Sometimes they call it the Indian Cemetery, but I do not know of any native American interments at the site.
I had to try to remember how to get to this site, and when I recognized a little ridge above the old road, both of which were vague, I bushwhacked up. I spotted the really odd grave first, the one that has a narrow bottom but a wider top.
I was rather shocked to see that the cemetery had badly deteriorated even since the first time I documented any of it in 2015. 

The cemetery has 59 known graves in it, and the oldest one I had found here had simply the initials "E. I." and was dated 1727. 

I looked around the cemetery for that very old grave, but I could not find it anywhere.
I figure it must have either been deteriorated away, or unfortunately someone might have stolen it.
People do know about it, although not many. It is not easy to get to, and there is no marked trail getting to the sight. You just have to kind of know how to get there.
One of the things that really shocked me was that the entire area had been somewhat cleaned up. The dead leaves and such that had in the past been scattered all over the surface were gone. The area had been raked out, possibly to try to identify more tomb stones or something. 

The next oldest one I could find in the collection was 1792, and most of it was hard to make out. Maybe "Here lies the body of James (?) Courtright (??). 

After spending some time looking around the cemetery, we needed to be moving along.
We headed back up the road below the little ridge the cemetery is on, and it seemed like it was just going on forever.
I didn't want to head almost all the way back to Bushkill, and I could vaguely see another old woods road up the slope getting more to the Hogback Ridge, so I figured we could cut off of this road and bushwhack the short distance to get to it.
This ended up not being too terrible.
We continued along a slope for a bit of time, and I started to be able to hear some water to my left a bit. I wondered if there was a waterfall down in this area or not.

I had read something about a waterfall down in the vicinity, but I didn't know where to look for it.
I figured if it existed, it might be on one of these cascading sounds I was hearing.
The others stayed up the slope, but I climbed far back down to the bottom, almost to the Delaware, in search of the sound of the water. 
When I finally got to the water, it ws kind of a let down. It was pretty, but there was really no waterfall. It was just a cascading stream.
What was odd about it was that it basically just came out of the ground as a full force stream. It didn't grow out of a series of Springs, although they were through the area feeding it as well.
It just seemed to appear.
In order to see more of it, on my way back up, I bushwhacked directly up the stream, and then cut to the left to climb back up to where I had let the others.
We continued uphill kind of to the south at this point, and eventually we hit the old woods road.

Once again, this was not the original Hogback Road that I was intending on using, but I could see it on aerial images, and so I figured we could use it.
The woods road continued to climb very slightly, and made the final ascent to the very top of the little Hogback Ridge that heads directly out to the end of the Pennsylvania side of the Walpack Bend.
The road was really quite high up, and as we continued on, we were afforded some views through the trees to the north out to the Delaware River valley.
I really loved this section at first. It was pretty easy to walk, and most of the road was just lined with hay ferns making it quite pleasant. The occasional down tree could be walked around or stepped under.

The road reached a peak out there, and beyond that point it got a bit harder to follow. I had to hop over lots of fallen trees and such, and at some point I ended up getting off of the road to the left in an evergreen forest.

It was always a bit easier to just go beneath the evergreens. The woods road was losing elevation, and as we lost elevation, we gained underbrush.

I realized after all of this mess that I'd lost my prescription sunglasses that had been on my head, so I ran back up the hill to look for them. I got all the way back to the top, but I could not find them. They must have flung off and gone somewhere more out of sight. I figured I would never find them again, and the likelihood of anyone else finding them is nil to none. 

All I could do was hope that I wouldn't have to see anything much more clearly out there before we got out of these woods. We still had a ways to go.

The old Hogback Road made a hard hairpin turn to the right somewhere in this vicinity, and we were still skirting it to the left to avoid the brush. In this area, we came upon a big pit that really didn't look like it had any business being there. There was no evidence of stone work for a foundation, so I assumed it was some kind of mine hole.

