Six Mile Run

Six Mile Run (1/12/2013)

Since Hurricane Sandy, we've been hiking lots of sections of the Delaware & Raritan Canal which, while damaged to a great degree in many places, has been open in its entirety for quite some time. Adjacent to the canal near Blackwells Mills is this beautiful reserve, which we hiked way back in 2006. Coincidentally, this park has also been open since Sandy. So off we headed today for a re-look. Back in 2006, we were following a description in a book that started at Canal Road and headed east on Red, crossing the Six Mile Run and then headed back west on Blue. Today we started on Jacques Lane and, using this JORBA map, we did a completely different set of trails, many of which probably didn't even exist seven years ago.

We first headed north on Red until we got to Six Mile Run and turned right (the trail wand at this point told us to head west, and we did for a bit, for a nice view from above of Six Mile Run, before continuing east). The stretch of Red heading east is beautiful, parallelling Six Mile Run from above. There are a small handful of informative signs along the way. We took Red all the way to the point marked "Concrete Bridge" on the map before heading back. But when we got to the abandoned farm where the trail crosses S. Middlebush Road, we went off-trail and explored a bit. It appears to have been inhabited within the last decade or so (there was a satellite dish on the main house) but now it's completely in disrepair. There are at least five buildings here, and two silos for good measure, with trees growing in each. It's clear that it's all been abandoned for some time, inherited by the park service. Back on Red we turned left on White and zig-zagged south, then west back to our car. All in all, it was a lovely hike. There were many many side paths, many of which seemed to be lanes between endelss lines of beautiful trees. Much of this area could have been an orchard. I've got some Googling to do!

Total distance hiked today was 5.2 miles in almost exactly 3 hours.

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