Horse-ShoeTrail in Middle Creek WMA

I've been long, a long way from here

Put on a poncho, played for mosquitos,

And drank til I was thirsty again

We went searching through thrift store jungles

Found Geronimo's rifle, Marilyn's shampoo

And Benny Goodman's corset and pen

Well, o.k. I made this up

I promised you I'd never give up.

If it makes you happy

It can't be that bad...

Sheryl Crow, "If It Makes You Happy"

So there we were, sitting on a big, dead tree trunk, eating our peanut butter and jelly bagel sandwiches at our turnaround point in an 8.2 mile hike on the Horse-Shoe Trail today.  We were discussing the merits of strenuous hiking during a time of coronavirus, and wondered whether the hiking would, on the one hand, strengthen our aerobics and immune system to help fight off any Covid-19 infection, or whether, on the other hand, wear us out and make us more vulnerable to the virus's insidious attack.  After tossing it around, Kathy said, "Well, at least if it makes us happy, it can't be that bad."  David flashed the Sheryl Crow song, and here we are.

But again, as with so many blog entries, we get ahead of ourselves.

We chose a reverse-lollipop route including the Horse-Shoe Trail in order to try to stay on a path less traveled.  We have adopted (the newly revised) protocol of wearing some sort of face mask when we encounter others and, frankly, it's inconvenient to wear a mask while hiking.  Sticking to the less frequented paths allows us to dispense with the masks most of the time.

So here we are at our trailhead on the Forest Demonstration Trail in Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area:

The trail blazes were an unique fluorescent green.  This blaze is slowly being overcome by little green fungi:

We climbed 0.75 miles or so to the ridge, where we joined the Spur to Horse-Shoe Trail:

The Horse-Shoe Trail is a 140-mile trail that runs from the western edge of Valley Forge National Historical Park, north of Philadelphia, westward toward Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It ends about 15 miles northeast of Harrisburg at the Appalachian Trail.  The history of the Trail is closely related to the development of the iron industry in this part of Pennsylvania during the 18th and 19th centuries.  The many furnaces and forges were connected by trails leading through the charcoal forests between them.  Portions of these trails have survived to become today’s Horse-Shoe Trail.

Today, new industry has resulted in links across the Pennsylvania countryside, including this powerline that bisected our route:

We always enjoy interesting flora and fauna we spot along the trail.  In the early Spring, it is sometimes challenging to find unique or interesting sights, but we generally find unique experiences on each hike.  For example, we spotted this tree burl that has been populated with moss, small plants and fungi:

We also caught sight of what appeared to be a cocoon for some soon-to-be-butterfly or moth:

The first part of the Horse-Shoe Trail section we hiked followed an old woods road that runs along Black Oak Ridge, which overlooks Middle Creek, Elders Run and Seglock Road, and leads to Cannon Hill from Middle Creek Lake.  It wasn't long before we reached a point where the road continued but the trail veered off onto a single-track footpath, complete with an old wooden sign:

One hundred yards or so down the trail, we came to a trail register.  We came prepared with doggy bags to use as sterile gloves to handle items that others may have handled, but even with hand coverings, we found it too difficult to open the box, open a zippy bag, open a register inside, and grab a pen, then write our names.  Kathy had the bright idea to wait until we returned home and "register" by posting a photo of our effort on the Horse-Shoe Trail Conservancy's Facebook page:

Soon after, we found our lunch spot at the bottom of a grade at a seasonal drainage.  We enjoyed our sandwiches and started our return.

Somewhere along the road atop Black Oak Ridge, we happened upon the first bear scat we've seen this season.  It seemed a little early for bears to frequent the high ridges, because most greenery has not sprouted.  However, the streams and drainages already boast fresh, green skunk cabbage, so perhaps the bears would be attracted.

We worked our way back to Elder's Run, where a footpath follows the little stream down to Middle Creek on its western bank, and an old dirt road follows along the eastern bank.

It wasn't long before we came to the ruins of a 2-story log home.  The logs are gone, but the brick fireplace remains and a solid stone foundation.  Available internet resources suggest this building was constructed by the CCC.  There is no doubt of the quality of the construction:

It would have been a pleasure to spend an evening in front of this hearth:

About 100 feet from the house is an almost completely intact spring house, constructed again with high quality stone work:

The interior of the spring house is intact, including the basin where water was fetched and the stone ledge where foods were likely stored to keep them cool:

The area below the ruins along Elders Run Trail were the subject of a prescribed burn on March 9, 2020.  While all of the duff and dry grasses and small branches were burned and that possible wildfire fuel eliminated, the burn nevertheless left a lot of deadfall.  It had not been and extensive burn, because the standing trees bore few black scars from burning:

We worked our way down Elders Run Trail to Middle Creek Trail and coincidentally arrived there at nearly the same spot which had been our turnaround point when we hiked Middle Creek Trail some days ago.  Our route back to the Jeep required us to retrace our entire track along Middle Creek.  We won't bore you with a repetition of what we saw along that trail, but you can get all you might want from this blog entry.

Since we had hiked Middle Creek Trail in March, some greenery had sprouted, including this beautiful little green-and-purple leafy plant:

On our earlier hike of this path, we missed the sight of this train rail spike that had been hammered into one of the trees along the path.  In our earlier blog entry, we recounted how the trail follows the bed of a trolley line that ran through the area, and undoubtedly someone found this spike lying on the railbed after the rails and ties had been removed when the trolley tracks were decommissioned:

We climbed back up the ridge from the trailhead of Middle Creek Trail, where we turned on this spur trail to return to Valley View Trail, which formed an early leg of this hike:

This one is a head scratcher.  The yellow triangular sign was clearly a trail marker or an advisory that motorized methods of traversing the trail are not permitted here.  But, somehow, it got flipped over and, slowly, the tree grew around the tip of the marker.

At the top of the ridge, as we started back down to our Jeep, which was parked on Laurel Drive at the trailhead, we ran across this lean-to structure.  It was quite a mansion -- it boasted a large room, a middle-sized room and a small room.  When it was originally built, with leaves or branches covering it, it must have made a spacious home for those doughty campers who built it!

We had planned only a 6-mile hike, but, somehow, as seems to happen all the time to us, our hike grew to over 8 miles.  We enjoyed it, but after a long hike the other day on a very rocky Appalachian Trail, we had been hoping for a slightly shorter walk on soft, dirt paths.  Together with the rocky ballast of the old trolley railbed along Middle Creek, the length of this hike gave us more than we bargained for.  But we enjoyed every moment, and it helped us discover another facet of Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area.