Edelman Fossil Park Nature Trail – Sewell, NJ

Edelman Fossil Park Nature Trail – Sewell, Gloucester County, NJ
Official Distance – 1.6 miles total walking (this is the out, around the lollipop, and back)
Type – lollipop
Difficulty:  3 of 10

Website – Edelman Fossil Park website.  Trail info is hidden on the “Visit Us” section
Open – Sunrise to Sunset.

Terrain – Fields, woods, wetlands
Surface – Some gravel, some paved, some dirt

Trailheads – North side of the parking lot, somewhere around N 39° 45.772 W 075° 07.710 (hard to tell, Google Earth hasn’t updated their imagery yet as of posting)

Directions – 66 Million Mosasaur Way,
Mantua, NJ 08080

Parking – Good sized lot, and then also an overflow lot somewhere.

Dog friendly? No dogs allowed on trails
Stroller friendly? Surprisingly bumpy, no strollers past where it enters the woods, should be fine up until there.
Benches? A few benches along the way
Facilities?: No facilities outside, facilities inside the museum (not sure if you can get to them without a ticket though)

Rules –

Cool apps they suggest (sure!) –

Markings – Tape at the moment…

Map –

Description –

We are a HIKING blog!  This post is about HIKING!  Why would we post about a museum and looking for fossils!? (Answer: need to wait for those teacher paychecks to start back up in September… so until then, HIKING!)

Anyway, the new Edelman Fossil Park looks amazing, and THEY ALSO HAVE A NATURE TRAIL!!!!  The nature trail and the playground (more about that at the bottom) are both free, you don’t need to be going to the museum to go use them, and the parking is FREE, which is the best price for hike parking.

Now to get this out of the way first, there are dinosaurs along the trail.  That we found.  Although if we had found them, we would have probably been eaten.  So there may very well be dinosaurs along the trail.

Facing the walkway up to the museum, the sign will point you left.

The trail will then take you past the gigantic Pterosaur playground, which you should NOT call a Pterodactyl because then your children will make fun of you, you big dummy who can’t even tell winged dinosaurs apart!  Wait, the sign says it’s not a dinosaur?  Man, we are losing so much street cred.

Just past the playground entrance, turn left to stay on the trail.  If you continue straight, you may notice that you are waist deep in a pond.  This is how you know you missed your turn.

The trail then splits.  Left takes you into the other playground entrance.  Right is the official start to the nature trail.  Force your children against the will to go right.

The trail will pass through a field, past a drainage pond and area.  There were a dinosaur ton of flowers and birds out when we went through.

The trail will pass a kiosk with a map, then curve around some small sand and clay bluffs.

 

The road the trail followed up until now continues, but follow the not-at-all-subtle arrows to make a sharp left, go over a bump, and enter the woods.  The second part of the hike becomes totally different now, heavily wooded, very green, and full of dinosaurs very bumpy with some short, but sharp inclines and declines.

Enter the woods, drop down, and cross a small bridge.

 

 

The trail quickly becomes outlined in logs, which make it easy to stay on the right path.  Someone posted online this feels more like a bike trail (FEELS!  FEELS! No bikes actually allowed), twisty with lots of up and downs, and I definitely agree with that.

There’s also dinosaur tons worth of poison ivy back here, so remember NOT to play with the hairy ropes – “hairy vine, no friend of mine” is what the internet told me.  And the internet is always right.

There’s also a LOT of Asian bittersweet back here, an invasive species that can wrap around trees and eventually kill them, which I now can’t look past after three days worth of cutting it during an Eagle project.

But there’s also some fine big trees back here, lots of fern, and holly.

A very, very short side loop leads to a view down to Mantua Creek, which the trail will soon drop to.

So drop we will!  But first, the trail will split into two.  We picked left.  It doesn’t matter which you choose though, it will loop back to this spot.

 

From the creek, we climbed back up and around to where the trail had split to start this loop.

Having gotten back to the “stick” of the lollipop part of the trail, we walked back exactly as we came, stopping to check out plants and bugs and such along the way.  Oh, and more flower shots.  Of course more flower shots.

Afterwards, your children will murder you with the help of a T-Rex they befriended along the trails if you don’t let them go on the playground.  It’s a pretty great playground.

There’s also, of course, the new museum here which you should get tickets for online ahead of time.

And while I love a good museum, the real draw here is a chance to dig in the old sand quarry, which is one of the most productive fossil spots in the USA, with tons of fossilized teeth and crocodile pieces and plates and other cool stuff being found.  Plus, it’s the only public fossil site that hosts digging east of the Mississippi!

If you are like us and not going in today, you can walk on the sidewalk along the right side of the museum building for an overlook of the digging area.

Some day we’ll be back to dig, but we had a great adventure with the trail and playground!

Nearby:

Ceres Park is nearby, as are Atkinson Memorial Park and Chestnut Branch Park.