Road Trips and Hike Reports

Two Rivers Trailway - Karl Stirner Arts Trail Posted by Chris 6/23/18 Basics: Length - 3 miles approximately Elevation gain - Minimal Nearest city - Easton, PA Difficulty - Easy The Day: After dinner last night (McDoanld's in Phillipsburg) it was still light out long enough to try to squeeze in a hike.  I had looked briefly online for places to walk near Phillipsburg and Easton and found a page for the arts trail .  I quickly printed the map out as we headed off to dinner.  I was surprised to find that it was mostly off street walking and even more surprised that a good part of it lies JUST below the very familiar and often traveled curvy section of US-22 just West of Easton. The trail: There are multiple places that could be used to get onto the trail.  We parked at 13th street near the creek crossing in a marked trailway parking lot.  The trail started squeezed in the space between US-22 and Bushkill creek.  I had no idea there was anything interesting there.  L

Turkey Brook Park Posted by Chris 6/23/18 Basics: Length - 3 miles approximately Elevation gain - Minimal Nearest city - Mount Olive/Budd Lake NJ Difficulty - Easy The Day: After seeing a movie, Book Club, we had dinner at Red Lobster in Ledgewood.  On the way home I really wanted to check out this park (which I had recorded simply just as 30 Flanders Road, Budd Lake.  The park was large and very clean. It is focused on sports fields which it has a seemingly endless number of but there are some walking opportunities too.  I found the war memorial with the war dogs memorial that doesn't allow dogs to be a little amusing. Pics from Brian:

Swartswood State Park Posted by Chris 6/23/18 Basics: Length - 3 miles approximately Elevation gain - Minimal Nearest city - Newton, NJ Difficulty - Easy The Day: It was hot and we didn't get as early  of a start as I might have hoped. There were bugs. The trail was flat.  We needlessly paid 10 dollars to get in (the trail heads are outside the paid area).  It just wasn't a great morning. Pics from Brian

Countryside Conservancy Trolley Trail Posted by Chris 6/18/18 Basics: Length - 3 miles approximately Elevation gain - Minimal Nearest city - suburban Scranton, PA Difficulty - Easy The Day: We had to go to Scranton for some car work in the morning and dinner with friends in the evening and in the middle we squeezed in a hike at one of the spots we used to go when we lived in Scranton.  The trail used to be an interurban rail line and makes for a beautiful walk in the woods.  It wasn't a challenging hike but the weather was pretty warm and we were on the trail in the afternoon which is not the time of day we'd choose for a more ambitious trail. Pics by Brian

Randall's Island Park Loop trail Posted by Chris 6/10/18 Basics: Length - 4 miles approximately Elevation gain - None Nearest city - New York, NY Difficulty - Easy The day: We don't normally count walks in cities but this was a dedicated and substantial effort to get to this island (which we not only walked around but walked TO) and we decided to at least count the island loop trail as a hike.  We were in NYC to visit my friend Drew who moved to NYC recently.  The Randall Island park is a very nice piece of land and had substantially nicer facilities than most NYC Parks.  Their were flush bathrooms, water fountains and a few different information/concession booths.  Everything was clean and well marked and it was really cool being able to loop most of the island and come out in the Bronx on the relatively new connector path . Pics by Chris

Stokes State Forest Blue and white trail mostly Posted by Chris 6/3/18 Basics: Length - 8.5 miles Elevation gain - Unknown - We estimate 800 feet? Nearest city - Sandyston, NJ Difficulty - Moderate The day: We started the day by heading to Firehouse Bagels in Hamburg NJ.  Breakfast was great (and huge and inexpensive) and off we went to the trailhead.  Luckily by feeding in the GPS coordinates from the New York-New Jersey trail conference guide , I was able to get a handy starting address from Google maps.  I'm glad these are becoming more common because it seems like most trail books or guides are written assuming you are coming from whatever your regions biggest city is.  While it isn't impossible to adapt these instructions, without going to a mapping site or using the GPS coordinates, the easiest adaptation I could have made would have been to go to the exit on I-80 the guide described but then I'd have to backtrack a substantial amount of east west tra