Former resident William Laubner left the following comment on my post about this suspected mine:

"There was an attempt to create a small mine opening near the east end of hog back road just above the squires home at a hairpin turn. Not sure of the date. That’s what my grandfather told me"

It seems that would make sense considering we were just about exactly where he described. 
We were still way up on this high ridge, but it was amazing how close we were to the Freeman Tract Road, which was the later road to the Decker Ferry on the bottom of the Hogback, which can still be driven.

There was no way we were going to be able to bushwhack down to Freeman Tract Road however. The brush was just way too thick on the south facing ridge. I chose to go to the north.

I had actually bushwhacked a lot of this with Jillane years before, although we did it in season without leaves. It wasn't so hard then. This ended up being really difficult.

We made our way down the ridge to the north, closer to the Delaware, and when I got down beneath a good enough canopy where it leveled off, I started walking to the east, to try to get around the Hogback and out to the old ferry site.

This was insane also. It ended up being far tougher to get through than anything further above. I was getting really tired and frustrated, and I just wanted to be done with all of this bushwhacking. It wasn't going at all the way I had planned.

I actually marketed this hike as a more liesurely thing, and here we were stuck doing the hardest stuff we'd done in a while. 

I eventually had enough of the bushwhacking myself, and I just got down in the Delaware River and started wading downstream as close as I could stay to the shore. I felt bad for everyone else that wanted to avoid getting their feet wet, because they still had to bully through this mess.
Pretty soon, I recognized the spot that used to be the ferry landing.
The Freeman Tract Road ends close to the former ferry site, and, there is a path down to the river at about the site. I think the ramp for vehicles to get on the ferry was slightly to the right of the path, and I tried setting up some more then and now stuff here.

I took a dip right there and cooled off. I needed it so badly. Pretty soon, the others had come out. I assured them at this point that the entire remainder of the hike should be easy.

I felt particularly bad for Phil being the only newcomer, not knowing what to expect and having this mess when it was posted that it would be quite easy overall.

The barely visible site of Decker's Ferry, which in 1860 became Rosenkranz Ferry (the dip for the road access is visible to the far left, obscure by Japanese Knotweed.).

It was accessible from the Old Mine Road in NJ.

The ferry was in operation by the time of the Revolutionary War, and was used in 1779 by Lt. John Hardenbergh and 1,000 men who camped here on their way to Fort Penn.

The Ferry remained in operation until May 1945 when a low flying student pilot snapped the one inch cable.

Although in poor shape, the historic Decker Ferry House still stands on the NJ side, along the overgrown Ferry road, and the PA side is accessible from the Freeman Tract Road.

Often closed to traffic, and I didn't know what the case would be this time, but it was possible that we'd head out the entire length of the Freeman Tract Road without seeing a single car.

I think they close it to traffic on weekends when it gets really busy, but leave it open on weekdays. Once everyone was feeling somewhat replenished, we started walking to the west, and we'd continue mostly direct toward the end from here. The remainder of the hike was just a relaxing joy. The road did end up being closed, so we didn't come across any traffic.

The only people we saw out there at all this time were cyclists. There were a few tree branches down over the road as well, so even before they opened it again, they'd have to clear those.

There was once a religious camp out on The Hogback off of the Freeman Tract Road, and my original plan for this hike was maybe to make our way off trail a little bit to find the podium with the cross on it, but I decided against that because of all of the hardship of the start of it. To the right of the road, there is another hidden old cemetery I had found with Jillane while wandering out there, and I looked for it to show everyone this time, but could not find it again. The distance just rolled away while walking this pleasant dirt road with almost no elevation change. Along the way, we came to the Owens Spring house on the right. I don't know a date of construction on this historic structure, but we went into it where it was much cooler, and Jen and I put our feet into the water flowing out of it. It looked crystal clear. I had wished I refilled my water bottle from it prior to dipping any part of my body into it. The floor of it went right to the edge of a drop off into a deep pool of water fed directly from the flow coming from the ground. It was some of the most crystal clear water one could ever see.

