Hike #1629: 10/27/24 Hidden Lake to Stroudsburg with Matthew Davis, Evan "Joe Millionaire" Van Rossum, Alyssa Lidman, Ken Zaruni, Elizabeth Manner, Diane Reider, Kirk Rohn, Robin Deitz, Stephen Argentina, Justin Gurbisz, Brittany Weider, Jenny Tull, Professor John DiFiore, Dan Lurie, and Everen
This next hike would be a point to point, this time bringing us back to the Stroudsburg area.
This hike came about because Lerch, or Michael Clark, contacted me that he was going to be having a Halloween Party again, and he wanted me to come up with a hike to the place again.
I'd been doing hikes this time of year up in this area regularly for years. It was associated with Michele Valerio's birthday in the past, but the past few years she hadn't been attending them when I had them up there, but we figure this could double as everything anyway.
There are still several opportunities for different things to do in the area that would feature stuff I haven't done before, and I wanted to make sure I had something pretty good.
I decided to focus on a trip that would be diverse, feature more stuff that I'd already done before than not, but then a few other interesting things. I figured it would be the best trip overall of the routes I'd had planned.
I made the meeting point the Aldi supermarket just down the street from Lerch and his fiancé Cara live, like I had done previous times.
I figured there was no way I'd be attending the party the night before because Ev's mom wouldn't permit me to take him, but she and I had an altercation a few days prior, and it resulted in a temporary split where she wasn't allowed to be around, so Ev and I did end up going to the party for a bit after all.
It was overall pretty tame, and Ev just played with the smoke machine a bit, blasting Justin with it.
We came back the next morning to the meeting point, and we shuttled from there to our start point I'd chosen, up at Hidden Lake on the Pocono Rim.
Hidden Lake has a loop trail around it, and in the past couple of years I did a hike on the south side of it, but the more obvious trail goes along the north side. I decided we would do this and then some of the dirt roads from there.
We made our way into the lot in this sort of secluded spot, and Stephen met up with us there because he'd missed the meeting point.
It was chilly in the morning, but not too terrible.
We got on the trail, which was covered in tree roots. I figured this might be the most difficult part of the hike all day, because it was just some narrow foot path.
Some sections I was able to push the stroller through, but other sections were rather tough. I got Ev to get out of the stroller and walk for a bit, but overall he was being pretty lazy.
Not only has he been lazy lately, he's milking it and saying "me lazy, me lazy" all the time when he wants me to pick him up.
He's starting to realize though, that I cannot just pick him up and carry him when I have the stroller to push, so he deals with riding in it. Then, he'll start crying "bumpy, bumpy" and he doesn't like that. I give him the choice to deal with the bumps, or to get out and walk, and that's usually the end of the complaints for a bit.
Hidden Lake used to have some homes along it, which are gone now. I remember going in one on the west side of the lake on a hike many years ago.
As soon as we started out, there were some sort of building foundations on the left side of the trail. I'm not sure what these ever used to be for certain.
On the south side of the lake was a YMCA camp, and some of that is in place and still used.
We continued up and down along the slopes, and then came out to a nice little cover of the lake with a great view. I walked out into the water up to a bit above my knees, which felt pretty good, but I didn't submerge again this time. It was a bit cold for that.
The views were outstanding around the outside of the inlet, and then out to a point close to the very northernmost part of the lake, where the grading of the dam spillway began.
It was a relief to have the stroller to that point after some rough trail, but I knew it was only going to be that beginning part of the hike anyway.
The leaves were looking beautiful in this part of the southern Poconos.
When we got to the dam, there was a set of steps going down to a small parking lot. Ev had been walking much of this part with the rest of the group, and he wanted to continue on beyond the steps, but I was a bit concerned about that because we were going to be on a paved road briefly, and we were going to be going uphill quite a bit, and I knew he wasn't going to want to do that.
I should have stayed on the trail beyond the dam a bit more, because there were ways to get out to where I was planning, on Church Hill Drive.
We followed paved Hidden Lake Drive just a short distance to Church Hill Drive and turned right there. Church Hill is unpaved and barely gets any traffic, which is part of why I wanted to include it as part of this hike. I don't believe I've ever walked it beyond Mosier's Knob.
