Hike #1524; Washington Crossing and Scudder Falls Loop

Hike #1524; 1/5/23 Washington Crossing and Scudder Falls Loop with Shane Blische and Everen

This next trip would be a loop around the Washington Crossing area, which didn't totally go as planned, but ended up being a really nice time anyway.

I have more benefit time than I know what to do with, and between stress, being way out of shape, frustration, and wanting to spend more time with my son, I decided to take a day off. There were several errands to run and things to deal with that I could justify it, and then I'd make the best of the remainder of the day.

I wasn't planning on traveling for as far, but none of my other closer proximity friends were available, and so I figured I could go and scoop Shane up, and we made a very good day of it.

Jillane wanted me to go with her to Connecticut to take Ev to an aquarium in Mystic, and to pick up a table she had purchased in Willimantic. We had hiked through there years ago; finished one trip and started another, in our journey eastward to Boston.

I was leary about doing it. I didn't want to go. I wanted to host a group hike and bring Ev out on that. I felt that if I agreed to go, I would get no hiking done at all except maybe what Jillane would do with me. She at first told me to post a group hike for that, and then agreed that she would do a hike.

She had not hiked at all really in about a year, so I questioned whether she could do it at all, and figured I would be disappointed and miss an entire week of hiking again. As such, I knew I had to get some trail time in before the weekend.

Jillane goes on about how selfish I am, and how I don't even care about Everen's well being, which couldn't be farther as well as closer to the truth.

Of course, I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I want to share my way, the things I know, with him. I want him to see me at his best so he has a frame of reference what his best could be, and I want that to be something happy. That is why it is so important for me to take him out with me.

There are no selfish and unselfish people. Everyone is selfish; the difference is the degree by which we see the world as extensions of ourselves.

I feel I keep a rather strong awareness of the world around me, and try to see the expansion of my own influence through it. There is an exchange of appreciation and imposition that some can't quite grasp because everything is in the moment, with too much focus on personal adversity. 

I considered doing something over by Hopewell or Pennington, but that was out of the way, and I was late getting started anyway. 

I decided we would instead park in Taylorsville PA, at Washington Crossing Historic Park, and then do a loop using both the Bel Del Railroad bed and some of the trails at Fiddlers Creek and Baldpate Mountain.

We parked at a spot I haven't parked in years; it was sort of near the visitor center but in a larger parking lot section a bit further to the north. I last used the spot in the earlier 2000s for at least two hikes featuring the Mercer and Somerset Railroad and the Delaware Canal.

It takes me forever to get going at a starting point. I have to get the stroller out, load it up with everything I need, and always consider what I might need that I might not be thinking about. 

Fortunately I had everything.

We walked to the south a bit, past the visitor center, and then along a path along the Delaware River, which at one time was a street, and maybe an earlier alignment of River Road.

We made our way to the Washington Crossing Bridge, completed in 1904 on the piers of the original bridge built on the site in 1834. That bridge was washed away and replaced by another covered bridge in 1841.

That second covered bridge washed away in the Pumpkin Flood of October 1903. It happened just before Halloween, and was so named because the flooded Delaware River was loaded with pumkins floating downstream. 

The current bridge replaced that covered one in 1904, a through truss structure.

Many people hate the width of that bridge because it claims so many rear view mirrors, but really there is enough room for any one on it.

It just come down to the fact that people are too afraid to get as close as is necessary to the side when crossing. They go too far over and end up clipping other cars.

From the area along the river, we headed back over to the road by the bridge and crossed. Shane wanted to go into the liquor store there for something to drink, but they were closed at that time.

There is a large pedestrian bridge on the other side of the Delaware and Raritan Feeder Canal and Bel Del Railroad right of way. We crossed the canal, built in 1834, and turned left onto the bridge and got a view of the Nelson House remnant below.

The Nelson House was once a large stately mansion house, but it was damaged by a derailment on the Bel Del, and so the state tore down the majority of the house save for the stone kitchen annex which remains standing today.

