Hike #1642; Whispering Pines

Hike 1642: 1/12/25 Whispering Pines to Whispering Pines (Kelsonville) with Jack Lowry, Sarah Jones, Jerry Scanlan, Dan M., Jenny Tull, Robin Deitz, Kirk Rohn, Professor John DiFiore, Stephen DiFiore, Matthew Davis, Mike Selender, Diane Reider, and Everen

Our next hike would be another interesting Pine Barrens trip slapped together at the request of my long time friend Jack Lowry, to end at his place at Kelsonville, or Whispering Pines.

Jack was planning another party at his place, and asked if I could have something that would be around his area to coincide.

When he and Sarah had first moved down there, I went over all of the maps and came up with half a dozen things that I thought might be good hikes for the area, so of course, I had several options we could use to end there.

For this one, I started looking over the maps and considering what I'd already done out of that area in the past.

The first one, we started in Whiting and headed south on the old Jersey Central line, then headed east through Brendan Byrne State Forest out to his house.

The second one, we started over in Pemberton to the west, followed some rail beds, and then other trails and sand roads to the east, again ending at the Kelsonville area.

This time, I figured it would be cool to approach from the south. I'd done a lot in that area already, but there was of course a lot I had never done before too. I looked over the maps, and the toughest part was figuring out where the hike was going to start and making it about fifteen miles.

I was originally looking at spots down in Wharton State Forest, and considering other sand roads as part of the route, but when I thought I had it planned, I used Google street view to see if these roads were accessible. Many of them are actually not. I had to make shifts to the plan based on that. 

Initially, I had drafted the hike with the name "Happy Jack's Piney Stomp" or something silly like that.

As I pulled the route together and figured on one that would work, the starting point would be a satellite property to Wharton State Forest known as the Whispering Pines, which has a loop trail through it, as well as an old causeway sand road heading south to north across it.

Additionally, the little development Jack's house is in, is officially part of the Presidential Lakes community, but it is also separate. Kelsonville Road is in there, and I assumed that would be the name of the community, and maybe it is or was. But also, the community is noted as being called Whispering Pines. As such, the hike would take us from Whispering Pines to Whispering Pines. I had no choice but to name this one the "Whispering Pines Hike".

The meeting point would of course be Jack and Sarah's house. I screwed up from the start with this one, picking the wrong time to leave, and then futher screwed it up by taking a couple of wrong turns on the way down there. We were way late starting out, and I was worried we would do badly on the hike and definitely not get done before dark, but it actually worked out very well.

Once we were all there, I didn't waste any time to try to get everyone into the cars and headed to the start. The driving route was not totally direct, but it was rather straightforward with few turns. 

The Whispering Pines trailhead parking is located at the intersection of Chatsworth Road and Patty Bowker Road.

One of the problems that came along with having such a late start was that the parking lot was just about full when we got there.

There was one parking spot shy of what we needed in order to fit all of the cars in, so I put my van in an odd spot further back and along the edge of the roadway where people could pull out.

I started getting the stroller and all of the stuff I needed ready, and while I was doing this, someone came back to their car and pulled out. I was able to get the van into a parking space at the last minute.

This location was somewhere I had never been at all. I might have driven through somewhere close at one time, but otherwise, it was completely unfamiliar to me.

That made this interesting, because we would cross and retrace previous steps at various points on this hike, but so much of it would be totally new to me.

We started our walk on what was official trail at Whispering Pines, but only for a short bit.

My plan was not to do any of the official trails at this location. We could do that on a future hike. My plan was to use the long abandoned road to the north, over the wetlands approaching the Friendship Creek. The old road was known as Irick's Causeway.

Nothing in any of the state material said anything about the history of this road or the area, which is not surprising.

Even now, I know little about the history of the road or for whom it was named.

The trail followed the road a bit, then came out and crossed it a little further up. It was a beautiful old road and very easy to walk with the stroller. There was a little snow accumulation on it, but nothing too hard to get through at all.

When we got to Friendship Creek, I was a little panicked to think that there might no longer be a bridge going across it. I knew some of the group would have a huge problem with wading a deep Pine Barrens stream.

Fortunately, we were pleasantly surprised of an extant, though somewhat washed out, bridge over the creek.

There were big concrete barricades, and water coming up from the right side. There is clearly a good amount of beaver activity through the area.

Some wood was placed at some of the washout spots, but it wasn't bad. I was able to take the stroller down and push it across the creek without any problem. I let Ev out of the stroller from the start, and he ran for a bit, then got in. When we got to the bridge, he chose to get out again and look around.

We waited on the other side for everyone to catch up. There were metal "road closed" signs on the bridge, and this was apparently the boundary between the state forest land and the Friendship Creek Preserve of the New Jersey Audubon.

