Hike #1633: 11/17/24 Whitpain and Gwynedd Loop with Jenny Tull, Diane Reider, Professor John DiFiore, Theresa I, Kirk Rohn, Heshy Busholz, and Everen
This next hike would be a big loop, and the next in my Wissahickon Watershed series.
Years ago, when I did the entire Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail, I hadn't considered doing all of the oddball parallel trails with it, or all of the other connectors, but my Neshaminy Creek series, and how all of that has gone, changed my mind about how I should be running the watershed series.
I was attracted to the Wissahickon once again because the opportunities with it were even greater than those of the Neshaminy that I loved so much.
The staggering number of trails and historic sites along this stream and its watershed are enough to easily keep us busy with the series for years.
This next hike was the one that I saw as possibly the most boring of all of the Wissahickon related hikes I had up my sleeve, but it was getting cooler out, and we wouldn't be swimming, so it felt like the right thing to post at this time.
The hike was a loop, which would connect with the last places we had been on the Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail at the east end, but as we did a loop east of the Wissahickon last time, this time the loop would be on the west.
I chose a place known as Stony Creek Sports Park near Lansdale as our starting point. The route I pieced together would have the most of the road walking near the start, and I figured on as much off road as possible through the other areas.
There turned out to be a lot of historic locations that made even the road walking bits worth it to me as we continued along.
I had originally intended to start the hike by going south through the Stony Creek Sports Park, though the grass, and then back out to the road, but then I decided against it.
We started walking, and then cut to the west from the parking area through grassy fields, toward the edge of the park, and out to North Wales Road.
We cut across the road as soon as there was no traffic, and there was a good sidewalk that weaved in and out a bit from the road on the other side.
Pretty soon, just barely to the west, we were skirting the south side of Worcester Township's Sunny Brook Park.
We skirted the ball fields here heading to the west, out to the intersection with Long Meadow Road. We crossed directly here, and a sidewalk went through along past the first house on the right. The trail then went to the right and came out to Stony Creek Road. This road and sidewalk skirted a retention pond on the left side.
Soon, we crossed over Long Meadow Road again, and continued on Stony Creek ahead until eventually, a crushed stone path broke away from the road on the left. There was a large earthen mound on the left side, so I had to go up and be sure it wasn't a cemetery or anything important. The maps don't seem to show anything here either.
The trail didn't go back down to North Wales Road. It continued ahead on top of the slope, which was right next to a scenic retention pond, which had a prettier look than some of the other local ones.
When we got to be parallel with a small development road across the street known as Cori Lane, we descended. Kirk pulled up just then in his truck ready to join us. I thought to maybe have him park there, but I was not really suitable, so I had him go on ahead to meet at the St John Church just up the road, because my plan was to walk through that property next.
We walked out Cory Lane to the end, and there was what looked like a trail on Google Maps at the end of it. When we actually got there, it was more of an access lane, but it did the job.
We went under the chains at the ends easily with the stroller, and came out at the Skippack Pike, where we turned to the left.
The access lane was immediately adjacent to active railroad tracks. When we turned left on Skippack Pike, we immediately crossed these tracks at grade. They pass beneath the Pennsylvania Turnpike Northeast Extension to the west, and we could see the underpass.
These tracks were the "Stony Creek line" of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad that ran from Norristown to Lansdale, built about 1874. The north side of this crossing was the former site of Belfry Station, and there is a sort of gravel lot where it used to stand.
I don't think the tracks here are used for passengers anymore, but rather just some other connection.
After a short while of walking the road to the southeast, we came to the St John Lutheran Church near Center Square, Whitpain Twp. Kirk was at his truck getting prepared to come out and join us.
The church was built in 1834 on the site of the original 1769 structure, which was used by General George Washington as a military hospital during the Revolution. The soldiers who did not survive are interred in the church cemetery.
Th Spanish Mission style facade is atypical of the area's historic churches, and so my first impression of the place was that it was not nearly as historic as it is.
Services were starting and there were people inside and going inside. We continued through the back of the lot and into the cemetery, first skirting the right side, and then passing along the back.
