For years, if you walked north out of the village on the towpath toward Bulls Island, you hit the same wall. A stretch of ground between the canal and the river, maybe half a mile past the parking area, was simply gone. Orange tape, a sign about erosion, and a detour back onto Route 29 for anyone who wanted to keep going. Regulars learned to route around it without thinking. Newer neighbors just assumed that was how the trail had always worked.
It wasn't. The section is called the Inlet Trail, and the state park's own account of it describes a stretch that had been "inaccessible to the public for several years" before it was officially reopened. If you haven't walked that piece of the loop lately, the map in your head is out of date, and that's worth fixing before the weather turns and everyone's back out there.
The Half Mile That Closed the Loop
The Inlet Trail sits inside Bulls Island Recreation Area, threading a narrow band of woods between the Delaware and Raritan Canal and the Delaware River itself. It runs about 1.3 miles, a leisurely stretch through shaded lowland forest rather than a workout, and it straddles the line between Delaware and Kingwood townships. It's separate from the shorter Natural Area Trail nearby, which covers a little under a mile through the island's floodplain forest, and both are separate again from the towpath proper, the flat crushed-stone artery that runs more than seventy miles down the old canal corridor.
None of that distinction mattered much when the Inlet Trail was closed. It matters now because it changes what "doing the loop" actually means. A walk that used to dead-end and force a backtrack now connects all the way through, which is a small thing until you're the one standing at the old barrier wondering if it's still there.
Three Miles North, Then Three Minutes Into Another State
From the village, Bulls Island is roughly three miles up Route 29, close enough for a bike ride before lunch. Once you're on the island, a pedestrian bridge designed by the Roebling firm, the same engineering family behind the Brooklyn Bridge, carries you across the Delaware into Lumberville, Pennsylvania, in a walk of just a few minutes. No toll, no car, just a change of state mid-stride.
For anyone who wants to turn that crossing into a longer day, the Pennsylvania side connects to the Delaware Canal towpath, and one popular version of the loop, tracked by hikers on AllTrails, runs from Bulls Island down through Lambertville and back across the Lambertville–New Hope bridge for something in the neighborhood of 13 to 14 miles round trip. Spring is the season to time it for. The island sits along a documented migratory corridor, and the state park's own notes mention warblers, flycatchers, vireos, and swallows moving through, along with the Delaware's shad run, when striped bass and shad push upriver in numbers worth watching for from the bridge itself.
The Permit Office Habit
Here's the part that catches people off guard on the first warm Saturday of the season. From Memorial Day through Labor Day, anyone launching a kayak, canoe, paddleboard, or any other unmotorized craft from the Bulls Island ramp needs a permit, and that permit has to be bought in person at the park office, a five-minute walk from the ramp itself. There's no buying ahead online. You show up with your boat, walk to the office, pay, and walk back.
The pricing breaks down like this:
| Permit Type | NJ Resident | Nonresident |
|---|---|---|
| Daily | $12 | $20 |
| Seasonal | $60 | $80 |
It's a small errand, but it's the kind of thing that only surfaces once you've actually tried to launch a boat there on a July afternoon and realized the office line is part of the plan, not an inconvenience layered on top of it. Locals who paddle regularly buy the season pass in May and never think about it again. Everyone else finds out the hard way, usually with a cooler already loaded in the car.
Prallsville's Actual Calendar
A few minutes south of the island, back toward the village, Prallsville Mills sits right on the canal, a ten-building complex that includes an 1877 grist mill, a sawmill from the 1850s, an eighteenth-century linseed oil mill, and a 1900 grain silo. The nonprofit Delaware River Mill Society has run the site since local residents Donald and Beverley Jones bought it in 1969 specifically to keep it from being lost, and the group still uses concerts and shows there to fund the ongoing restoration work.
The longest-running piece of that calendar is a folk concert series called Music You Can't Hear on the Radio, produced at the mill since 1985 as a benefit for the society. It's the kind of program that doesn't advertise itself loudly but has quietly outlasted plenty of venues that did. Later in the year, the mill hosts its Winter Fine Arts and Crafts Show, set for December 5 and 6 this year in the Grist Mill and Silo, with roughly three dozen artisans and jewelers from the region and five dollars at the door. It's a small show by design, drawing around 500 people over the weekend, which is part of why it's stayed a fixture rather than a draw for anyone driving in from outside the area.
What the Loop Tells You
None of this is dramatic on its own. A trail reopens. A bridge takes three minutes to cross. A concert series has been running since the mid-1980s. But taken together, it says something specific about how this stretch of the river actually works. The outdoor life here isn't a fixed backdrop you can describe once and leave alone. It's administered, closed and reopened in pieces, gated by permit offices and shaped by a small nonprofit's fundraising calendar. Knowing which part is currently open, which part requires a walk to a specific building first, and what's actually on the mill's schedule this season is the difference between visiting the area and living inside its rhythm.
I've spent more than twenty-five years in this stretch of the Delaware Township and Stockton corridor, and the towpath loop is one of those things I check on the way it changes almost like weather. If you're already out there this fall, walk the Inlet Trail before the leaves come down, and if you're crossing to Lumberville for the first time in a while, notice how quickly the character changes on the other side of that bridge.
If any of this river corridor, its land, its light, its odd small habits, is part of why you're thinking about a move here rather than just a visit, I'd welcome the conversation. You can reach Jacqueline Haut Evans directly to schedule a free consultation.
