Another weekend and another dog hike at
French
Creek
. This time we went to the far north
end of the park to hike the Six Penny Trail. The Six
Penny Trail is cool because it goes through an abandoned area
of the park. I can only guess it was called Six Penny lake.
I'd hiked through the area before, but never from the
direction we took today.
Looking at the map, I saw the
Horse-Shoe Trail entered the park just
north of the Six Penny Trail and had a small parking lot for
access. The parking area was more muddy shoulder, then
parking, but good enough.
This is Six Penny creek that
the dogs and trail are crossing. Eventually the Six Penny
drains into the Schuykill river, but that's a few miles north
and east of
here.
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Another
weekend on the Horse-Shoe Trail. This part is at least active
as you can see by the freshly painted horseshoe.
It was drizzling
when we started. Through these hikes this winter,
Jen has learned a lot about proper gear. Today we
needed waterproof shells that would breath. There would
be a lot of uphill hiking the first half, so it was
necessary to have jackets that kept us dry from the rain and
dry from perspiration. Now if I could just convince her to get
her own breathable shell, I could get mine back.
The
dogs of course don't care. They get wet and they get muddy. Makes no difference
to them.
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I wonder if this guy knows this tree is
trespassing?
There was a section in the beginning with
lots of No Trespassing signs and this wire fence. You would
have thought with all the warnings it was some kind of secret
military base or something. Turns out it was just a shack
and some junk cars. Hardly worth the effort or
curiosity.
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 Oh yeah. Road bikes are
illegal on these trails. Don't even try it or you might get shot.
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Gretchen helped with the trail
maintenance. The trail was in better shape then last weeks
trail, but it looked like someone had been out to clear it
this week. There were quite a few freshly cut
logs/trees.
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Thank god!
The dogs were getting desperate for a bathroom
and someone was kind enough to supply them with a fire
hydrant.
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Fire hydrant source? The water tower
marks the top of the climb. From here we turn and head back
down toward the Six Penny
area
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There's lots of curious things in the Six
Penny lake area. The first thing we ran into were these old
fire pits. They were evenly spaced along either side of the
trail, but there was no indication of a campsite or picnic
area at any of them. The ground was neither level or
clear. Around many of them the trees grew too close or even in
the pits. Obviously it's been quite a few years/decades since
these were
operational.
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This we had no explanation for. You can
see it has mortar, but other then that no discernable purpose.
I kept saying it fell out of the sky, but Jen
wasn't buying it. There is no other structure or other
manmade objects near it. I suppose if we dug through the
leaves, we'd find something, but as-is it's
odd.
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An old
water fountain. I found some letter-boxing article on the
internet that mentions a water fountain in the Six Penny area,
but I doubt this one is it. It didn't have all the matching
clues.
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When I first started hiking here ten years
ago, there was an old pavilion in this spot. Not sure if
it was purposely burned down by the park or what, but it is no
more.
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This is the highlight of the Six Penny
area. It's an old dam used to create a lake much like the
other two lakes at French
Creek.
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