August 28, 2010 New Jersey Section 4 from 14.2 to 14.3 and Section 3 from 0.0 to 7.4 South to North [AT: 7.5 miles]
High Point State Park HQ north to Goldsmith Lane. With Sona. Started at 11:15 and finished at 5:45. I don’t know what our problem was but we couldn’t find the trail crossing at Unionville Rd. so we went with plan B and parked on Goldsmith Lane but we couldn’t find the trail there either. It appeared on the trial map to be north of the locked gate so we weren’t too worried – took a GPS point at the car and headed off to High Point to start the walk. We parked at the big AT hikers parking lot off of Rt 23 just south of the park office. We stopped briefly at the office to look around at brochures, use the facilities, etc. and then headed off. Walking through the woods of High Point we go around a bend in the trail and suddenly see this….
Quite a surprise. This is the High Point monument. There was a wooded observation deck built along the trail a little distance from the monument so we decided it was a good place for lunch as there were benches and a cool view. We were joined by another hiker from Connecticutt who had a British accent. He and Sona exchanged stories. He told us of hiking many of the big peaks in the Adirondacks and Sona shared her favorites. He was day hiking on a loop hike.
After lunch we hiked on and soon departed the woods for sequences of farm fields and abandoned fields. One place was an abandoned orchard with apple trees loaded with fruit – we helped ourselves to “organic” apples for an afternoon snack. Not too bad.
Some beautiful fields with purplue loosestrife (a non-native invasive plant) in bloom along with the native ironweed, golden rod, boneset.
A few months ago I had bought some rubber tips for my hiking poles. During the last hike one kept coming off and I finally lost it. During this hike I lost the other tip but later found one on the trail which I am now using, so maybe the hiker who lost it will find my lost one from last trip!
It was during this hike that Sona diagnosed me with OCDR (obsessive compusive data recording) for insisting on taking a photo and GPS point of ladybugs for the Lost Ladybug project. (http://www.lostladybug.org)
lindasnature