Ev got back in the stroller, which he wasn't happy about at first, but I knew he was not going to walk up this hill.
These hills are killing me more than they should be. I was doing some serious mountain stuff up until Ev was born, and pushing the stroller is tough, but all of the weight I gained since he's been born makes it a whole lot tougher.
Part of that is just lack of being out and not changing diet, and part of it is the fact that I eat whatever food Ev doesn't finish, because I don't want anything to go to waste. I'm hoping that as he becomes more mobile, I'll be chasing him around and getting myself whipped back into shape more.
We continued up the hill to the top of Mosier's Knob. There were some old side roads off of this that I actually never followed before. They're not shown on Trail Conference maps, but they are shown as faint lines on the internal use only NPS maps. Maybe one of these days I'll follow some more of those as well.
At the top of the hill, we reached the intersection with Mosier's Knob Road. One day, I hope to walk all of that as well. I've already done sone of it; some of this was one of the first hikes I did after barely surviving my house fire in 2010.
From Mosier's Knob, we continued downhill, gradually at first, toward the south side of the knob and the Delaware River. There were some nice seasonal views through the trees as we continued.
About halfway down to the bottom, there was a little side road to the right, which leads into the Zion Church Cemetery, and I planned to take that to the top of the cemetery, then descend to the church at Church Hill Drive again.
We followed this, which soon led out to the uppermost level of the old cemetery. I saw some graves for someone from the Michael family, relatives of Nancy Michael Shukaitis, who wrote some of the history books about this area.
Once we got to the middle of the cemetery, we descended very steeply toward the Zion Church. It was built in 1851 to replace an earlier structure along River Road below.
I had to hold on pretty tightly to the stroller as not to drop it. That was a pretty rough slope so I held on super tight.
We soon got down to the church and paused for a moment so everyone could take a closer look, then turned to the right and continued down Church Hill Road to River Road a short distance away.
From here, I was planning to turn to the left, and then cut through a narrower swath of trees to get into the fields, and then over to the Joseph McDade Recreation Trail, which would be the next leg of our trip.
Fortunately, Dan I think it was had gone somewhat ahead, and found a spot to the right where we could go directly in to the fields via a farm access, with absolutely no bushwhacking.
We had a very pleasant and easy walk over to the fields, and then directly to the south to the Delaware River and the trail where we turned right.
It was a very pleasant walk along field edges, just above the Delaware River to the southwest.
We passed through a section of woods, and then came out at the Smithfield Beach boat ramp where there are restrooms, so we took a nice break there. I walked down to the water and walked into it up to almost my waist. It felt pretty good, but again, too cold to completely submerge I think.
I was able to put all of the garbage from the day so far into the receptacles, and I recall there was a park ranger just sitting there when we popped out of the woods. It was rather funny that he took off as soon as we arrived. It was almost as if he just knew we were the type of group he would probably have to cite us for, and he wanted to have no part of that!
Soon, we moved on along the trail, which passed through the picnic grounds and close to the parking lot, past another restroom building.
We skirted the access roads through the open area, and then cut back into the woods and slightly uphill when we came close to another little car top type of boat launching area.
We continued through woods a little uphill, then down through a rather deep gully, which was one of the steepest portions of the McDade Trail. It's quite a pretty spot.
We steeply made our way up the other side, with nice views of the Delaware River, to a sort of level area alongside more cultivated fields.
Soon enough, we came to the western terminus of the McDade Trail at Hialeah Picnic Area.
We waited at the entrance to the picnic area for everyone to catch up, because I wanted to show everyone the forgotten cemetery evidence just up ahead.
Once everyone was caught up, we made our way through the picnic ground. There were charcoal grills and trash receptacles on the way, but as we approached the end of the place, I started pointing out the stones and slate and such that I believe to be former grave markers. Each one is set in a sort of concrete frame, obviously much later than the time of interment, probably to protect the markers.
Most of what I felt were markers were these slate bits, but there is one undeniable one, in a marble material, and still clearly legible.
The grave of Rhoda Shoemaker laid flat in the grass, somewhat growing over it, near a trash receptacle. I had found it and dug it out a bit more a couple of years earlier.
This epitaph near the south end of the grounds, and more inspection revealed what might have been 4 more graves right there, with the same recessed epitaphs embedded in other rock. There was also some evidence of what might have been cemetery delineation and other slate pieces.