The church has many additions and such, so from the back, nothing looks historic about it at all.
There was one very nice, big tree in the back in the cemetery.
I had been hoping that maybe we would be able to exit the rear of the cemetery and pass through part of the Whitpain Hills development, but this is apparently a private homeowners association property and I didn't want to mess around and possibly have to turn around. We just continued back around the east side of the church through the parking lot, and then around the parsonage house.
We continued walking a bit further down Skippack Pike, and soon, on the right side, there was an abandoned old home with a mansard roof, right at the entrance to Whitpain Hills development.
It was a shame to see this rather glorious old home going to ruin. It was quite an impressive one.
The 1877 J D Scott Atlas of the county shows this as the home of J. Frantz.
I knew there was no good way to go through from here. We would have to make our way back out to Skippack Pike to continue to the southeast.
It was a bit narrow to walk on this at times, and we had to cross over to the north side temporarily to be on the safe side.
We approached a large parking area on the right and a vacant building, so we went into that for easier walking.
At this lot, we crossed the right of way of the Lehigh Valley Traction Company's Liberty Bell line, which was in service from 1912 to 1951. This was one of the most popular trolley lines in the area, but is also getting to be more forgotten all the time. I hope to lead a hike series on this one of these days.
Just ahead was the intersection of Skippack Pike and the old Dekalb Pike, Rt 202. This was previously the route of a predecessor trolley, the Montgomery Traction Company from 1902 to 1912. This earlier line was mostly in public roads, while the Liberty Bell Line remained on much more of its own right of way, which allowed for much faster speeds.
The Dekalb Pike was a toll turnpike road that started in 1853. The Skippack Pike was an older road dating to colonial days, which also became a turnpike. Tolls were removed from these in the 1880s.
We continued ahead a bit more, and there was an old building on the southwest corner of the intersection with Dekalb and Skippack Pikes. This was the former Waggon Inn, and more recently Reed's Country Store.
The one and one half story Waggon Inn was built Quaker Thomas Fitzwater in 1758, and it passed through many hands over the century and more.
Historic documentation notes construction of the current building as 1800, but some of the earlier building might be incorporated into the structure. No demolition of the 1758 structure was specified.
The Reed family began operation the location as a store in 1925, and it remained open by the same family until 2019.
In 2020, permits were issued to demolish the historic site, but there were deficiencies in the application.
I understand that a CVS was planning to build at the location, which is typical of these types of places. Pharmacies and convenience stores are constantly leading to the destruction of historic buildings. However, the CVS was built about a block to the south, and so the old hotel building remains.
It is uncertain what the future holds for the intersection and the old Waggon Inn / Reed's Store. I couldn't find anything very recent about the plans for the site, but it does appear to sit vacant currently.
We went down a side street away from Center Square, which is the actual name of the little community in Whitpain Township, and took a break at the Wawa. I forget what I got inside. Something or other, and shared with Ev. We had a little break outside for a bit before moving on.
I announced that this would be the crappiest part of the entire hike, because I didn't see it as anything at all exciting or interesting, but that ended up not really being the case.
We carefully crossed over the Dekalb Pike, and then cut through the parking lots of businesses on the east side as we headed south a bit. After a kids academy sort of building, we went behind it and remained behind buildings.
Soon, there was a very interesting and unique round building we passed behind.
Google maps showed this as the Bay Property Management Group building. It was apparently an engineering and architectural firm previously known as the Altemose Building.
We walked through the parking area to the south, and soon came out to Cherry Lane where we turned left. This was a bit of a road walk without a lot of interest. We followed the road through a neighborhood and then turned to the left until we got to Anvil Lane. A right turn from there took us to the north entrance to Wentz Run Park.
I had hoped to have a connection into this from the neighborhoods from the south, but I didn't see any opportunities to do that. I also figured this would certainly be the only time we'd ever be visiting this tiny little park.
We turned to the right into the park, first through the gass next to a baseball field, and then onto a paved trail that went around the perimeter of it.
