Traveler's Forecast for the Pine Barrens
- Thread starter MarkBNJ
- Start date
Excellent thread-jack, Jerseyman.
If Spung-Man had misspelled Champale as Champipple.... Jerseyman would have had us on the floor with laughter.
Why the mystery about the conditions of the roads in the Pine Barrens/Pinelands? Everyone knows that each weekend and many days though the summer months hundreds of over sized tires on muscled SUV tear up the terrain with abandon. There are lots of people in the Powersports Community who think the Pinelands is their personal outdoor gymnasium. Club after club, from all over the Delaware Valley, meet and run through the Pinelands in packs and herds looking for all of those puddles and ruts so they can splash and squeal in the mud like kids in the bathtub with rubber duckies. I am sure most have seen the YouTube vids that they are so proud of posting. The Pinelands is an ecosystem not a outdoor NASCAR style abusement park. Everyone of those over sized knobby tires is doing irreparable damage to the land, heck they are designed for slinging mud and dirt in all directions. Everyone who uses the Pinelands in a respectful manner ought to be outraged at what is going on there all the time. Worst yet is that our land stewards turn and look the other way. Not only are the roads destroyed and unusable by the citizens of NJ who foot the bill for our state parks but many of the wetlands have become targets of these "Citizens for Ripping up the Soil" as well. The only mystery here is why something is not being done about it and that the public is not totally outraged. Perhaps the state should have the people responsible for the damage do the re-grading with the cost coming out of their pocket.
Wow, I thought this was a thread about Trenton Breweries. 
I'm sure there are some other factors contributing to poor road conditions, but I don't really disagree most of what you wrote.
I'm sure there are some other factors contributing to poor road conditions, but I don't really disagree most of what you wrote.
I think this has been gone over before.I think many of us knowing how the state of NJ operates live in fear that the state may see the answer to the problem is to shut the roads down entirely and keep the rest of with regular sized tires out as well.Your right,it is out of hand but we know the governments penchant for overreacting and I personally believe they would like nothing better then an excuse to lock up as much acreage as they can so they don't have to worry about patrolling it.Out of reach out of mind.
I feel that the problem is more that the state forest managers, in these parts anyway, have aligned themselves with the motorsports people for some reason or another, can't image what it could be beside perhaps the clean up they do every year, but then anyone could organize that. I don't think they could, or would, close down the forest, that would be a move that would really bring outrage. Now they are crying poor mouth, as they should right now, but this has been going on for years with no abatement. It is a mystery to me why the stewards of our land want it destroyed by these land thugs that attack and degrade our collective natural heritage by bombing and strafing our public lands.
Was discussed at length here, which got kind of ugly... http://forums.njpinebarrens.com/threads/closed-to-mortorized-vehicles.7062/
I took part in that closure and was proud to do so. Don't know that it is holding up though. The area was not closed it was closed only to motor vehicles so the land thugs could not continue to destroy hundreds of acres of prime wetlands in what they call 1/4 mile. I walked back there many times after the closure to motor vehicles, it is not far and is pleasant. Besides if you drove back there you couldn't get past the R.R. tracks because they had everything beyond that destroyed and impassable. How else you going to stop them. Enough areas get closed perhaps the citizens that own the land will get ticked off enough to take it back from them (the thugs) and make sure these things don't continue to happen.
Focus is important.Sooo.... does anybody else have some interesting trivia to share about those Trenton breweries?
OK, let me bring this thread back to the Pines. Gibby, I assure you that no one around our part of the Great Wilderness partook in Champale or Champipple, nor had either swill ever passed my lips. I’m sorry to say the same can not be said for Hammonton Brewery’s analogs Fox-Head 400 and Canadian Ace. The former had an illustration of a mountain spring on the packaging, as if South Jersey had such features. The latter was sold in half-gallon plastic jugs or one-gallon cans in rough parts of town. They also brewed no-name brand beer for Pathmark. Thus fortified, I once was able to follow in the ruts of 4X4’s across puddles along Hesstown’s Cow-S--t Road with my 1970 2-wheel drive F-100. This route included Sweeten Water, which I learned half-way across wasn’t really a puddle. Any one know where I’m talking about, below the stone hole?
S-M
S-M
I was never brave enough to even try going down that road, but had a good laugh the first time I saw the sign. AFAIK, that sign disappeared several years ago.
I was at quarter mile a week ago.There were track and a truck was coming out as me and Bill were walking in.he had firefighter tags so maybe he was legal but their will still tracks everywhere.
The Park Police made a big deal out of it at first and then as time got on they were less and less interested it seems. That is part of the problem. The Park Police are State Police and not necessarily beholding to the Parks and Forest. They do what they want and not necessarily according to the needs of the state park. The difficulty is if the state doesn't want to stop these dirt/mud thugs then who is going to. Now they are talking privatization and as that progresses who know what we'll have for state parks.
Perhaps an Occupy Wharton gig would work!
I don't know that anyone implied there was a mystery surrounding the condition of the roads. There was at least a little bit of a mystery about why the water was so high when we hadn't had that much rain.
Anyway, I don't disagree with most of what you wrote either. I would point out that there are only a few rangers to patrol the whole area, so in terms of active enforcement they have a pretty challenging task.
Mark,
Good observation. I too have wondered about that phenomenon. It might be that precipitation is increasing enough to reverse a ground-drying trend that’s been going on over the last century. Nickl et al. (2010) in “Changes in annual land-surface precipitation over the twentieth and early twenty-first century” noted that regional precipitation has been increasing since the early 1990s after a half-century-long drop. Also, I suspect groundwater withdrawal has diminished with the increased rainfall. Demand for irrigation has also dropped because of the poor economy (an unnecessary expense).
Mark too
Good observation. I too have wondered about that phenomenon. It might be that precipitation is increasing enough to reverse a ground-drying trend that’s been going on over the last century. Nickl et al. (2010) in “Changes in annual land-surface precipitation over the twentieth and early twenty-first century” noted that regional precipitation has been increasing since the early 1990s after a half-century-long drop. Also, I suspect groundwater withdrawal has diminished with the increased rainfall. Demand for irrigation has also dropped because of the poor economy (an unnecessary expense).
Mark too
that is my gr gr gr grandad.A kentucky guerilla during the civil war.heres a little info on him.a mystery surrounds his demise at wars end.
http://eakycivilwar.blogspot.com/2010/05/eat-hearty-men-for-this-will-be-last.html
On a more serious note for a change. The amount of rainfall this year as of November was just over sixty inches, breaking the 1996 record. A large portion of that number came in August and it was raining almost weekly since then. It could simple be the combination of less demand on the water supply, a point Spung-Man makes, and ground saturation. Does anyone know the amount of time it takes surface water to reach the ground water?
I know something needs to be done about responsibility with land use, but I am pro-access and dread any land closures. It seems the elitists , at the extreme opposite ends of the subject, get to to do what they want and the general public, caught between the two, suffer as always. As usual, the ruffians, with an exaggerated sense of entitlement, still get away with what they are doing.
I know something needs to be done about responsibility with land use, but I am pro-access and dread any land closures. It seems the elitists , at the extreme opposite ends of the subject, get to to do what they want and the general public, caught between the two, suffer as always. As usual, the ruffians, with an exaggerated sense of entitlement, still get away with what they are doing.