The other stones had no legible markings, but this grave of a 5 year old girl named Rhoda, who died in 1833, is quite clear. She lived in Warren County, and was buried on the farm of her maternal grandfather, now the Picnic Area.
It just amazes me that the federal government saw fit to put a picnic ground, where people are regularly blasting music and throwing trash, right in an old cemetery.
We continued walking to the southwest through the picnic grounds, and then turned to the right on the access road back out to River Road.
There is another public field there, with no trail through it, but it was full of crop and weeds on the sides, so we opted to just go for the road.
Just a little bit further ahead is an abandoned house, known as the McManus House, on the left. It looks like it might have been lived in just a few years ago, but not recently.
We continued from here up River Road to the west. It at times had a line of cars coming at us, but overall wasn't too bad.
I told the group before we got out to the road that we would be turning off, and not to assume where we were going. I had a really good route in mind that I hadn't taken any groups through on much in the past, and it makes the walk so much better.
Unfortunately, the group nearest to the front got too far ahead and didn't hear me at all when I called out. They ended up having to just do the road walk.
The rest of us turned to the left off of the road when we got parallel with the last of the Shawnee on Delaware community rental places associated with the inn.
We went through a brief weedy spot, and then down to the left through the grass, at the end of the property, toward the Delaware River.
Just into the line of trees, there is a good trail that follows the Delaware downstream in this section.
The section of the Delaware is separated from the main flow by Depue Island and Shawnee Island, and the smaller side stream is known as the "Binnekill", which literally means "side stream" in Dutch.
Several mowed paths pass through the swath of trees and a small meadow parallel with the buildings along Depuy Road.
We continued along these pleasant, mowed pathways to the east, and eventually we emerged in the grass below the historic old stone homestead known locally as "Fort Depuy", which is not correct.
Historically, this building was known as "Manwalamink". It has been known as the erroneously labeled Fort Depuy in more recently years.
The garrisoned, stockaded fort actually known as Fort Depue, 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.
I went over this history with the part of the group that followed me, but the others missed out. We walked from the house a short distance on the road to the east, and then turned to the left. This little side road took us to yet another Shawnee owned trail directly beside the Binnekill.
We passed along the end of Minisink Ave, and then to Hogan Drive and followed the edge of that to the Shawnee Inn and Country Club ahead.
We walked along the main access road to a point where we got a good view of the hotel to the right, and of the former swimming pool, now filled in partially, and partially used for subterranean storage, to the left.
The inn opened in 1911 as the Buckwood Inn, in Spanish Colonial Revival style with white-Moorish architecture and Spanish tile roof. It is amazingly the only remaining resort along the Delaware River.
The place was built by Charles Campbell Worthington. Worthington's father, Herny Rossiter Worthington, invented the first direct-acting steam pump in 1840. He found great success with the Worthington Pumping Engine Company, and Charles took over the business upon his father's death in 1880.
CC Worthington started spending more time at his country home in Shawnee on Delaware in the late 1890s. He built his first small golf course there in 1898.
He purchased 8,000 acres of land on both sides of the Delaware and began to establish the Buckwood Inn resort. Popular Sunfish Pond and Worthington State Forest were part of Worthington's estate and private deer park, and he had water piped from the pond down the mountain and across the Delaware for the use of Buckwood Inn. At the time, Sunfish Pond was called Buckwood Lake.
The golf course was an early design of A. W. Tillinghast who designed many notable courses. In 1912, Worthington invited professional golfers to compete on his course, which led to the creation of the Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA).
Worthington tried to have sheep on premises to keep the grounds in reasonable shape, but it was quite a chore. As a result, he invented the Gang Mower with three moving wheels. First based out of Shawnee, and then nearby Stroudsburg, Worthingtn found success with the Worthington Mower Factory, because not only his field of work, but also farmers had use for the new concept and design.
The golf course is still considered among the finest in America.
The resort was renamed Shawnee Inn in 1943 when it was purchased by band leader and radio personality Fred Waring. Frequent notable faces were Jackie Gleason, Ed Sullivan, Lucille Ball, Art Carney, Perry Como, and Arnold Palmer.
