From what I saw at Gouldsboro and Tobyhanna State Parks on Sunday, I knew that the northeastern areas of PA are now snow free. With that in mind, I decided to head up to the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. The last time I was there on the Jacobsburg eagle watch program much of the recreation area was snow covered and I wanted to see how much trash was around now that it is gone. Since this is a longer trip I set my goal for the day at two garbage bags full of trash. I did not know what I was going to find, but I didn't want to go home without removing at least that much. My first stop in the recreation area was at the eagle nest pull off. I didn't see either of the pair that were on the nest on the last trip through.
The site looked much cleaner with a coating of snow. There was a lot of trash between the pull off and the river. Even found another old 7-Up Bottle.
I wouldn't say this was a good start. A good start would have been finding nothing at all. This gave me an idea of how the day was going to go though. This recreation area is part of the National Park Service, we as Americans should respect these areas much more than we do. There should be no litter left behind by anyone and where there is litter, more people should pitch in to help pick it up.
The Delaware truly is a beautiful river. I love areas like this. As far as I could see not a single other person. Once the trash is eliminated in places like this, there isn't even a sign of people around. I think that would make this place much more spectacular. This was the second site in the recreation area, here there was a flat walkable bank. Not every access is like this and there is a lot of inaccessible shoreline in this section of the river.
Newspapers. Multiple stacks of old, unread, bundled, newspapers. All but the plastic tie around it will biodegrade, so I left these. Had I found them right after they were discarded I would have taken them and turned them into compost. Why did this person have all of these newspapers? Why did they decide to take them and throw them down the bank of the river? Why do I constantly find things like this that just don't make sense?
Much of the recyclables and styrofoam I found at this site were washed up in debris piles. From the debris line it looked like the river was very high during the last rain event.
More than the first stop. After this I knew I was going to reach my goal.
Took a walk down to check out this spring house before I moved on to the next site. There were only a couple bottles on the roadside down to it, but across the road next to a pond I noticed something about thirty feet off the road...
A mystery bag. The recreation area has trash receptacles at many of the accesses, so today I was taking everything I found. Seeing recyclables peaking out of some of the holes in the bag I was hoping that would be it and there wouldn't be any surprises in it. There was one surprise, a diaper. Wasn't pleased, but I bagged everything up and put it in the car.
The Eshback Access was my final stop of the day and was another location that still had snow when we stopped on the eagle watch. It looks like the boat launch here will need a little work before the main boating season starts. Would be just a tad hard to get a larger boat out currently.
Plastic netting. I am very tired, so that's about all I have to say about that.
I was hopping to see some ducks on this trip. I didn't, found duck tracks though.
When I found the styrofoam container my garbage bag was nearly full. I left both and continued on to fill my pack.
If it wasn't for views like this, this clean-up would have been completely miserable.
I have found four or five fire extinguishers along the Delaware and Lehigh since I started this project. This is another trash item that I would like to know how they get into the river. Are they from boats? Do people just like throwing their old ones into the river? Are they items that were washed out of houses during floods? I would love to have the answers to these impossible questions. The oil tank on the left is not the first one I have seen on the Delaware. Not something that I can take out and it will probably end up somewhere down river after the next large flood.
Carrying all of this up a muddy bank with Penny on a leash was not the easiest thing. Made it though and this brought my total for the day to around four bags. Two of recyclables and two of garbage. There were a lot of small items packed into that styrofoam container.
I made the mistake of glancing up river before getting back in the car and I saw a few more items. Picked and packed them up and I went to dispose of the true garbage.
When I stopped to deposit the non-recyclables in the trash cans I noticed another bag. I could see it from the trash cans, there is no reason it should have been there.
On the way out to the main road I stopped multiple times to pick items up. I was exhausted by this point, but I really wanted to leave this access as clean as I possibly could.
I know I missed things, but I got as much as possible from along the roadway. I was happy with what I collected today and I well surpassed my goal of two garbage bags full.
You too can help with taking out the trash! If you get out hiking take a grocery bag with you, give it a second use and fill it with trash while you are out! Every bit helps. You can also help contributing to this project here: Help Fund Taking Out the Trash
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