Defenders Trail, Day Three

 Over a decade ago, I walked most of the "Defenders Trail" around North Point, in Baltimore County. I posted 2 summaries of those hikes as "Day One" and "Day Two", so though there is a big jump in elapsed time, this is "Day Three".

Looking back at the images I captured and the notes I took, a bit has changed, in particular Google shut down the Panoramio web site. The images I and others uploaded, were mostly retained by Google, except the former URLs are broken and are now harder to find. For a while, I could not find any of the thousands of geo-tagged photos I contributed, but at some point, they showed up in Google Earth Pro when you select "show photo layers". Fortunately I was able to pull down my contributions and spent a little time recovering shots from the first 2 posts to make them readable again.

Methodist Meeting House

Nothing is left of the original building, though this substantial marker should last a few centuries, above or below the water line. There are no sidewalks or paths leading to this fenced-off area, so you'd need to park on a nearby street and wander around. 

Nearby is the Bread & Cheese Creek streambed, where there are high water markers for times when upstream runoff rushes into a constricted area. Needless to say, don't walk on North Point Road past the narrowing.

North Point Battlefield

When I hiked these trails in 2011, the North Point Battlefield Park did not exist in the condition that it does in 2022.

"State."

It's flat, and wet. I hope enough people use these trails to keep back the phragmites. But the wetlands are pervasive, and invasive.

North Point 

One site mentioned in the old trail guide was "Cooks Tavern". That's long gone, replaced by a variety of shopping center buildings. This view shows North Point Boulevard, the Beltway, and in the distance, a road sign commemorating the battle of North Point.

Speaking of signs, here's two.

No giant flags here, just swamp and stickerbushes.