I sat on the edge of it and soaked my feet in it for a bit, and that was good enough I suppose. We then moved on down the road further to the west, and came much closer to the Delaware River.

Off to the left, there was a stream that flowed down where it looked like there used to once be a farm pond of some sort. It had a really pretty little cascade where it flowed out to the Delaware River below.

After a little bit, the McDade Trail descended from the right side. The biking route follows the road for a bit, while the hiking only route stays up on the slope above us for a bit. We actually stayed lower on the biking route through here. The trail descends the Hogback on what might be the old Hibachi Road it was called.

The trail turned off to the left from the road and then followed an old farm road for a bit, near the Owens Trailhead. I guess this was once the Owens Farm.

The trail weaved around a lot, and crossed over a couple of small streams on prefab footbridges as we neared the site of the former John Turn farm.

This area was not all part of the trail the first time I ha hiked it. We had to road walk back then from the National Park headquarters area down to the Turn Farm trail head in order to continue. That has since been completed and is very nice.

It's probably the steepest part of the entire McDade Trail too, with switchbacks and such, but we didn't do that this time.

I'm actually surprised that the trail was brought to where it was and not the old woods road that I was intending to follow over the Hogback.

We didn't go up to the Turn access I guess it was because it's on a side trail, but the next lot had several people already in it heading to swim. There are great spots to take a dip along the entire Delaware on the trail, but people really only get out of the car and get in without doing much other work for it.

I pointed out some old steps where there used to be a spot called the Shangri La, which was lined with hostas still to this day.

We continued through woods for a little while farther, and then the trail came out into the first field section. We skirted the field, along the line of trees, and then went back into woods closer to the Delaware again. When we came out closer to fields again, I looked back and spotted the old cemetery in the island of trees out in the field and pointed it out to the group, although we did not bother walking out to it this time.

We skirted a very long section of field edge ahead here, and I watched for the Old Ramp access. This was either a put in for boats, or maybe even once a ferry location because it is directly across from the Sadie Van Campen farmstead on the other side of the Delaware, as well as Coppermines Inn.

We went down the Old Ramp and took a break there, because I wanted to take a dip after all of that mess before. It felt great.

I was shocked that no one else wanted to get in at all. Only Jen and I went in, and so we didn't spend as much time in as we would have if the others weren't waiting.

We continued on along the trail and then came to the Smithfield Beach access. There are restrooms right by the boat ramp and some nice views of the river there. We took a pit stop there, and then continued along the Smithfield Beach recreation area.

This entire area was rather dead, which was surprising. It was a beautiful, hot day, but of course everyone was going to the free trail lots and filling them up to swim rather than the places they had to pay to go to. It was nice to see the big recreation area so nice and clean though.

At the end of Smithfield Beach, we continued on the trail into the woods to the west. We skirted woods and followed a few more field edges, then dipped steeply down to cross another tributary. We climbed steeply up the other side to more fields, and then mostly stayed on those edges until we came out to the east side of Hialeah Picnic Area.

The picnic area was closed to traffic when we go there, which we didn't mind at all. It gets kind of nasty when it's crowded.

We headed down to the water again here, and found an old set of stairs leading to the bottom. Hialeah used to be a development with several bungalow homes until the land was taken for the Tocks Island Dam project.

Hialeah Park was owned by the developer Frank LaBar (1884-1970). A private 18 house residential community, lived in year round homes.

This would be a good last cool off spot for the hike. We climbed back up from the shore and started walking through Hialeah to the west.

There was something here that I had been looking for for a very long time but had not found it. I was beginning to wonder whether it was legit or not, but I wasn't sure.

On the official use only maps, it shows all of the old cemetery locations, and Jillane and I went out looking for all of them back starting around 2011. We found many of these lost cemeteries, but one of them notes Hialeah to have once been a cemetery. Despite having walked it extensively, we never found any stones or delineations of where they would have been.

