No Million Clicks walk today. It rained all evening and thru the night. Mother Nature did the watering work for me. I might get to skip another day since they are calling for afternoon/evening/night rain.
Today I planned on meeting Pam at the Hellertown Park and Ride to go do the Polk Valley Park trails. However, Pam was ill and couldn't come, so I decided to go alone and check it out alone. After all, this is my summer for finding new locations to walk. (I've lost track of how many I've done: 2 in Macungie, South Mountain in Bethlehem, lots of places on vacation, the two gardens ...)
It was easy to find the park. It is just outside outside of Hellertown. When you head out Main Street from Bethlehem, you make the left a McDonalds. It's at the top of the hill with a lovely view of "Education Park". (The name of the acreage where K-12 buildings and the athletic fields are. You never leave the property. Just switch buildings. Cool and weird all at one time.) Originally we were also going to check out Kingston Park, near I-78, but I discovered the other day it had no walking trails.
I pulled into the park and parked at the first lot. It said meadow trail straight ahead. And it was: Uphill a half-mile later. I quickly discovered that there were multiple parking lots (with a port-o-potty), mostly labeled for the athletic fields. At this park are soccer, lacrosse, and baseball fields, a playground, pavilions, a dog park, and the walking trails.
Like most parks in 2018, they have stopped mowing the massive lawns and have left the weeds ... I mean wildflowers ... take over. (Saves labor, $, and ecology. A win-win!) Actually, in this case they might have actually seeded some flowers, because there were actually areas with flowers. Not just weeds.
Ultimately I had a choice between the meadow trail and the loop trail. I chose both. They started together. First I chose the grassy path through the flowers which made me think I was on the meadow trail, but it quickly turned to cement. But to the left was still flowers and a grassy path. Who knows. I returned and the second time took the cement/asphalt path and made a loop. This was clearly the loop trail. I had set my MapMyWalk app to measure the distance of the loop and it was about 1.25 miles. The meadow was about a half. If I did it correctly. Maybe I missed part of it. Coming back around I saw another entrance to the meadow trail, between where I started and the dog park. Maybe the meadow trail is U shaped? Maybe I wasn't on the meadow trail at all.
All the trails are hilly. The way I did the loop it was about 75% downhill. For more of a workout, you could do it the other direction. The meadow trail was not quite as hilly. But there were a few elevation changes.
Hot an confused, I found my way back to the car, and headed to the Saucon Valley Farmers Market at the Water Street Park.
Instead of doing that I should have gone up the hill to Reservoir Road. Another park with a 1-mile loop is there—the Alfred J Fitchman Reservoir Park. I didn't realize it was about a mile away until I turned on the computer to see if Polk Valley had trail maps. I think I went looking for this once. They have a car show there in June so it should be easy to find, right? Maybe I'll look tomorrow and Pam and I can go another day.
52-hike challenge: 38/52
Miles/Steps: a little less than 3 miles when you add it all up.
Weather: low 70s, overcast, with 75% humidity
Bathrooms: P-4.5 and handicapped accessible. Yep it was a double wide! (@Playground lot) That might be a tad high, the storm blew in a lot of organic matter onto the floor. But the area to take care of business was clean, and it had hand sanitizer.
Wildlife: six cardinals, swallows, robins, sparrows and a ground hog. Oh, and lots of happy bees in the flowers
Extra: if you go to this park, take the road in to the very last parking lot. Follow the signs to the "playground" or "Pavilion". Save yourself a lot of walking
Extra 2: There is a Little Free Library box shaped like a stack of books near the playground. I would have made a deposit had I known. I would have made a withdrawal if I didn't need to carry them in my sweaty arms a half mile.
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