Today was another beautiful day (ok, maybe a little cloudy, but no rain, no snow) so we decided to find another park to add to our list. We chose the ChesLen Preserve which is just north of Kennett Square Pa (address is Coatesville but it didn’t seem like we were near Coatesville). The first challenge is parking, most of the lots are small but did you notice, I said lots… there is more than one place to park, how cool is that!
This place has multiple paths and loops and not all parking accesses all loops so we checked the ones near the “yellow loop” and grabbed a spot. The beginning of our “hike” was more of a walk. We started with open fields and well groomed trails and eventually entered the woods which also had wide trails and few rocks. Easy walk but some significant elevation change which we like (gets the heart pumping).
Along the path we noticed these spiral cuts in the trees. There was a large section where the vines wrap around the trees and end up leaving these scars in the bark, sometimes causing significant impact. Haven’t seen that on any of our other hikes.
Most of the stream crossings have bridges and there is a well made swinging bridge on the yellow trail that we really enjoyed.
We found an alternate trail off of the “yellow trail” that connected two of the parking lots and opted to take that route. We came across a small stream with just a rock crossing. If you have been following us, back in November we had some shoe failures (see “Sole-Less” Sunday) and for Christmas we both got some new waterproof hiking shoes. Since we are a bit nerdy we were happy to get them wet and forged our way through.
Nice park with lots of options. Check it out!