The Inn remains popular throughout the year for golf, river recreation, skiing, hiking, and more.
We walked up toward the front of the place for a good view, and then around it to the north a bit. We followed the walkways around to the entrance of the Shawnee Craft Brewery, where I wanted to see what strong stuff they had.
My first trip to this brewery had been great because they had a delicious strong thing called "Hair of the Bear", but they've never had it the other times I've been back since.
I went in and asked this time, and they sadly did not have it.
What they did have was something called Lakes and Rivers Imperial Schwarzbier, and so I got a pack of those to split with Matt as we continued. I wanted to make sure I got a few drinks in him, because Matt gets absolutely hilarious.
Once we'd picked something up, we headed out and onto the cart path that follows parallel to the entrance road but to the left a bit.
We went north to the maintenance area, and the road that goes to the west, toward the bridge to Shawnee Island.
On the right was the historic Nun House, originally the LeBar homestead, sandwiched between some of the other buildings and looking in pretty bad shape. I found out from the folks working at the inn that it was originally intended that the old house become the craft brewery, but they ran into problems.
The home is in rough shape. Management of the Shawnee Inn made efforts to use it for their craft brewery, and after spending a lot of money to renovate it, they were not permitted to use it because it was too many feet away from the rest of the establishment. A fine example of rules getting in the way of positive progress, and why concessions should sometimes be made.
We continued on down the road in front of some of the townhouse looking time share buildings, and then toward the bridge to Shawnee Island.
This was my first time seeing the new bailey bridge they'd put in, at a higher elevation than the original bridge to the island which sat down below.
When I found out that the old removable bridge was to be replaced, I had gone out with Ev and walked over it. That was nearly two years prior.
Now, the new new one was fully in place and only the footings for the old bridge, which was the site of the bridge for probably a century, remained.
We didn't go over the bridge. Instead, we continued on a pedestrian trail that leaves this area and continues on what was likely an earlier alignment of River Road, to the west.
There were some pretty nice views of the Delaware River through the trees along this route. We continued mostly clear with only a little help needed over a couple of fallen trees, and then downhill slightly to I think it was Ickes Memorial Drive.
We reached this and then turned immediately right to head uphill a bit. We walked the road up to the present day alignment of River Road where we then turned left again.
I had walked this segment before, but I wanted to try to do things a bit differently this time, adding some other stuff I'd not done before.
Where we hit River Road, there was an old stone entrance gate. I'm not sure if that is original to the time shares or if it is something of an older estate.
As we began to walk down it, there was an abandoned batting cage or some sort of sports thing in a fence to the left behind a building.
We continued past a speed limit 5 sign, and out toward the first buildings. At the corner, there was an Air B&B sign for a lodging that a sign said was to open soon. This building and other were right on the Delaware River, where Acres Road turned hard to the right.
We followed the road for a bit past a few homes, and then the road soon cut to the northwest, back toward River Road. We followed it.
In this next stretch, we were immediately parallel with a church property, which I figured would be good to go through, but there wasn't a really good way through.
I walked ahead a bit and saw nothing, then started backtracking when the group pointed out a good spot close behind where I was. We all made our way through and walked across a parking lot to the west.
We walked around the south side of the building on the south side of the Light the World Church grounds, and then turned to the north along the edge of a slope, at the side of the mowed lawn.
Straight ahead, there was a giant chimney out in the open area before the next building. It looked to be old, but not colonial old. Not really even 1800s, more of an earlier twentieth century thing.
I posed the questions online to some local historians who told me this property was previously a camp. I guess this was the chimney for a lodge or something, although I still do not know for sure.
After being a camp, I am told the property was some sort of special school, and finally the church it is today.
We went past the big chimney, which had chairs in front of it, so it still gets used, and then we passed around the outside of the next buildings. We made our way past a couple of parked vehicles, and out along an access road to the north. This took us to the intersection with the gravel road to the left, which leads along a small ridge to St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church, built in 1890.
I had gone out this way before on previous hikes, but not for a while. I'd been back there in the dark before as well, and I may have never even done a group hike through here in daylight until this time.
It is a beautiful church perched on a hill that overlooks present day River Road below through the trees.
We backtracked from the church a bit, and then took a side road to the west which leads down into the cemetery associated with this church. We turned right from this and skirted the edge of the cemetery heading to Binnekill Lane.