I suspect the flood damage to the bridge is probably why the road was closed, because there are no other problems on it.

Once on the other side, we continued to the north a bit, and saw several signs for the Friendship Preserve. There were also "no trespassing" signs, some of them shrunken by forest fires from which we could see some remnants in charred wood around. 

We passed an intersection on the left, a dead-end road that apparently has a few houses down it in the Delanco Camp area, and then crossed another tributary of the Friendship Creek, where to the left it is dammed as the Delanco Camp Lake, and to the right is another lake with a nice wooden footbridge across it in the distance, with a pavilion in the very center.

Google maps shows this leading to sort of a foundation of a house, but in a little while we would walk by the driveway to it, and it looked pretty obviously used on a regular basis.

We continued ahead, and soon reached Powell Place Road. I looked back, and saw the road had "no trespassing" signs. I had no idea we would come out of something like that, and so I didn't want to sit still. We turned right and just continued along slowly enough that everyone could catch up.

Irick's Causeway used to continue straight across at the intersection, but the northernmost section was cut off in private land as well.

We passed a farm on the right, and the property was surrounded by nice big white fences. They were set back from the road a bit, so they provided a bit of roadside grass to walk on.

1937 Library of Congress

Soon, we came to the intersection with Sooy Place Road and South Park Road. This was once a rather important location, though it looks like nothing today.

The location on the oldest maps is simply known as "Pines", and it was the location of Pines Tavern or Sooy Place Tavern. Sooy Place (pronounced soo-ee), in Burlington County was a stop for travelers to Speedwell Forge, once owned by Andrew Elverson.

It was possibly built in 1770, and purchased by Nicholas Sooy in 1810. Uncertain when Andrew Elverson was involved. 

The old inn burned down in 1949, but was partially rebuilt. One of the original sections apparently survived, and it remained at the site reportedly until the 1970s.

The name Sooy Place is first applied to the area in the USGS maps in 1888.

1950s after partial rebuild

Here is an excellent article on it: https://tabernaclehistoricalsociety.org/.../sooy-place.../

All that is left to note the historic location of this tavern is a blue sign that tells the history of it.

We turned right to continue on S. Park Road to the southeast for a bit. 

This road took us as a paved route through some light residential area, and then became unpaved through a very pleasant back woods area.

As we continued, there were some open field areas behind a line of trees to our left, and hunters wearing orange were all out in it.

We could hear the gun shots, and this was a bit of an unnerving area because there were pieces of dead bird in the road. We feared they might have been firing toward the road, since hardly anyone uses it.

We hurried through this area, and made our way to the next intersection to the east. Moore's Meadow Road went to the right, and to the left was Johnson Place Road.

This entire area was shown on Google Street view, and shown as open, so I figured we would be fine getting through making the left turn to the north. At the end of Johnson Place Road, on Sooy Place Road, the Michael Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve goes straight through.

I could not see that there was a gate on this road when I was using the street views.

We walked up to the site, and it was a bit of a panic. What were we to do? It was marked no trespassing, but was shown as a through road, and it might put us way out of the way if we were to turn back.

The group voted to try to push on through this. They felt that everyone was out hunting to the west, and that we could probably walk through the short 1.5 mile distance to get to the Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve.

I looked ahead, where S Park Road used to continue through, if there was any way we could follow that to get through. It looked like there might be a parallel clearing through the woods, but it was rough.

This was a mistake. I should have just come up with a way backtracking from the start, because not twenty feet down this road, a truck came down. I couldn't believe it. We got nowhere.

I was caught, the only thing was to be honest. I talked to the guy who came up, and he was very cool about it. He said that he was being cool about it because we were pretty obviously not the same type of people he usually has to run out of there. 

Thankfully, I was able to show him on my phone the street views that I had used, where we could clearly see no gate over the road. He told me the gate had been there for years. I told him I believed him, but I just wanted him to know and to see that this was why we were here, and why we ended up in this place trying to get through.

I was thankful the guy was as nice as he was about it. I had hoped that maybe for this situation, he might let us pass through for the 1.5 miles, but there was no luck there. He was concerned about liability with the club members firing out there. He also said he had problems with people setting fires and such out there, and I understand that's a big issue, especially in the pines.

We turned around and had to walk all the way back to Sooy Place the way we had come. I pulled my phone out and desperately started concocting a new route that would get us back without going over the mileage much.

It was a good thing I spent such a huge amount of time putting these routes together and studying the different places to visit, because it gave me insight on how to fix this hike from here.

Within a few minutes, I had a new route to connect north to my original planned route that would get us back to Jack and Sarah's in under 16 miles.

We walked all the way back to Sooy Place through the woods on the unpaved road, which was quite pretty. We watched closely when we went by where the hunters were, and greeted one as we were walking on the road heading back.