We continued around to the south side, and in a short bit, there was an unpaved trail that went into the woods to the south.
I figured this would be just a little extra side loop, but was not sure where it was going to lead.
We had been in drought for quite a while, and so the Wentz Run, which starts in this park, was pretty much dry.
The trail took us south through the woods for a bit, and there was a side trail to the left. I wasn't sure where it would lead, but it led to one of those concrete block crossings similar to what we see on the Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail. This was more substantial than anticipated.
We continued on, and there was a sign reading there was the largest of some species of tree in Pennsylvania. I forget what kind it was, but we all thought it sounded cool.
The trail just kept going on, had another nicer bridge, and other options moving forward.
I found out that the trail continued on through, and pretty much connected with only short road walks to other area parks. The same went for the areas to the north. I was not expecting to find a larger trail system in this area, but it helped me to start looking at more future hikes here.
I had to make the executive decision to turn back before getting to the tree referred to on the maps. It was going to be too far out of the way, and we had a lot of stuff coming up. I didn't know what it was going to to be like.
We turned around, and when we got to another fork in the trail, we went to the right. This one weaved around in the woods a bit more, and was heading in the direction we needed it to.
Eventually, we emerged on the paved trail on the outside perimeter of Wentz Run Park once again. It looks like I can connect this right on through pretty easily, with some road walk, right on to the Stony Brook and then Schuylkil River. I'm going to be tying a lot together in the future!
At Wentz Run Park, we turned right and continued around the perimeter of the park in a counterclockwise fashion.
We walked along the right side, which was at a lower elevation than a lot of the ball fields, then reached a ninety degree turn to the left. This took us uphill slightly, and then past the parking lot and right another ninety degrees heading more north.
In this area was an old barn, a playground, ball courts, and such, heading out to Skippack Pike again. The trail sort of weaved around the old barn.
The bank barn and home to the right of it, now the office of a state representative here, on the 1877 J D Scott Atlas of Montgomery County, were those of E. Harley.
Straight across the intersection was Cathcart Road, with a nice old stone road on the right side of the corner.
In the 1877 J D Scott Atlas of Montgomery County, Cathcart Rd was known as Wood Road, and the stone home on the corner belonged to W H Seeley.
Around the corner, we headed over to the nearby playground for a break. Ev climbed around for a bit and had some fun, and I used the time to double check my plan for where we were heading.
I was rather surprised to find that exactly the route I had planned to walk, including the connecting road walk, was an official trail route for Whitpain Township.
This trail that connected Wentz Run Park to the Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail was called the Crossways Trail. I knew we were going to be heading through the Crossways Preserve on the way there, but it was nice to think we were walking this designated route without knowing it was a thing.
When we were ready to go, we headed back over to the old barn, and then hard to the left to follow an access lane to the Whitpain Twp administration buildings.
It seemed like we might not have been allowed to walk this way, and a police car was going by us as we were walking through, but he didn't stop us, so we were okay.
We continued around a corner, in front of the municipal buildings, and out to a trail to the right through grass and out to the traffic light where Wentz Road and Parkwood Road cross Skippack Pike.
Even at the crosswalks, there were signs stating that the Crossways Trail went to the north on Parkwood Road.
We crossed over and started walking north on the pleasant back street. People were in the neighborhood clearing leaves off of their properties while we walked by. I felt glad that I didn't have to spend my time doing such things.
At the very end of Parkwood, we could see into the baseball fields of Monmouth County Community College, but I knew ahead of time from studying the Google Street View images, that there was no way through here.
We had to go to the left on Hunter Drive, and at the end, right on Crestline Drive to get into these fields. Both of these turns had signs designating this the route of the Crossways Trail.
We continued into the open fields, and then kept to the left around the outside of it. I wanted to go with the best way through the fields, and it appears that this was actually the trail route.
We made it to the north bit of the first fields and turned right, and then around to the right where there was parking access.
I think Ev got out of the stroller for a little bit of time in this area. It was around here that we found a pair of orange sunglasses with dark lenses. They were big, but Ev put them on.