We turned to the right here, and headed out toward River Road.
Just before coming out to the road, in the woods to the left, there were large concrete structures.
I am not sure what the purpose of these things are, except that they apparently had something to do with the former New York, Susquehanna, and Western Railroad, which passed through and crossed over River Road very close to this spot.
One of the interesting things I had not noticed in the past, perhaps because maybe it wasn't there just yet, was the development of a frisbee golf course along these structures.
There was now a trail along them, which I might have tried to incorporate into this hike had I known they were there. I will have to go back and explore a bit more in the near future.
We reached River Road and turned immediately right. There used to be a train station here on the NYS&W, and I haven't looked too far into that yet. It then crossed over the Marshall's Creek just to the north of us.
This was the oiginal part of the line built in 1881, which went north up along the Brodhead Creek, and then on to Stroudsburg, and then to Gravel Place where there was an interchange with the Lackawanna main line until 1893. After that, the wholly owned subsidiary, the Wilkes Barre and Eastern, traveled on to Wilkes Barre and other points.
The WB&W lasted only until about 1939 and was abandoned. The NYS&W through this area was abandoned in the forties, and down at Columbia was abandoned in 1962.
We continued down the road to the intersection with Post Office Road. There we reached the Minisink Hotel, a bar and grill that has been a popular spot for over 280 years.
This old coach stop building opened as a hotel in this area in 1740, in the earliest days of the River Road.
River Road is a very important early colonia through road, similar to the Old Mine Road on the New Jersey side.
There were once other lodgings and businesses in the area of present day Minisink Hills. It was once known as "North Water Gap", as well as "Experiment Mills" around 1860, in addition to other names from time to time.
This little spot would be our late lunch stop. Originally, I had considered waiting until later in the day and not really eating, because the plan had been to end at Lerch and Cara's house, but unfortunately, Lerch got called into work last minute. He would was ordered to board a plane in the late morning while the hike was going on, so he was quite disappointed to miss it. He wasn't too worried about being hung over from the party though, because he said he didn't have to do anything but ride in the plane.
We went into the bar, and I talked to a pretty brunette girl about whether we could be served outside at the tables rather than inside. She said we could, and I told the others to go in and order.
I got a cheeseburger to share with Ev, with some fries, and talked to a couple of drunk guys at the bar that were ball busting a bit. They seemed pretty interested when I told them how much we were hiking.
I went back outside and Ev was running around having fun. He knew not to go into the road, and the area around the outdoor seating was pretty well delineated.
Even better, there was the covered bridge over the Marshall's Creek, which went to a former concert venue site that is now grass on the other side.
This covered foot bridge was great for Ev. He climbed the steps and ran back and forth across it happily the entire time we were there.
This was good because it let him get his energy all out, and then by the time the cheeseburger came out, he was willing to eat a little.
This was really a great burger. Food and service we all agreed were great. I was so happy they let us eat outside.
Once we were all done, we headed out from the place and onto Post Office Road. Before River Road had its own bridge over the Brodhead Creek to the west, Post Office Road used to cross its own bridge over the Brodhead, but is now a dead end down this way.
We followed the road out, and passed beneath the bridge abutments where the NYS&W used to cross over top. Just a little past that, close to where the bridge used to span the Brodhead, there used to be an ATV path to the right that led up to the rail bed, which could be followed upstream past the paper mill and then to another missing bridge site where an old road used to pass beneath.
Sadly, this right of way is no longer as accessible as it once was. I was able to push Ev's stroller through the first bit, but then there were far too many branches down. We could have gotten through it, and if I'd never done it before, I might have pushed for all of us trying it, but I was more in the mood to relax this time. I'd walked this before.
I decided we could split the group. Some of us would love to bushwhack through on the railroad bed and come up on Rt 209, but I didn't want to be struggling with it at this point, so I could go back around another way. I let everyone have the option. I was surprised that so many remained on the rail bed.
I turned back around to Post Office Road, and then we went out and back to the Minisink Hotel. We crossed over the pedestrian covered bridge from there, and I got a hand bringing the stroller up and over.
We crossed the lawn on the other side, right on out to Gap View Drive where we turned left and started heading uphill.
