White Clay Creek

On the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's the temperature rose to a balmy 50 degrees and my hardy hiking buddy and I decided to take a walk through the White Clay Creek Preserve, a state park near Landenberg. We parked in a small lot off London Tract Road and hit the Penndel Trail, walking to the London Tract Meeting House (site of the "ticking tomb") before looping around on the Edwin Leid Trail along Sharpless Road and then retracing our steps, a round trip of about four miles.
It was a beautiful sunny day -- no need for gloves or a hat! -- and there were many other hikers, joggers, hard-core cross-country runners, and dog-walkers taking advantage of the unseasonable weather. We also saw two equestrians fording the stream and one shotgun-carrying hunter.
The route we took followed the creek most of the way. We didn't see many birds or animals, but it was interesting to see a couple of man-made structures: a crumbling old boarded-up house near the Meeting House, its dormer windows collapsing at alarming angles into the roof, and a green metal shed that once housed a USGS monitoring station for transmitting data about the creek's water level. I noticed one of those ground-level USGS cartography markers in front of it.
The footing was a little muddy in spots, but as far as I was concerned that just made the walk more fun. I was wearing my all-purpose Gore-Tex boots, and wouldn't you know, we ran into a fellow hiker who was a Gore-Tex employee and noticed my footgear right away: "Practical AND stylish!" he commented with pleasure.
Another friendly fellow walking with his lively dog, Jack, turned out to be a trail maintenance volunteer for the park and gave us a few suggestions for trails we should check out.
Another hiker we encountered was rather less sunny. She told us -- with startling vehemence -- that the muddiness was NOT due to the rain, but rather to the number of hikers using the trails. She didn't seem to approve at all. Perhaps she thought that she and her group should be the only ones permitted in the park?