Dry Run Creek Trail

Hi, Kathleen here. I volunteered to be a site steward for the Dry Run Creek Trail and today Jim and I walked the property together. My first time. It's a lovely trail. Alan Hershey and a crew of volunteers have been working on the trail and although it is not complete, what is complete is just terrific. Stone steps, wooden bridges, side-hilling in appropriate places. We entered the trail off Woodens Lane, very near the parking lot of the Howell Living Farm. The trail runs from there to Route 518, in Hunterdon County, near Mountain View Road. I live in Lambertville, so this is a convenient location for me, and it seemed like it was in another world it was so remote. We began our walk in a rather intimate setting of cedars, with lots of vines and undergrowth, and slowly worked our way very gradually up the ridge until we were looking down on Dry Run Creek. We were in a forest of deciduous trees, oaks, beech, some sycamores, with the forest floor covered in a carpet of leaves, no more vines, just open vistas, sky, silence. It was really a nice place to be. You could hear the creek. Because of the topography I suspect this may be a good place to bird and I can't wait to see what may be there this spring. Today, there wasn't much. I saw a female and male cardinal and we heard the screeching of a red tailed hawk. Also, there were some twits and twitters of chickadees, tit-mice, and I saw some flashes of the white tail feathers of juncos. It was a nice day for a walk and we did it in the afternoon. Jim thinks it might be about a mile from the trailhead to Rte 518. We had to go back the way we came. When we got into our car to leave, a bunch of turkeys crossed the road into the preserve.