I told them these were his puke glasses because for some reason I thought they looked like a puke color, and so he continued to refer to them as his puke glasses. They were actually helpful when it was bright, and he liked having them for that.
We weaved to the right, and then cut to the north, parallel with the parking lot for the Health Sciences Center, and crossed over the college entrance road. From here, we were parallel with Cathcart Road on the right, and a college access road on the left, following the paved trail.
This was still very pleasant, and I was feeling very good about how nice this walk had been so far.
Pretty soon, the trail turned slightly right and came out to Cathcart Road, at the intersection to Morris Road. The trail crossed Cathcart, and then turned left and crossed over Morris Road. It then continued to the north a bit as a crushed stone path parallel with Cathcart to a parking lot, at the start of the Crossways Preserve.
There was a trail going right, which I understand is the longer one, and passes through some private property, but this time, I wanted to just stay on the official Crossways Trail, which continues a bit more into woods and parallel with Cathcart Road.
There was a very wide and improved surface trail that we were following, but in the trees to the right of us was a rougher trail. It turns out this is the equestrian route, which deviates from bicycle and pedestrian route through the preserve.
We cut away from the road to the right and deeper into the preserve. The section just before and through this was very nice with bridges and such, but most significantly, one very long boardwalk section that was just a pleasure to walk over. Ev wanted to get out of the stroller to run it himself.
We weaved on through this tract, and then there was a large field above us to the left where there was a guy driving a small utility vehicle. I understand some of these lands are actively being farmed by the folks at the Kindle Hill Farm just ahead.
The trail met a fence at the end of the wooded tract, and then continued along it, and parallel with Township Line Road. There was a sign in this area stating that the farm was private land, where generosity of the owners allowed for the trail to pass through.
We continued ahead, and soon the trail crossed Township Line Road, and became paved just inside the trees on the other side. We continued to parallel Township Line Road.
We soon reached Plymouth Road, and the trail stopped. The official trail route continues across Plymouth Road and onto Township Line Road, which used to go straight on through, but is now a dead end, and the trail continues on the road.
We continued walking down the road to the dead end, and then continued on Crossways Trail onto the abandoned section, and down toward the Wissahickon Creek.
Ev got out of the stroller again, because there was another long-elevated section of boardwalk at the approach to the bridge over the creek.
There were nice creek views from the bridge.
On the other side, the Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail crossed the abandoned bit of Township Line Road. Ahead, the road leads into the Penllyn area, where there are several more trails I'd cover on a future hike.
We began following the trail upstream, which was quite pleasant.
Ev continued to run the trail on his own. He was pretty happy with the narrow foot path, and he's seemed to like those better overall for a while.
He ran ahead of me, but never really out of sight. There were a few boardwalk bits along the way that he liked, just some peat up old puncheons.
The trail got a little closer to the creek, and it looked really inviting. I waded into it a bit.
After a little while, the trail turned into almost a sort of service road, and went by a sort of ejector building, probably for buried utilities.
Side trails came in from the right, from the Penllyn Woods.
Pretty soon, we approached the double stone arch bridge carrying the SEPTA line that was previously the Reading Railroad line up to Bethlehem.
The line was built here as the North Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1850s. It was completed through this area about 1857, and although I'm not totally sure, the stone arch may be original to the railroad.
The line was leased to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad in 1879, and was known as the North Penn Branch, or Bethlehem Branch.
The line traveled north from Philadelphia to Bethlehem Pa. The original plan was to extend it all the way to Waverly New York.
Passenger service continued to Bethlehem until 1981 when it was scaled back. The rails remained in place after that for many years, but removal began around 2011 when construction began on Saucon Rail Trail at the north end. Today, it is trail from Quakertown to Bethlehem, but the tracks are still in place, all the way through below Quakertown.
Talks of reactivating passenger service to Quakertown have persisted over the years but never got farther than discussion.
A recent government study recommended reactivation of the entire branch to Bethlehem. The right of way was double tracked all the way through, so there is room for rail with trail, although complicated.