Once we got up and across the bridge, we were in the little grove area near the end of the Continental Lane, where Washington and his soldiers supposedly walked before making their Christmas 1776 crossing of the river. 

I chose to turn to the right through the grass and head directly toward an area between the maintenance shop and the visitor center.

I had recently had a meeting and holiday party with the staff at the parks, and I talked to Clay who works at the visitor center for a good while. I told him how I'd been down that way several times with Ev, and that I'd meant to stop in and say hello, but it was always too late or we had a long way to go by the time I got there. I decided this time I would pay the visit.

As we made our way to the end of the area that is regularly mowed, and where there is a grassy road that went along the back fields near the maintenance shop, there was a tree blocking the way. I didn't feel like trying to lift Ev over the mess with Shane at this point, so we just moved on ahead. It looked like the tree had been down for quite a while. I think it was one of the Ash trees that had died.

We went to the left through the field, and came out at what had been a trail entrance at one time from the loop road around continental lane, but the trail was no longer maintained. We went along the road the short distance to the east, and soon reached the visitor center.

We walked in the front door to greet Mark and Clay, the regular interpreters who are always working there. Mark had recently gotten some publicity as he was photographed with Governor Phil Murphy because he was wearing the traditional Continental Army uniform during Murphy's meeting and press conference there recently.

I'm no fan of Murphy because he has undermined the integrity of the office, not only because of the pandemic stuff that I had to deal with firsthand, but since then irrefutably illegal campaign contribution payoffs through a rail trail acquisition. I'd gone on the website of the donor and found that said donations were made in April 2021, and the payoff was Fall 2022. Someone I used to be friends with blocked me for calling out this activity, so that is a definite red flag that my assessment was correct.

We didn't get too much into it in our conversation, because I didn't want to lose any more friends over this. 

Murphy had just announced a major funding coming to not only Washington Crossing, but other Crossroads of the Revolution related parks such as Monmouth Battlefield, Princeton Battlefield, Trenton Battle Monument, and others.

We talked about some of the future of parks and the staffing issues we face. It seems like nothing is getting done, and there is a situation where there are great employees, doing the best they can to get more work done with a fraction of the workers, and then a couple of really bad eggs that do literally no work at all, and it is they who end up being seen and are the justification for more cutbacks.

Among the things that are being done, Washington Crossing is getting a new visitor center.

 While this is a nice thing for the park, they have a functioning visitor center that is inhabited every day. At the same time, there is a house in the park built in 1764 that is criminally wasting away. 

I fail to see how dumping millions of dollars into a new building could take precedent over something like that, but that is literally what is happening.

Plenty of other parks are having huge problems like that. In Monmouth Battlefield, one of the historic homes that was part of the Underground Railroad had collapsed, literally into a trail, and no one even knew about it until I reported it. The office building at Hacklebarney has a collapsed roof, and water is coming in daily, through the roof, collapsing the visitor center flood.

1764 house

There are countless other examples, and yet new buildings are being buil there, a new million dollar restroom is going in at Hacklebarney, and these historic buildings can get no help.

It was nice that Shane got to meet Clay and Mark, because I had tried to get him to get job as a seasonal interpreter at the park, because of his familiarity with area history. Maybe one day.

It turned out that Mark had a railroad affiliation that I didn't remember about, so they had a lot to talk about.

While Shane was in discussion, I let Ev out of his stroller, and he was running around the museum like crazy. He was particularly going to the books for sale and pulling them off the shelves, making a mess. I had to keep taking them from him and putting them back where they belonged.

Before we left, we discussed where we were heading. My original plan was to try to follow the easier trails to the north, via Brickyard Road through the park, then into the Ted Stiles Preserve at Baldpate Mountain, or perhaps the Fiddlers Creek Preserve, but then I remembered it was hunting season and some of those trails are closed periodically for hunting. It turns out Clay's wife works at one of those park offices, and he reached out to her to see if they were open that particular day. They were not, and so I made plans to amend the hike from this point.