I noticed along the road further toward the west side, there seemed to be a grade cut down on either side of the road. I know of no railroads having been here, and wondered if it was a road or some other type of drainage. It was obviously somethat that had come through there. 

Matt was looking up the hunting club as we went. He was trying to figure out a way of getting a day pass to get through, but fortunately we didn't need it.

We passed by the former site of Sooy Place Hotel, or Pines Hotel, and continued ahead on Sooy Place Road. From here, we were no longer backtracking on what we had already done for the day.

I got way ahead of the rest of the group with the stroller, and turned right on Avenue Road when we got to it. I pulled ahead just a bit, until there was a good spot to head to the side and take a pee, and then waited for the rest of the group to catch up.

Avenue Road was pleasant enough, with development mostly only on the left side of it.

Avenue Road turned slightly to the right after passing the intersection with Avenue D, and soon we reached the intersection with Burrs Mills Road.

Ahead on the left, the Burrs Mills Brook passes beneath the road. Across, there was an entrance to an ATV trail into the New Jersey Conservation Foundation property along this part of the brook

The 442 acre tract was preserved in 2018 and features the pristine tributary of the Rancocas Creek in what used to be the cranberry bogs of the Birches Cranberry Company.

The property had passed down through three succeeding generations of the Haines, Wright, and Thompson families since the Civil War, and ceased cranberry production in 2004.

To the east in this property, there are a lot of sand roads, some of which connect over to the lake of Ward Sand and Materials, and which do not provide a good route to the east.

However, the north side of the Burrs Mills Brook had an obvious ATV used road passing along it that connected all the way to the east. 

I had figured we could follow the South Fireline Road as we headed east, because I didn't want to get involved with having to deal with any landowner issues with the stroller, but when I saw that this had been preserved only a few years back, I was ready to take this alternate route.

This development made this route possibly better than the original one I'd had in mind!

When everyone was caught up, we made our way into the woods on a prominent ATV path. It headed a bit to the south of where our trajectory was, but it was the best way to get over to the main impoundments of water to the north.

The path took us to an intersection with more paths, an we turned left, to the north, which soon took us over the dam of the first former cranberry bog impoundment on the Burrs Mills Brook.

The brook is a tributary of the Rancocas Creek, which is something of a series I'm looking at doing more on in the near future. Our previous hike in the pines followed some of that.

I let Ev out of the stroller to run for a bit, which he was happy to do on the narrower pathway.

We made our way past the spillway at the pond, which was quite pretty, and took a little break on the other side while I looked over some more of the maps.

I wanted to be sure that the way we were going was going to get us through alright. I couldn't be totally sure, but it looked like it would, so we went for it.

The path went to the east along the north side of the pond and wetlands of the Burrs Mills Brook, and we did see signs for the public land. 

We continued along this pleasant path for a while, and I could see where it continued on the edge of the pond. It looked like it would all be public land. However, as we moved on, I saw a few no trespassing signs. It wasn't immediately clear that it was the property that we were on, but then there was one on the path. I suppose I could interpret it that it was off to the side of the path, so we continued on anyway.

It remained a pleasant route, toward the end of a second area of pond, and there was a deep trench to the left of us, sometimes with water in it. I was concerned that we might end up on a long causeway and that there would be no way out without backtracking.

Fortunately, there was an ATV path that went down and then came back up the other side where it was dry. We then continued on the path as it meandered back and forth through the woods some more. We also came across more of the public land signs, which made me feel much better. It seemed like this path sort of followed the boundary.

It was at times hard to push the stroller through the sand, but I got by alright.

We continued on along this path, which got a bit wider and less rutted, and then came to an area of woods with lots of junk strewn around. A side trail to the left led to the north, while the one we were following went straight to another road access.

This way straight led a bit closer to a house, and I didn't want to risk any more trouble, so we took the left turn to the north. 

We passed between a couple of piles of tires, and then made our way out to the South Fire Lane. North and South Fire Lanes are parallel sand roads to the main Rt 70, which stay a substantial distance in the woods from the main road, enough to make for a nice hike.

My plan was to come out to the South Fire Lane eventually, after Four Mile Circle, but we came out to it earlier due to my amended route.

There were some no trespassing signs where we had come from, but none coming from the public land we were on back to the fire lane. We won't be going back there, so it shouldn't be much a problem anyway.

We continued to the right, past two houses, and the lane straight ahead looked really bad. Even ATVs had not been using it. We had to turn left on the cut over to Rt 70. We turned right on this main road for a bit, and reached the intersection with Tranquility Ct on the north side. We crossed, reached the North Fire Lane, which was a paved road at this point, and turned right.

It was pleasant for a little bit, but then the drivable road turned to the right back out to Rt 70. We tried following an ATV path straight on the fire lane, but it got badly overgrown, so we opted to go back out to Rt 70 again to continue east.