I decided to walk the picnic grounds rather than the access road this time just to see if I could find anything that might have been it. I had gotten confirmation from a former park employee that it was indeed a burial ground of some sort. I honestly didn't expect to find anything this time. While walking through the grounds, I started seeing some partially covered over cinder blocks within the mowed grass. I thought maybe it could have been a cemetery delineation, but of course this was a bungalow community so it could have been anything. Then, I saw an old water shutoff valve capsule, so that kind of shot my hopes down too. Then, there were more stones. Some of them were normal that might have been delineations, but then the next ones looked like pieces of slate embedded into concrete. I figured this was probably some sort of sidewalk that was part of the access to a bungalow.

The proble with these pieces of slate is that they were not attractively embedded, nor were they in any semblage of a walkway. They just appeared to be placed in a haphazard fashion thorugh one particular area. But then, one of them was different. It wasn't slate, partially grown over with grass and not really recognizable at first. We uncovered an epitaph here, near the south end of the grounds.

I removed grass from around the outside of the stone, and found that similar to the slate pieces we had found earlier, it was similarly embedded in a piece of concrete, but was a well carved, more permanent stone. The grave was of one Rhoda Shoemaker, only five years old, who died in 1833.

Rhoda was born about 1828- 17 Feb 1833, daughter of  Samuel (1791-Jan 1872) and Margaret Chambers Shoemaker. Rhoda is a unusual name, actually a family name of Samuel's mother. The mother Rhoda is buried in Calno Cemetery along Old Mine Road in Warren County NJ. Samuel and Margaret lived in Pahaquarry Township, which is now part of Hardwick Township in Warren County NJ.

Samuel's will was probated in New Jersey 1872. There other children: Maryann (1820), Henry (1822), Moses, and Blandena (1830) were all baptized in the Minisink Valley Reformed Dutch Church (NY G& B pg 79, 81, 87).

The question here is, how did Rhoda get buried on the Pennsylvania side in such a seemingly random place when the rest of her family is across the river?

The land which became Hialeah Park development was part of the prominent Colonel John Chamber (1740-1810) plantation of 342.5 acres. John Chambers was Margaret Chambers Shoemakers Father according to the will (Chambers Pg 366 1809 NOH Vol-4-5) Number 949 American Land Company ; private home on property. The original owner is reported as A. J. Zabriskie.

So, when young Rhoda passed under unknown circumstances, it was decided that she be interred on the farm of her grandfather.

Thanks to Michelle Harrison for much of the recorded research on this topic.

But what of the other markers we found through the area first? There is really no reason for these odd pieces of slate to have been embedded in concrete.

It is my opinion that this was most likely a family burial plot. When the land was first settled in the 1700s, slate was still a very often used stone for grave markers. I've seen it done elsewhere in the early grounds. Unfortunately, slate also does not hold onto the carving very well. The memorials on them were probably done in a similar fashion as with chalk, and the weather wears it all off with time.

The site might have been a family and/or slave cemetery since it was a larger plantation.

When the property became the development, if the cemetery was already known at the time, the existing stones known to be tomb stones were probably framed in the concrete to help preserve them. This would explain why seemingly useless pieces of slate are embedded in such a way, and why the actual legible tomb stone is also encased in the exact same fashion.

Rhoda's grave was already broken by the time it was embedded in this cement, we could se from how it was set. I also found a round stone nearby that looked like it might have been another grave marker and placed it near Rhoda's, because it had just sort of been kicked off to the side. Stones like that round one are used as markers on the NJ side that I've seen .

Before heading out, I had noted what I believe to have been at least four other tomb stone remnants in the immediate vicinity of Rhoda's grave.
What really irks me about all of this is that National Park Service knows about these graves, since it is on their official use only maps, but they do nothing about preserving them at all. This little girl's tomb stone is in the middle of a picnic ground where people party and throw trash like crazy. She's only maybe fifty feet from a trash receptacle and parking, and there are grills placed in the ground all through the area as well.

