Cool road up to the sanctuary; bus parking! Heated bathroom with real toilet—mom would have loved and probably would have stayed in there while we hiked. Unplanned BM on canal Rd. along 611, very neat area. Great hike, wildflowers, sun came out and we were warm for the first time in months! We had the place entirely to ourselves until our return trip down the Main Trail near where we began seeing the old stone walls. Memorial bench surrounded by violets, and Emerson quote about flowers “Earth laughs in flowers.” Hills were rough on dad but he went almost the entire way, just not quite to the overlook, which was a bit rocky and steep but only for a few yards. While R and I were there, we noticed some people on a ledge further down—loud people from NJ. Woman was wearing flip flops. We rejoined dad and tried to distance ourselves from the noise. We ran into them again at the bird blind (which isn’t all that effective if you’re screaming!). Dad disappeared inside for quite a while, at which point R said teasingly “There must be a bench in there.” And of course there was, we went in to find him sitting at the bench. There were only a few daffodils blooming in this area and only a few birds (no food-maybe because the visitor center was closed for the weekend). We saw a titmouse and a few sparrows.
After our hike we explored Easton for a short while. It has the feeling of Bethlehem and other nearby towns but feels a bit more run down. Of course that may be just the sections that I’ve visited and so only have those to compare.
It should come as no surprise that before anything else, we had to search for a few survey marks. We found a bench mark disk set vertically into the gate at the base of a long stone stairway leading up to Lafayette College. We then searched for a few survey marks in the area of the courthouse. The first one was a straightforward find, a disk set into the base of the Spanish-American War monument. Our next find was a chiseled double “X” in the foundation of the old county jail. It was carved as a bench mark in 1881 and marked nearby with the letters USBM, also carved, as identification. Very cool! Another really neat find would have been the chiseled mark at the adjacent courthouse-but it was not to be. According to the description it was carved into a windowsill that is, at present, too high to reach or even get a good view of. Rich was able to get a reasonably good view of the sill from one spot at the very edge of the courthouse portico, but he was unable to spot the chiseled mark. Probably didn’t help that the sill had been thickly painted over at least a few times.
Supper before the film festival was at Two Rivers Brewing, a relatively new brew pub that Rich and I just discovered online a few days ago. Outdoor seating was available on this sunny and relatively warm day, but it was still a bit chilly for us and we didn’t feel like sitting near the loud hipsters anyway. We had duck fat fries for the table. Dad had a turkey sandwich with some sliced apple and cheese, and I had BLTA, while Rich had the fish of the day (monkfish), batter dipped and fried. We all had beer (unfortunately not from this brewery—they’re not yet set up to brew their own beers), and we all shared apple cider donuts with caramel sauce for dessert. They were giving them away today for some reason. (Otherwise we wouldn’t have gone for them, but they were decent.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20141014005623/http://www.tworiversbrewing.com/menus/Menus/2RB-Lunch-Menu.pdf