I decided we would take a roundabout route through Washington Crossing State Park, and then head back down into Titusville, and follow the Bel Del Railroad bed south to the new Scudder Falls Bridge. 

We would then return to our start point by way of the Delaware Canal on the Pennsylvania side. With the weaving around in the state park and that route, it would put us above fifteen miles as I wanted.

We said goodbye and headed out into the park, but were warned first that there was an outfit hired for Ash tree removal, and they were working at this time. We would have to avoid them if we found an area to be closed off.

We headed over to the one way access road, which goes east and west on either side of the historic route of the Continental Lane. That old road up the center was typically quite clear and should have been no problem getting a stroller through.

I was rather shocked to find that as soon aw we got to where the deer enclosure used to be (something I removed when I was working there), there were so many sticks and branches down blocking the trail that I could not easily push through it. It didn't look like anyone had done anything on the trail in a long while.

Disappointed, I headed back the way we came, and we walked east on the eastbound trail toward the exit turn, but made the left over toward Knox Grove. 

1912, A. L. Opdyke photo

Below us to the left was the now abandoned Summer Outdoor Theatre stage area. When I was working there, it was still in use, but was the off season. 

It has now been a while since that was open, and it is looking pretty rough. The theatre troupe still exists, but they moved to a different venue. I suspect that the theatre will never open again because the parks are such a mess, and because the stage area is situated along the creek. That is probably a big red flag when it comes to electric and such.

We continued to the right from the entrance to Knox Grove, onto some mowed trails to the east. Several trucks and chippers drove by us, presumably for their lunch breaks, that had been working on the ash trees. We continued to closed old paved road, which brought us further to the east and then back out toward Continental Lane. There had been an older park entrance in that area, but it's been closed forever. We turned back and to the left onto more trails in the east side of the park. It was my intention to head north toward the Philips Farm section. 

I didn't want to go all too close to the edge of Bear Tavern Road, and so we took to some of the trails slightly inland, to the west and then north.

This area was very annoying. The trails were completely blocked off by fallen trees. Some of them were so bad that lifting the stroller over or through them was out of the question, and the weeds and brush on either sides of the trail were so impenetrable that we couldn't go around.

We ended up heading west for a bit, trying to go north but couldnt' get through, then west again, then north again. Shane continued to get in front to help to lift the stroller over the managable trees.

I don't know if this is happening so much because they're short-staffed, or because they're not doing anything, but it was really the worst I've ever seen the park.

We eventually found our way to the grassy trail closer to Bear Tavern Road, which was the route we should have taken to begin with, and then came out ot the parking lot there. 

I was surprised again to see this entire parking area and access to the Philips Farm section was closed. The only problem in that area was that one of the farm buildings had a collapsed roof. I found out there are tons of brand new grills and such inside that were allowed to go when it collapsed. It just got more disheartening to see as we moved on though.

We continued back to the west through Philips Farm section and then past the group campsites. We made our way from here out to the access road to the Nature Center.

The Nature Center used to be run by a great guy named Wayne, who not only provided nature programs, but also maintained some of the trails in the immediate vicinity of the center. 

Now, Wayne retired, and it looks like his position was eliminated, so there is another vacant building in the park. I was told that rather than backfill his position, another resource interpretive specialist got a promotion. Tha doesn't help that park however.

We continued north onto the old Brickyard Road, which is paved but closed to traffic. It travels across the park out to Church Road. The former superintendent used to live in a house in the park out that way, but he recently transferred to Stokes State Forest.

The road dips down and crosses a brook, and then climbs back up to more of the open field areas.

Just as we began climbing back up, Shane felt the call of nature and had to blow mud. 💟

I pushed Ev further uphill and through the fields, and then watched for the point where we would be turning to the left. I tried to push Ev slow so that Shane would have some time, but I couldn't sit Ev still for very long or he goes off and gets loud.