I am not in any way against using cemetery lands for recreation. That was the purpose of the Rural Cemetery Movement of the late 1800s in fact, but those cemeteries were at least acknowledged as such. This one was absolutely hidden, where the epitaph was not even recognizable until we showed up looking for it.
There should at the very least be some sort of historic marker noting this to be the final resting place of possibly several people, but at least one we know of.
Since I brought this to light, I know a lot of people were quite irked by it, and I would suspect that many of the people of hispanic backgrounds, who make up the majority of those who use the site, and are typically more religious, will be horrified when they realize they are picnicing on a grave.
I was elated to have made this discovery, and after the research that went into it, I feel very confident that we've at least brought a lot of the necessary information to light.

We continued from here out along the gravel driveway of Hialeah Picnic Area, which eventually turned to the right heading back out to River Road. The last time here, we cut through fields to the west.

This time, it was a bit more overgrown, so we instead chose to just head out the regular exit and start walking River Road. The more than a month since the last visit had made quite a difference in growth.

Just after turning onto River Road, we passed the MacManus House on the left, yet another very nice old homestead that is now vacant in the national park property. This one is actually in better than average shape, and has a well mowed lawn. We didn't bother trying to look closer at this point though.

We continued down River Road to the west, and like the previous time, we went down a bit into an area near Depuy Lane, where there was a path just below River Road. We walked between town houses or time shares or whatever they are, down to the road, and then across into an open grassy area where there are mowed paths out along the Delaware River. We wandered our along this to a slope, and came up byond the building that reads "Fort Depuy" on it. 

This was actually the historic homestead built in 1785 known as "Manwalamink", and erroneously labeled Fort Depuy in more recently years.

The garrisoned, stockaded fort, built in 1755, was located a bit to the west and no longer exists.
The home was built by Nicholas Depuy, grandson of the original Nicholas Depuy who settled here at present day Shawnee on Delaware Pa in 1727.
The settlement was named for the Shawnee native Americansb ecause the Lenape first encountered there were mistaken for Shawnees.

We headed out Depuy Road back out to River Road and turned left, then left again briefly on Minisink Ave. This took us into the rear parking lot of the Shawnee Playhouse. We walked up to it and sat on the porch for a few moments.

The Shawnee Playhouse was originally built as Worthington Hall in 1904, by businessman Charles Campbell Worthington in Shawnee on Delaware, the old community we had just entered.
The building was burned by an arsonist in 1985 and rebuilt, which is why it is delisted from the national register of historic places.

The venue remains in use today providing entertainment and education to the community and its visitors.
We headed through town and passed the nice little Shawnee General Store, and headed to the Gem and Keystone Brew Pub.
The last time we went through, we went to the craft brewery just to the south at the golf club, so this time I wanted to actually try to bar and restaurant, which ended up being quite good.
We went for the outdoor seating, which was perfect.
I looked at the time, and I did want to get home to take care of the baby. At this point, I realized that we had already covered over fifteen miles because of our weird meandering.

I double checked that to all of the google maps, and we were almost at fifteen exactly. With the side trips that it was not accounding or, it definitely put us over.

Everything else that I had planned for this hike back into Delaware Water Gap was stuff I had already done, so I decided, if everyone was amenable, that this coul be the end of the hike. There was nothing new that I felt I absolutely had to see.

I think everone was kind of shocked that I was at all willing to cut a hike short.
I reminded them that we had already done the miles I had set out to do, and that this wasn't like the New Jersey Perimeter series or any of these others that we went way out for, and to cut it short would mean coming back and re-doing a section to get it out of the way.

I'm tot all about just pushing hard and never enjoying. I have a plan that I set out to do, and the first and foremost was that I wanted to hit fifteen miles. We had done that, so I was good with cutting it short. I got an Uber and we were able to be done with the trip a bit earlier. I figured we all earned it with all of the craziness of the Hogback adventure.

It was really a great day overall, and we got to fill in a lot of gaps in history that I'd been wanting to look at, so it was more than I had even hoped for.