Washingtons Crossing and Baldpate Mountain on Pres Day Weekend

[William and Marieann Bannan]

Seeing that the weather on Saturday was suppose to be beautiful (for February anyway) , me and the wife decided we needed to do some hiking this weekend.  I decided on Washingtons Crossing since it was Pres. Day weekend, hoping something might be going on there. So we headed up Friday night, and stayed overnite in Ewing so we could get out Saturday morning. We headed out Sat. morning to Washingtons Crossing SP, and parked at the HQ by Bear Tavern Rd. and walked the Continental Lane the entire way. The path was extremely muddy and slippery in places, but we survived the walk all the way down to the Delaware River. Oddly, nothing was really going on in the NJ section of the park, so we walked the bridge over the Delaware to the PA side where it seemed all kinds of activity was going on. This was the first time I went when all the building were open.

 

But, back to hiking.... after browsing the shops and seeing some of the buildings we wandered back into NJ and back along the Continental Lane.. We did make a stop at the museum, then continued back to the car.. totaled about 4.5 miles including our wandering around on the PA side. We then hightailed it over to Baldpate Mountain to get a little hike in that would give us a little more workout, so we chose the Summit Trail up to the top, where we had lunch at one of the picnic tables up there (and we weren't the only one). I really enjoy the Summit Trail because it is as close to a northern NJ mountain trail as you will get without going all the way up there. Here is my favorite part of the trail

After lunch, we decided to wander on some of the trails along the ridge.. however, we stumbles across some signs I dont recall seeing before along the white trail "Danger: No trespassing. Mining operation in progress, blasting is possible".. The signs looked fairly new, so we didn't take the chance seeing that there was already about 6 turkey vultures floating overhead, and I didn't want to supply lunch for them. We did a 180 and headed back down the summit trail back to the vehicle, passing a lot of people along the way. Seems like a lot of people decided to get out and enjoy the day also. Combines, we did about 7.4 miles today, which is plenty for me.... Overall, a very good Pres. Day weekend hike.