At least it wasn't too cool out. It must have been about seventy degrees; very unseasonably warm. 

Eventually, Shane came into view heading uphill, and when he was close enough, I made the left turn we had to make to continue through the park to the west.

It wasn't all that far down before we came to the historic homestead built in 1764. I'm not sure all of the history of the building, but I remember Wayne telling me more about it. I just can't remember what it all was.

I walked around the building, and was satisfied at least that the boards over the doors and windows were still intact. The place has some roof issues, and when it goes, there will be no saving it. I truly hope that some of this Murphy funding plan will turn it into something. Even if it were just park housing, there is a level of security that comes with having someone living with in the park.

The problem here is that the state, and most governments for that matter, have no concept of what fair compensation is or what rent should be. Having lived in government housing for over two years, I know what it's like to have privacy much of the time, but none others, and to have my home broken into because it was thought to be a vacant park building. 

Current lease proposals are for "fair market value", which is far from fair when we consider that we are in a public place at all times. I would be happy to live in a home like that, and the caveat could be that I maintain the trail system in the park. Provide me with a mower, and I'd keep them all mowed down, and trimmed back. I'd pay utilities and a reduced rent. However, state leadership has no concept of the resources they're supposed to be entrusted with.

We continued past the homestead, and the grassy trail through the former field edges was incredibly muddy. This got to be quite a chore to push Ev through on the stroller. The wheels were digging in pretty badly, but I pushed forward. It was so hot out that I was sweating like crazy. I had to strip away my jacket and just go with the tee shirt. 

We continued along the trail until we got to the intersection with the Blue Dot Trail, which skirts part of the farm perimeter trails at the west side. We turned right there, and followed it to the north for just a bit, and then left downhill and out through another old field area. 

The trail continued to dip down, and the terrain got to be a bit less muddy. We passed into some old woods, and reached a spot where a woods road used to come in. I thought I remembered the trail continuing straight and coming out along Rt 29 in Titusville, but there was junk all over the trail ahead, and blazes led to the right.

This trail had been rerouted since the last time I was out there. It now turned to the right, and came out in the back of the Titusville United Methodist Church Cemetery.

The historic place of worship dates back on the site to the 1880s, but the original church was replaced by the one standing today starting in 1903. It was completed in its current form in 1956, which I am assuming meaning all additions. Historic photos seem to show that the chapel building standing today was in place soon after constructed started.

We cut through the cemetery, and then behind the church, to the access road into the front, which afforded us a view of the former railroad station site and canal just to the west. 

We headed down to Church Road, then crossed Rt 29, and I got another then and now history compilation using Mr. Opdyke's photo of the station and canal from 1912.

The station is long gone. It was built in 1850 as one of the original stops on the Bel Del Railroad, and was a rather large structure.

The canal was originally just a feeder for the main Delaware and Raritan Canal, and it opened for navigation at about the same time the railroad was built. This is why the towpath was always on the inland side, because there was not enough room for the railroad and the towpath.

The station remained in place until the lumber shortage during World War II. The Pennsylvania Railroad dismantled the station to use the lumber elsewhere, and the building was replaced by a simple shelter building for passengers.

Titusville continued to be a passenger stop until the 1950s and was discontinued, and all passenger service on the Bel Del line ended in 1960. Freight service hung on, with all of the area quarries north of Titusville, until 1979. The line was then truncated and abandoned from Trenton up to Lambertville, where there was connection to Flemington, and from Lambertville north to Milford.

I decided at this point, with Shane on hand, that we would make a history video about the Titusville Station site to post on Metrotrails, and it went pretty well. Shane suggested we do another when we got to the former site of Washington Crossing Station.

We continued on the rail bed to the south for a bit, and I noted on the right side, out in a wooded swath, that there was a nice little cemetery and stone arch bridge on the road through Titusville, and then on the next wooded swath, what looked to be some sort of berm. It was like it was a water impoundment, or like a dredge spoil. Shane seems to think I spotted the former site of the Titusville Rubber Mill, but I'm not totally sure what it was.

