ABOUT THE PARKS:
Herrontown Woods Arboretum - Princeton, NJ
Herrontown Woods - Friends of Herrontown Woods
Autumn Hill Reservation - Princeton, NJ
DIRECTIONS:
GPS Coordinates 40.376353, -74.640519
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| Herrontown Woods Parking |
TRAIL MAPS:
Herrontown Woods Map - Friends of Herrontown Woods
Autumn Hill Reservation - NJ Trails Association
HIKE DISTANCE: 4.8 miles
THE HIKE:
This hike links together Herrontown Woods, Autumn Hill Reservation and All Saints Preserve. It could have been somewhat longer but after over a week of rain, the trails were so wet and muddy that it did not make for as enjoyable of a hike as it could have been.
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| The red trail starts to the right of the kiosk. |
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| A short distance in, an unmarked trail splits to the right. I took the unmarked trail. |
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| That trail leads to the Veblen House. |
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| Continuing out on the Velben House drive ... |
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| ... we followed that to Herrontown Road and turned left heading to Autumn Hill Reservation. I had thought we would be road walking back to the trail on the left but that turned out not to be necessary. |
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| It's a short road walk to Autumn Hill. |
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| Leaves have only been out for a couple of weeks and these trails are already becoming overgrown at times even though the trail is well-defined. |
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| The boards were a nice thought. |
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| But on this day, it didn't much matter since most of the trail was a swamp. |
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| An old picnic table rotting and being overtaken by nature. |
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| Following an old stone wall. |
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| The sign points to an outlook. |
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| This would be it. If it weren't for the trees, we'd be looking at homes so apparently that outlook hasn't been for quite some time. |
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| Another outlook sign a little farther along. |
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| And this would be the view in the gas pipeline cut. |
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| Heading back. |
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| A really old junked car. |
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| There were so many birds around but between the camera lens constantly fogging up and the poor lighting, this was the only one I got. |
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| At least it was warm out. |
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| Heading back to the parking lot. |
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| It looked like there was a trail into Herrontown Woods directly across the street from Autumn Hill. |
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| Indeed, an unmarked trail leading right to ... |
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| ... the blue trail. |
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| Blue ends at red; we kept right. |
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| I would have just waded across to get some of the mud out of my shoes but parts looked to be more than knee deep so the log crossing it was. |
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| No owner in sight. He eventually caught up to his dogs. Sigh. |
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| At the All Saints Trail map, right on the All Saints Trail. |
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| This part, if at all possible, was even soggier than what we had hiked so far. Just too much rain. |
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| At the woods road, turn left. |
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| Then left again to come up the other side of the All Saints Trail. |
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| Is that.... the sun?!?!?!? |
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| Coming back into Herrontown Woods, I stayed straight along the creek on white/green. |
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| Then white back to red ... |
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| ... to the parking lot. |