Events such as Musikfest, Celtic Classic, and year-round concerts and casino suggest such a reactivation could be beneficial to the area.
For the time being, passenger services are available to Lansdale and to Doylestown via the branch.
The trail approached the bridge, and then turned around its right side by climbing up onto the lip that surrounds the east abutment.
This lip around the outside was just barely wide enough that I could push the stroller across, but I was not going to take any chances having Ev in it. He had just gotten back in the stroller before we approached this underpass, and I hated to make him get back out, but he handled it well.
Ev walked pretty well from the edge of the bridge right back to the rocks on the other side, which were a bit steep, but he was good.
I was able to get the stroller up that by carrying it, and then it got easier to push again, but Ev continued to walk just a little more before getting back in the stroller.
We continued upstream a bit more, and then came to one of the concrete cylinder crossings of the creek. These man made stepping stones are very fun for Ev to cross on, so he wanted to get down again.
I pushed the stroller through the water on the upstream side of this spot and Heshy held his hand. Once on the other side, the trail became a wider gravel route, and I suggested Ev get back in the stroller again for a but, until we got across the next road crossing.
It was a steep push up, and there was no crosswalk when we got to the top. When there was a break in traffic, we hurried across, and then headed uphill onto Station Lane. There had been a sign on the other side of the road showing the route the trail took on the other side, and this was it.
It was a pleasant walk out Station Lane, all the way nearly to the end. There was a driveway to the left that turned off, and the trail went off of the right side of the driveway and downhill toward the edge of the creek again.
The trail from here followed a slope edge with the railroad tracks above us to the left. It was getting tough to push the stroller through, so I asked Ev to get out and walk some more. At first, he was against it, but then took off running down the narrower footpath, quite happily.
We continued on this stretch for just a but until we reached where the railroad crossed over the Wissahickon again, and the trail once again passed beneath it.
This time, the bridge was a large deck girder structure, on older stone abutments capped with some more modern concrete. Likely, the original bridge was wood.
This spot was tough to get through, and there was no way I could push Ev through in the stroller.
Still, we waited for the others to catch up, and then waited a bit longer because we heard a train whistle. I figured it would be cool to watch a SEPTA train go across here.
It wasn't too long before it showed up and sped across the bridge. Ev was quite happy to see it.
I had to pick up the entire stroller and hold it under my right arm, then carefully walk over the rocks beneath the bridge. It's a rugged section, as it turns along the bridge abutment and then skirts a deep wash to the left, then crosses it to continue along the Wissahickon upstream.
It's possible to push the stroller briefly ahead there, but then necessary to pick it back up and carrying it along a narrow sidehill, then down a set of small steps to a former building site.
On the right side of the creek in this area is the site of a former mill with some sort of ruin in place. There was an extant remnant of an archway at a mill race over there as well, but not much more. No mill was shown on the Montgomery County atlas through this area, so it was built either late 1870s or later.
On the near side of the creek, there was an old chimney that stood tall. Heshy had gone ahead of everyone and was resting just inside the chimney like Santa Claus.
Kirk stayed back with Ev from the bridge underpass and helped him over all of the rocks. Ev handled it very well, and happily hiked with Kirk, holding his hand over the rough stuff while I carried the stroller.
At the old chimney, there is what appears to be a second mill race just beyond and on the trail side of the creek. The trench of it weaves off to the left as we continued upstream.
There was a bit of a dip I had to get the stroller across, and so I told Ev he could get back in once we we were beyond that. To my surprise, he was happy to keep on running.
"Me Uncle Kirk take shortcut" he was telling me, which was in no way a shortcut at all, because he was insisting on walking through parallel weeds rather than on the clear foot path in this next section ahead.
There was an area of ruins just up ahead, on the right side of the trail, which Ev pointed out as we went by. It was a sort of suspended area of masonry wall that might have been the head race to a mill.
It was a very pleasant section of easy woods ahead, and there were substantial sections of boardwalks in it. Some of these were wrecked or somewhat dismantled, some abandoned, because past flooding had knocked them all out.