When we got nearer to the state park again, I decided to take the opportunity to use the restroom and give Ev another diaper change. It's always a pain to do that outdoors, but it wasn't too terrible on this day because it was so warm.

It was a great relief to be on the rail bed moving along more easily than the previous trails. While I went down to the restroom, I told Shane he could go and check out the liquor store to see if they had anything good.

I got into the men's restroom, and of course there was no changing table. Usually it still is the women doing that job, but now I have Ev out more than his mother does, and so I have to do diaper changes often in these places, without the easy means to do so.

I ended up having to lay him on te floor on his blanket and change him there. He was hollering at me because he never likes, it, and a guy was coming in trying to use the restroom himself, but then waited because I needed the floor space. 

When this inconvenience was over, we headed back up to the rail bed and started heading south toward the bridge. Shane was waiting outside and didn't go into the store yet, so I told him to hurry up and do that, and then we did a little video on the history of Washington Crossing, with the station, the canal, and the bridge. 

Sh
ane picked up a six pack of the Triple Horse by River Horse Brewery, which is a pretty good one. It's not as good as what Weyerbacher puts out, but it's an acceptable subsitute. 

We continued to the south pretty easily, and the time just flew by. 

We came to the old metal mile marker that denotes 61 miles to Manunka Chunk, the northern terminus of the Bel Del, and 6 miles from Trenton at the other end. 

Shane pointed out that I'd taken a photo of him at that mile marker more than five years ago, and since that time he and a friend had traveled the line and re-painted the old mile markers.

Not exactly like most of my then and nows, but midlly entertaining.

The next major point of interest south of Washington Crossing was the former site of Somerset Junction. This was the western terminus of one of the most obscure but substantial railroads in the history of New Jersey. I had tried to hike all of it as closely as possible, and pretty much did it all, although there are a couple of bits I can get on that I couldn't before.

The Mercer and Somerset was funded by the Pennsylvania Railroad and built very quickly from this point on the Bel Del, near where Jacob's Creek flows into the Delaware, up to East Millstone where it joined another branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad out of New Brunswick.

The purpose of the line was not so much to be practical, but to bar the National Railway from being able to build its proposed new line across New Jersey to New Brunswick.

The Mercer and Somerset was built in the 1870s, but the National Railway, under the name Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad, was built anyway and completed through in 1876, parallel with the Mercer and Somerset. 

The Hopewell Frog War took place at this time, where a M&S locomotive was parked across the "frog", a fitting where the rails cross one another at grade, to keep the Delaware and Bound Brook train from getting through. The conflict has gone down in area history. 

The M&S was forced to move its locomotive, and by 1880, was finished. The line was ripped up and didn't even see a decade of service.

Today, the right of way is hard to see, but at this western end, Jacob's Creek Road was built on the right of way.

The former junction site is an obvious widening of the right of way. Despite the fact that the line was abandoned so early, the Pennsylvania Railroad kept "Somerset" as a station stop for many years later. 

There was a station building as well as a water tower, but that was eliminated with the end of steam, I think in the early fifties.

The base of the water tower and the station foundation were recently cleared off by state park service, by one of my co workers, Clint Wojcik. 

We made another little history video at this location, and I got a couple of then and now compilations of the former station and water tower site.

We continued south from here, and eventually came to the ramp up to the recently completed Scudder Falls bridge, which carries I--95 across the Delaware River.

Shane and I had attended the grand opening of the new shared use pathway across the bridge, in which many dignitaries were present. Little Ev was the first baby stroller across the bridge. 

There were some nice views of the bridge as we approached from the New Jersey site. 

The entire thing is full of cameras, and I didn't realize it the previous time, but this bridge really has no barriers on it if someone were suicidal. It's rare to see bridges like this erected without those kinds of barriers I think. I'm kind of glad they're not there, because if someone is that set on it, they'd get around anyway, and this way it provides for a very nice view of the Scudder Falls themselves, actually just a riffle in the Delaware River where it drops elevation rather quickly.

