Horse-Shoe Trail, Part IV

On 6/17 we decided to pick back up at Welkinweir and walk to St. Peter's Village, a quaint little community/tourist trap we'd never visited before. When we got to Welkinweir, all of the gates to the parking areas were locked, so we ended up parking on the shoulder a bit farther down Prizer Road--causing us to skip a mile of the trail! Oh well.

We took the new camera with us, and took our time, stopping to take plenty of pictures. We're still having fun learning the camera. This was a nice, mostly woodsy portion of the trail, with plenty of wildflowers to photograph. We came across a lot of wild raspberry bushes, but most of them weren't quite ready to be plucked. There were a few in full sun, however, and we helped ourselves to a couple of handfuls of red, juicy, delicious berries from the vine. The section of the trail ran along (and back and forth over) French Creek.

I guess if I was really interested in photography, I'd photoshop the electric tower out of this photo.

Raspberries!

So many lovely little wildflowers!

This part of the trail goes through Warwick County Park--a really nice park with trails and playgrounds and picnic areas.

Tiger lilies, leaving Warwick County Park (that's the park to the left).

We always sign the register!

Using a short spur trail, we emerged into St. Peter's Village to retrieve the car we'd left behind. It was Father's Day, so there were a lot of people wandering around town. We didn't make any stops (since we were stinky and sweaty), but there was a cute restaurant with a large patio over the creek and a couple of little shops. Cute!

Distance: 5.5 miles
All-in-all: Perhaps the best segment of the HST we've seen so far; loved the flowers, berries, and park!
Links: www.hstrail.org; http://www.chesco.org/ccparks/cwp/

Horse-Shoe Trail, Part III

Two weeks ago we did a nice 12 mile stretch of the trail, picking up at Brightside Farm and emerging at Welkinweir Nature Preserve. It was a gorgeous day and a really nice stretch. We were on the edge of several horse pastures to start, which was nice--who doesn't enjoy looking at grazing horses? Right at the start, we stumbled upon a scattered skeleton, including the jawbone pictured. I have no idea what kind of animal it was, but it was kind of neat to see the skull, jawbone and all of the bones scattered--they were dry bones that had been there for a while.

We startled (and in turn were startled by) three white-tail deer, and there was no shortage of chatter from birds. Flowers are blooming all over and the trees are getting greener and fuller by the day.

As we're learning is the normal on this trail, there were quite a few miles on roads--and at some points, on windy, narrow roads with car flying past. Yikes. But there were certainly some great woodsy sections, too, and one section even included some nice elevation to get the blood flowing. When we emerged at Welkinweir--tired after walking 12 miles--we were unsure how to find where we'd left the car. We walked around the lake where we emerged (there's definitely an active beaver population there!)  and had to wander around a bit to figure out where we were going, but it's a gorgeous area, so despite achy feet, it was nice to see. Add it to the list of things to explore further in the future!

Distance: 11.7 miles
All-in-all: A few awful section on a road with speeding cars, but plenty of nice walks through woods and around pastures to balance it out.
Links: www.hstrail.org

Horse-Shoe Trail, Part II

The mild winter seems to be seamlessly blending into spring--I don't want to jinx anything because March blizzards are not unheard of, but it's in the 70s all week and things are starting to bloom. HOORAY!

We had a productive weekend between me catching up on graduate work and Husband working on his pottery before the spring/summer selling season, but we took a break on Sunday to knock off another few miles on the Horse-Shoe Trail. We picked up where we left off at the Rees Road access point and did six miles to where we left the second car at Brightside Farm. It was an easy walk, again on a good deal of paved roads (with fast moving traffic, yikes).

It's neat on these walks to see how these routes that I drive so often connect through the woods. I have a TERRIBLE sense of direction so it's hard for me to make sense of how places connect sometimes. We passed an alpaca farm, saw some massive hawks and definitely heard a little more chatter from the birds than the last time. We also passed the Great Valley Nature Preserve, which has been on my list to check out for a while.

We may end up going last-minute backpacking this weekend--looks like it's supposed to be nice. If not, I think we'll try to do a nice long portion of trail.

Distance: 6 miles (Rees Road to Brightside Farm)

All-in-all: Another pleasant and easy (relatively unexciting) portion of the HST.

Links: www.hstrail.org

Horse-Shoe Trail, Pt. I

Oh! That's right! I started a blog two years ago! I do wish I had kept up with this, because we’ve explored some pretty great trails over the past two years: Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, a gorgeous loop on the Tongue Mountain Range on our honeymoon, Mt. Mansfield/The Chin—Vermont’s highest point (although in the interest of full disclosure, we did not climb that one—we drove up the mountain and hiked across the ridge due to time constraints and an injury), plenty of great spots close to us in Pennsylvania, plus, our first overnighter after getting fully outfitted with backpacking gear thanks to our wedding registry.

Here’s to hoping I stay a little more dedicated to the blog this time around. I need an outlet for writing that isn’t technical/scientific (as at my day job) or formulaic and research-based (as for grad school).

What prompted my return to the blog? We’ve started our first long-term hiking project! We’re going to complete the Horse-Shoe Trail in 2012. It’s a 140ish-mile connector trail that goes from the Appalachian Trail on Stony Mountain (Dauphin County, PA) east to Valley Forge National Historical Park, which happens to be in our backyard. We got the complete map set for Christmas (two, actually—Eric bought it for me, and my mom bought it for Eric) and started with the first five (okay, 4.9) miles on Saturday, February 4.

The map set is really complete, with detailed descriptions and directions to parking areas at various access points. We parked at Washington’s Headquarters in Valley Forge NHP and started there. It really is a sin that we haven’t explored Valley Forge and our nearby walking trails more in the nearly two years we’ve been in Phoenixville.

The first bit of the HST is in Valley Forge NHP and we passed forks in the trail that would lead to the Upper and Lower Forges and a historic covered bridge, which was the original starting point of the HST. We have to get back and check out those spur trails. There are some neat ruins of an old bottling plant early on (see photo of my husband as Sasquatch) before just enough of an incline to get the blood pumping.

The thing about the HST—at least this first leg of it—is that much of it cuts literally through people’s backyards, sometimes it’s on a street, and it certainly doesn’t always feel like “real hiking.” Nonetheless, it was nice to spend a couple of hours outside, and we had fun picking out houses where we’d love to live.

I think this project/goal will be great to have as a go-to hike when we don’t have time to plan something out or go too far, and since it cuts through Chester, Lancaster and Lebanon counties, where we have friends scattered all throughout, hopefully some of the day-hikes will include friends. Our next two weekends are pretty busy, so it’ll probably be a while before we get out again, but I’m glad we started.

Distance: 4.9 miles (Valley Forge to Rees Rd. access point)

All-in-all: In itself, not a great stretch, but the HST is pretty impressive and we’re looking forward to completing it this year.

Links: www.hstrail.org

www.nps.gov/vafo/