I had hoped to cut into the woods to the right, back to the South Fire Lane earlier, but all of the land was posted no trespassing by a hunting club. We were eventually able to cut in to the south after the end of these signs, and passed the intersection with Mile Road, which is a through road to the south into the Michael Huber Prairie Warbler Preserve. We started seeing signs for that and connected with the official trails there.

I pointed out to everyone where I had originally intended to join the route we were on, and happily announced that we were now back on our planned trajectory.

I found it interesting that on this stretch, there were more no trespassing signs. However, in this area, we could see where the public land signs were obviously torn off, with the stables and nails that had secured them still in place at their former corners, with remnants of these signs, and new yellow no trespassing signs put on top. When I checked over NJ Geo Web, it looks like this is all in fact public land, but that these landowners had tried to claim it for their own to keep public from visiting.

We continued past the intersection with the Slab Crossing Road, another sand road, on the Southside Fire Lane, and soon after that, there was another ATV path that cut off to the right.

I could see it on the aerial images that it cut through the woods and led to Billy Boy's Four Mile Tavern, my proposed late lunch stop. It was perfect. We turned right here and followed another nice trail through woods.

This trail had lots of "whoops" on it, those bumps created by ATVs after months of going over the same spots. I pushed the stroller quickly up them, and then down like a rollercoaster which was fun for Ev. On each whoop, I shouted in a high voice "BILLY BOYS!". Ev would holler back at me "NOT SAY BILLY BOYS!", but then I'd do it again every time we went over another bump.

The trail came out directly behind the tavern on the south side. It was great. We came out of the woods and directly to the place! 

We headed inside and seated back by the pool table, which Ev was very interested in. We all sat, and Ev was quite peaceful sitting on a stool chair in the back, watching closely as the people were playing pool. He was so interested in it that he didn't cause really any kind of a nuisance this time! Usually he's excitable and climbing all over me!

I ordered a burger I think, so that Ev could eat some of it. He didn't want to eat a lot because he was so excited about all of the sounds and such at this place.

When everyone was done eating, I decided we would get our group shot right outside at the Billy Boy's sign before moving on.

I had considered going nearby to visit the Lebanon Fire Tower, but at this point it was getting a little late, and our distance was going to put us just barely above 15 miles. I didn't want to push it too far more, since it was pushing dark, not only for our rerouting, but because I showed up late.

We headed directly across the street, and the South Side Fire Line access road was immediately across. We walked it slightly north, parallel with Four Mile Circle, and then turned right parallel with Rt 70 on the main fire line road heading generally northeast.

It was pleasant and easy walking for a good while, and we crossed the intersection with Four Mile Road, as well as over the pink blazed Batona Trail, which travels across the Pine Barrens over fifty miles, cleared by the Back To Nature Club of Philadelphia.

We eventually came to a sort of dead end on the South Fire Line, at Dakota Trail, where we had to turn left and back out to Rt 70. This side step I was prepared for, because we were coming up on Presidential Lakes, and we could not walk across them without coming back out to Rt 70.

We crossed over the bridge, which splendid views of Presidential Lakes to the left, and the dam and Lebanon Lake to the right, which I understand was also once part of the cranberry industry.

The lakes are fed by another tributary of the Rancocas Creek, known as the Cooper Branch.

The sun was setting beautifully as we crossed, and on the other side, there was a trail into woods to the left, which cut a corner over into the estates onto Washington Blvd.

At this intersection, the north fire line is just an ATV path, but it is given the name Whispering Pines Blvd at this point. We turned right and followed it along the backs of homes, along fences and such, parallel with Virginia Drive.

All of the streets within this development are named for US states, including some of them that were technically never finished. We had hiked through the north side of this development on a previous hike, so this time we would be on the south.

The road headed into a more undeveloped area after a church on the left in the development, and we had a nice, quiet walk as the sun was setting behind us for our home stretch. The only sound was the parallel Rt 70 to the south.

As we started approaching Jack's development, Whispering Pines Blvd was cut off and gated by a place that looked like they had a small animal farm. Fortunately, the ATV path cut into the woods to the right, parallel with the closed road and with Rt 70.

We made our way through these woods, and the trail soon connected with a road that is a secondary access to the development from the way we had driven in earlier.

We were soon out to Kelsonville Road and the end of the hike. It was just about dark by this time, but only just barely. I was at the very front of the group with Steve, and the others soon poured in.

Ev hung out with everyone in Jack's yard while I got a ride back to get the van from the starting point. There wasn't really a gathering at the end, and we were so far from home that I was happy to get moving anyway. It was just a very nice hike, seeing places I'd never been before, and exercising resourcefulness enough to deal with adversity as it comes. This day proved that such incidents can produce better results, if we can just remain positive.