When we got to the Pennsylvania side, we had considered walking down to Yardley in order to stop at the Vault Brewery, because last time we came through, we both found some brews that we absolutely loved, but that would have put us out an extra two miles, and more than an hour more walking. 

I wanted to be back well before dark, and so we just continued to the north. Shane still had plenty of his Triple Horse left, and I ended up drinking some of his just to keep him from getting too loopy. 

He would be ramming around taking photos, and not realize that I poured some of his drink into my empty bottle. 

The bridge leads directly onto the Delaware Canal towpath on the PA side, across from the 1799 house, which was originally in the Scudder family and reworked by Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission as a new restroom/comfort station along the trails. 

The canal was built a
s the Pennsylvania Canal, Delaware Division, in 1832 and ended up controlled by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company when the Pennsylvania Canal went out in the 1850s to private interests. 

We headed north on the canal, which was very pleasant. It was a great way to finish out the day. 

in a short distance, we reached Lock #7, which remains i good shape with some wood work still in the lock walls, and lock house still standing and occupied to the right.

After we passed the lock a bit, I took Ev out of the stroller and allowed him to walk on the towpath by himself. This would be the longest he ever walked solo to date.

I thought for sure that Ev was going to get tired. I pushed the stroller just a little in front of him. The trail had water to the left and a slope to the right, so I had to watch closely that he didn't get too bold as to go close to those edges. Fortunately, he didn't want anything to do with anywhere but the treadway of the trail.

I would have to watch if I saw a cyclist coming by, but the trail wasn't busy at this point.

Ev was loving it, and was almost getting into a run, which was amazing considering he hasn't even been walking for all that long. 

He must have gone about a quarter of a mile all by himself, which is great. At some point, Shane laid down on the ground looking like his feet were in the canal and he was dead. I watched Ev and took a video of him hurrying down the trail toward me to see if he would notice.

Just as Ev was getting closer to Shane, he stopped in his tracks and looked over, motioned with his hand a bit, and looked confused. He certainly noticed that something didn't look right, and I was very happy to see he was so well aware of his surroundings. He could easily not have been, because he was so deeply concentrating on his own trajectory.

We let him continue to walk until he started getting fussy. That's been my strategy when I let him out to walk on his own. Let him go to the point it is no longer enjoyable.

I want to try to keep this as positive as can be for him.

I put him back in the stroller, and we continued to the north over the Hough's Creek. In this section, the canal goes over both Dyer's Creek and Hough's Creek. 

As we reached the Rt 532 bridge near the end, someone had crashed into the bridge railings pretty badly. The underside of the bridge on the towpath was blocked off, although it wasn't necessary, and bits of the bridge railing were hanging over the edge. It seems like someone must have driving right up onto the railings. 

It seemed to go by pretty fast that we got to Taylorsville where Washington Crossing Historic Park is. At that point, we turned to the right from the canal and into the park along the weaving acccess road. There is a lovely pond along the west side of it, adjacent to the canal that looked quite lovely this time of night. 

We walked to the right around the edge of the pond, and then toward a lovely pavilion known as Greene Pavilion, for one of the Generals involved in the crossing of the Delaware under Washington.

We cut to the right across some of the grass and back to the parking lot where we had started to conclude the hike, which was perfect. 

The sun was just starting to go down as was the temperature, so it was a great time to finish.

I let Ev stand up and meander a bit while I got the stroller and all of the stuff all packed up, and we took Shane back to his house up Rt 32.

I was so thankful to be out on this day to enjoy the unseanonably warm temperatures, and to have good experiences. It was what I needed, but it was also what was best for Ev. He got out and walked the farthest he'd been yet, laughed and smiled all day. 

I can only imagine what the experience of eight plus hours in nature means for his development, but it seems as though it must be a very good thing.