Camp Road (Mohican Road) to Delaware Water Gap (10.30 Miles)

We hiked this section on November 13, 2010.

Friday: DWG to DWG National Recreational Area

We hiked from the parking lot on the PA side of the river to the Dunnfield parking area in NJ. This walk was over the Delaware River Bridge.

The walk was behind a very low barrier wall and as the trucks and cars wized by it was a very scary feeling. We looked in the window at the DWG visitor’s center since it was closed.

Saturday: Mohican Outdoor center to Dunnfield Creek Parking Area

This is going to be a long day.

We stayed last night at the Super 8 in East Stroudsburg, PA. We had planned on a good nights sleep before this long hike, but the craziness started at the motel at 11:30 pm and continued until about 3:30am.

There was a man in the hall crying loudly and a lot of yelling and screaming so Dirigo went to ask them to be more quiet. The man was walking past our room and said his wife just left him and he was upset. Dirigo told him she understood but to please keep it down.

The yelling and screaming continued until at 3:00 am and Dirigo again went out to ask the people in the hall to be more quiet. Dirigo was confronted with 2 men and a young girl. The girl at one point in the night was screaming at the top of her lungs at a guy. The 2 men were standing in her door way about 3 doors down from our room. Dirigo asked them to please tone it down, that we were trying to sleep and one of the men said Ok, and then proceeded to get very loud again.

She asked again to be quiet and said please I was being serous. He mocked her about being serious and had this weird smirk on his face. Dirigo closed the door and then about a few minutes later they got very loud again and knocked on our door 3 times and screamed and laughed.

We tried to call the front desk but no one picked up. We talked to the manager in the morning and she said someone else had complained and apologized and took some money off of our bill.

We met Chuck from Edge of the Woods outfitter at the Dunnfield Creek parking area for our shuttle to the Mohican Center where the AT crosses the road. We started hiking around 8:45. We met some guys coming out of the woods who were hiking north, we talked for a few minutes and then they realized that Chuck was their shuttle when they got to Rt 206.

We ascended to the ridge and had some beautiful views of the surrounding area and Lower Yards Creek Reservoir.

We came to a sign that said we were now crossing into Worthington State Park, and at the top of the ridge we met a guy who was bird watching. We asked if he had seen anything and he stated that he had only seen 1 small bald eagle. He had a very large scope and was looking off towards the Delaware River to the west.

We crossed some power lines and continued to hike on the ridge. We crossed a brook and a few blue & orange trails came into the AT. Finally we were beginning to see Sunfish pond. We hiked past the north end and followed it along the banks and came to a place where people had made some carin sculptures.

It was really cool. We sat there a few minutes and soaked in the sun and began hiking again, and Dirigo almost stepped on a black snake. All she saw was the tail but it slithered under the rocks piles that were on the trail. We were sure there were lots of snakes in this area and had heard about the rattlers in this area so we were glad to be hiking in the fall.

We kind of lost the trail for a few minutes as it was not clearly marked and we thought it went up a hill but it still went beside the pond. Once back on the trail we stopped at a nice over look and climbed up on the rocks and ate lunch. Dirigo went down to the waters edge and saw a bunch of sunfish near the edge and a small gecko looking creatures skimming across the water. The fish were gathering near it to make it lunch but it swam towards shore to avoid the fish. We went past the south end of Sunfish pond and a bunch of hikers were spread out eating lunch and we thought this was the backpackers site, which it said had no water.

We were wrong because the backpackers site was about a mile or so down the trail. We stopped at the backpackers site to use the privy. This site was very large and had room for many tents. It also had a bear box. The trail went off to the left and started to descend on a rocky path. Many trails intersect the AT at this point, so we were starting to met a lot of other hikers.

At this point we had only seen a handful of people. We came to the place were we had hiked up to when we did our scouting trip in the winter with Zero. The trails all intersect at this point and the trail was a wonderful contrast to the icy mess we dealt with in the winter.

We descended to Dunnfield Creek parking lot and the whole parking area including the road on I-80 was full of cars. When we left the truck in the morning, there was only about 4 -5 cars in the parking lot.

We decided after our hike to take the same road as our shuttle and go to visit Mohican Center, as we did not see it when we were dropped of. The center is a nice place with cabins and a bunk house.

The guy at the front desk gave us a map and told us to go look around and told us about a cabin which sleeps 6 but we would only have to pay for 4 for another time when we need to finish this area. After our trip to Mohican we went back to the outfitter so we could find the parking lot where we were to meet for our hike the next morning. We also bought some socks at the outfitters.