At the intersection with Hillside Drive, we continued uphill on that past a couple of nice old homes.
Before we came out to Rt 209, we turned left on Eilenberger Road and continued uphill a bit more. This is also a pleasant road without lines in it. It brought us out to Rt 209, only a short distance from the Odd Lot Outlet. We cut into this lot rather than walk directly on the highway and continued to the west for just a bit.
We passed the Dairy Queen and then a car wash place before having to come back out to Rt 209 west.
We continued west a bit more, and I noticed an old hotel that used to stand on the north side of 209 was totally gone. The last time we went by, it looked like there were homeless people squatting in or around it, and a motel area behind it was all abandoned.
I had eaten I think at a Mexican restaurant that had been inside it several years ago that was pretty good. I'm surprised that the hotel couldn't make it in this good location directly off of Rt 80.
Just after this, we reached the intersection with Independence Road/Rt 447. Our group was already there, sitting on the grass along the left side of the road.
They had followed the rail bed and then followed the woods road or something back uphill to come out behind the businesses on 209 and said it was pretty easy.
Together, we continued up the road and to the left, into the parking lot for a research lab property. We had come through this way on a past hike through the area, and this time we were just tracing that route backwards.
There is a little woods road that goes into the woods off of the back of the lot. I was actually easily able to push Ev in the stroller up the hill on this path a bit, and then came out on a power line clearing, where the path turned to the left and continued steeply uphill to the west.
We followed this, and soon came out into the parking lot for University Ridge Apartments.
We skirted the north side of the parking lot heading west, and then at the end of the lot, a paved trail enters the woods to continue to the west.
We emerged along a field, and then the Fine and Performing Arts Center building of East Stroudsburg University. Here, we turned to the left, as a trail continues to the south from where it hit the road, and then out to the west again.
We skirted the edge of the Smith Street Field, and then came out on Smith Street. From here, we continued straight on Centre Street, and then came to the Warrior's Baseball Field. We turned left there, and then cut at an angle across the field to the south a bit.
When we came to a chain link fence, we went to where there was a gap in it, and then ascended to East Brown Street. We crossed this directly, and then passed into a parking area directly on the other side, which skirts Interstate 80. We started following that west.
There seemed to be one private house in the way, so we had to go back to the north, out to Brown Street, then west, then south again.
Once we were back over by Rt 80, we could pretty much stay there for a bit. There was construction going on, and so we couldn't get too close to it.
It was fine walking through the parking lot. We made it through a couple of parking lots behind buildings, and then out to Prospect Street near the Rt 80 on ramp.
We safely crossed when the traffic died down, and then headed west all the west to the end of the road, where it terminates at a sort of townhouse area.
There were rather thick weeds all around this, and trying to get through and across whatever. Still, it wasn't all that far. I pointed out on the other side where the former Lackawanna Railroad tracks were, and that the road was just beyond that. If we could just bushwhack across the first part of it, and assuming it was dry enough below, we could walk right on through, it would save us a lot of time and distance.
I would need help with the stroller to pull this one off. The descent here was pretty bad.
I got the stroller through alright, and then reached what is apparently usually a pond. It was now a muddy slop hole pit, but totally dry for walking on.
I got right across the thing to the other side, and then carefully had to climb up the other side back to the former Lackawanna Railroad tracks, which were built through this location in 1855.
John was helping Ev across, and he walked across the slop hole himself. With a little help, he climbed the slope on the other side, but I went down to help him in the way up anyway.
From here, we went right out to Lincoln Avenue, and turned left. This road took us through the Walmart parking lot.
We made our way out to Main Street, turned left, and crossed over the Brodhead Creek on the road bridge. We then continued on Main on the left side, and soon passed by the Stroud Cemetery.
The historic former site of the Dansbury Mission sat adjacent to the present Stroud Cemetery in Stroudsburg Pa.
The mission had been built for the use of Moravian missionaries by Daniel Brodhead in 1744. It was destroyed in 1755 during the French and Indian War.
From here, it was the home stretch. We simply walked on through the downtown of Stroudsburg, and didn't take too long until we got to the Aldi Supermarket on the west side of town.
This had been another really pleasant and interesting hike and I'm really glad we to to finishing off the route as planned.
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