Some of the trail went closer to the creek to utilize some of the berm along it, and closed off bits of flood damaged boardwalk remained in place.
The trail continued on toward Rt 202/Dekalb Pike, where a rather new bridge is in place. The trail passes under it, with a sort of sidewalk section on place. There were a very nice collection of Chicken of the Woods mushrooms growing on a long fallen tree over the trail just before this point. There was also the remnant of what appeared to be another dam across the creek through here.
I can't figure out a lot of the history of the area in terms of mills. The early 1870s atlas maps will give me a good amount of history, but anything built after that, and there must have been quite a lot, appeas to be missing.
We continued beneath, and then to the left through a sort of meadow area left over from the new bridge construction, then entered another section of woods.
It wasn't very long before we got to a trail intersection, and another area of concrete steps placed across the Wissahickon. The Green Ribbon Trail continued along the left side of the creek upstream, but my plan here was to go right. This is known as the Runner's Crossing.
The trail here connects though Wissahickon lands, and then enters the Gwynedd Preserve.
Ev was excited to see another of these hopping spots across the creek, and so of course he wanted to get back out of the stroller to walk it himself. Kirk helped him again while I pushed the stroller through the water.
Once on the other side, the trail ascended a hill for a bit. I pushed the stroller uphill to an intersection where there were choices to go left or right. We waited there for everyone to catch up.
When Kirk and Ev got up the hill, Ev was ready to get back in the stroller again. He was starting to get tired by this point.
To the left where the trail ascended, we crossed the former raceway to yet another mill. This one was much higher up above the stream, which meant it was either a very long raceway, or that there was a very large dam in the ceek at one point in history.
We took the right turn here, and passed through some young growth forest with young trees, converting former field and pasture to forest.
We soon reached a meadow with new plantings of young trees to transition to forest.
People seem to be a bit critical of this because there are plenty more forests, but there is a lack of meadow areas in this part of Pennsylvania.
We continued across this first field with plantings, and then made the first right turn back to the south. There used to be a trail connection much closer to the Runners Crossing, which even appears on Google Maps to this day, which we passed, but it had been junked up with branches and such because they don't want people using it.
There seems to be a habitat restoration thing going on, because other trails that I saw on Google maps as routes through the area were blocked with sticks and branches. I suppose many were redundant.
We continued downhill a bit through the plantings, and then cut hard to the left near the bottom. This brought us into the tree line and through a young forest.
This area was the Tunnel Woods Trail. It took us along the edge of a small meadow, and there was a side trail to the right that Google maps shows makes a loop, but we didn't take that way this time.
The trail was pretty easy to navigate with the stroller, as it was mostly a sort of woods road or old farm road. It made its way eventually back to the former Reading Railroad tracks we had passed under earlier, and paralleled them for just a bit as our direction shifted to the northwest.
This area was the former site of the Gwynedd Tunnel on this line.
The tunnel was completed in 1857, and daylighted in 1930 to make way for overhead category electric wires. It is now a deep cut where the tunnel used to be, and the nearest farm to the tunnel site, on Swedesford Road, is still called the Tunnel Farm to this day.
The trail went slightly uphill through this area. It was getting a bit bumpier because the trail had been rerouted in a sort of circuitous manner.
The old trail route was pretty obvious and had been junked up a bit with sticks and such, and the new one went back and forth across the old one. The old route was obviously an old woods or farm road, but this was just cut back and forth.
Ev was getting really tired, and was falling asleep through this, but the bumpiness of this section in particular kept him from getting there.
After a bit, we made our way up to where the trails resumed on its original alignment, and it was less bumpy. We turned to the left, away from the tracks, and back toward the rest of the preserve lands.
There was a spot where a woods road used to continue through around the north side of the Tunnel Farm, which would make a good connection to the Penn Oak Trail system to the north of the tracks, but that all appears to be closed now.
The trail passed by the Driscoll Family Dedication Bench on this section of trail just ahead.
