a helluva day

Bonnie and I decided to do a few of the Montco Trail Challenge walks yesterday. She left me plan the route. That was our first mistake. Then we took my car. That was the second.

Our first stop was the Wissihickon Green River trail. It had three trail heads. One was in North Wales. I chose that one so that we could hop on over to Skippack and grab that one, and then go to Lower Perk Community park and get the Perkiomen Trail. Nothing went as planned.

I chose Rt. 309 because I didn't want to get caught on the Turnpike, at rush hour, in 90 degree weather. Good thing we didn't go that way. A shrimp truck had overturned and spilled it's cargo on the highway.

We never found the street to turn on off 309. We saw North Wales Road,  knew it was close, but totally missed it. After parking in an Ethan Allen lot, we reviewed maps and picked a new route. Everything looked familiar, including a park. It's where I had done the Deja Vue Half. We pulled in there to see if someone could get on course. A runner checked the GPS on her phone and we were so close. We went 1 block and were back on our directions. We turned, and the directions were gone. Bonnie tries to figure out her GPS and I turn the car around. I thought maybe we went the wrong way. Nope. We were right. We go back and forth several times and FINALLY find the road. It says a half mile. There is no trail head anywhere. Forty five minutes had elapsed since with talked to runner girl. We could see the trail but couldn't park. I was a little more than frustrated.

Finally we threw in the towel and went to Lower Perkiomen Park. I was worried at first that the sunny trail would continue, but ultimately we reached the shade. It was a nice walk. At this point the Perkiomen and Schuylkill river trails run together. It splits at Valley Forge. Perkiomen goes to VF and Schuylkill goes to Philly. We just came back. We already had two miles in, so four miles at 11 am on a 90 degree day is plenty.

Since the trailhead didn't specify which walk we were on, we thought the sun icon was for the Perkiomen Trail. We drove to another entrance of the park to see if we could verify. No trail head sign.

This park is adjacent to Rt. 422. We were about 2 miles from VF so we decided to drive there and see if we could figure out which trail the sun icon was for.  But nada. There was a lot of signage, but none from Montco.  I wanted to go over the new pedestrian bridge really badly, but it didn't open until today. Poop. We explored a bit, then hopped back in the car and took Rt. 422 to Rt. 29.

When we turned on Rt. 22, we could go left or right. Right would take us home. Left would take us to a trail head in Phoenixville. We decided to go there. It's a cool little town. Very hipster. (I think that's the new work for yuppie.) There we saw canal lock 60 and lots of algae.

I was glad we went there because of this mural. And the parking lot I took the photo from was a distillery with fantastic signage. But they didn't open till 3. Lunch idea ruined. We ended up eating in Collegeville.

Here's another mural from where we turned around.  It is the most beautiful phoenix.

Then it was up 29 to got to Skippack. The road was closed. Clearly, the universe was telling us that this was the wrong day to do this trip! We stopped at the Perkiomen trail head in Graterford and found out for sure that the Perkiomen trail is a purple diamond. So the sun was for the Schuylkill trail. My suggestion to the county would be to add the name of the trail to their icons. It would have saved us a tiny bit of time.

All in all it was about 4.75 mile walking and 6 hours in the car. My mama told me there would be days like this.