The bench is a tribute to Lee and Phoebe Driscoll who first placed a conservation easement on the Tunnel Farm property in 2002, and then donated the Tunnel Farm Woods to the Natural Lands Trust as an addition to the Gwynedd Wildlife Preserve in 2009.
The bench read that the land had been good to them, and to stop and sit a while.
While we didn't bother to sit down, we appreciated the location and the sentiment.
The trail soon led out to a side path to the right, into a field, and then the area we had turned from when we reached this part of the property earlier.
We turned right and passed a house on the left, then came out to and crossed Swedesford Road directly.
At this area right across, we reached where we had been before in the Gwynedd Preserve. That previous time, we followed the path along the edge of Swedesford Road to the north. This time, we would continue uphill just a bit, and then cut to the left on one of the trails we had not done before.
It was the second left on the trail heading uphill where we turned, at a small grove of trees. This mowed trail led gradually uphill a bit more and through a wide open field.
Out in this field, there was a fork, where we turned right. This brought us through to a small headquarters building that had open restrooms. We stopped at an awning of the building for a break while everyone was able to use the facilities.
My plan from this point was to make my way to some of the southern trails within the preserve through some successional forest to the south, and then connect with the Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail again on the north side. Doing this meant we'd skip a section of the Green Ribbon parallel with this, but I had a plan to do that in the near future.
After our break, we went south from the visitor center onto a mowed trail. This brought us down to right near the last house on Evergreen Drive. We turned right and skirted the very end of Evergreen Drive, and then continued walking into scrubby young woods.
Ev was still fast asleep through this section. It was less bumpy, so he was able to zonk out pretty well. He had run so much earlier, it was no wonder he was so tired.
The trail weaved around to the west a bit, and eventually came to a clearing and field area. We moved ahead slightly northwest, above a small pond. We then continued on mowed trail until we reached a power line clearing, which is the route of the connecting trail to the southwest, back down to the Wissahickon Green Ribbon Trail.
We turned left on this and continued gradually downhill and the bumpiness approaching the main trail was such that it started to wake Ev up again.
We crossed a little bridge over a spring and then reached the Green Ribbon where we turned to the right. We had already done this little bit here before, but I didn't mind covering it again.
Just ahead of where we got on the trail is the Merck Crossing, another concrete block crossing we wouldn't' be doing this time.
We headed to the northwest from here, and the wooded section had some little puncheons along the way that were rather pleasant.
Ev was awake, he stayed in the stroller for just a bit, but we did eventually come to the northernmost block crossing of the creek, known as the Memorial Crossing.
Ev got back out of the stroller here, and Kirk helped him hop across it. I love seeing him excited to do these bits of trails we come to. I pushed the stroller straight through the water.
Ev continued walking beyond the crossing on the trail, and we continued to the north until we reached Truck Rt 202.
Here, we had to leave the trail and turn left on the road. It was getting close to the end. We followed the road to the left, and there was a good sidewalk along the north side.
Soon, we went up and over the former Reading Railroad tracks, the Stony Brook line we had crossed earlier in the day.
At this point, as I understand on the north side of the crossing, was the former site of Acorn Station. This little settlement area, on the boundary between Whitpain and Worcester Township, is known as Acorn. Or at least it was at some point in the past.
We crossed the tracks, and then just ahead, we crossed a major intersection where truck 202 went to the left. We continued straight on North Wales Road. There was a lovely old stone barn building on the northwest side of the intersection that looked like it had been turned into a residence.
The 1877 J D Scott Atlas of Montgomery County shows this as having been the farm of E Preston.
The trail weaved around a bit from here, which made for some more pleasant walking rather than just a straightforward sidewalk.
We continued west along the road, and the last bit back to the Stony Creek Sports Park came fast.
We had finished this hike quite earlier than I had anticipated we would, and with it not being too long a drive hope, we decided to go to dinner afterwards, which we hadn't been doing as much lately, I think at a place in nearby Lansdale.
I knew the Wissahickon Watershed series was going to be pretty great, and this was just another really nice one. I can't wait to continue wth this series.
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