The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
A STARRY, STARRY NIGHT IN PLYMOUTH
Attendees to spend night in Harriet Wetherill Park
Love camping? PLYMOUTH »
Agree with seminal outdoorsman Henry David Thoreau’s contention, “We now no longer camp as for a night but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven”?
Think you might enjoy pitching a tent and sleeping under the stars but worry humorist Dave Barry might have been onto something when he described camping as “nature’s way of promoting the motel business”?
Organizers promise even novices will have a blast at Plymouth Township’s first-ever Family Camp Out in Harriet Wetherill Park. The openair overnight is scheduled for Sept. 14-15 from 5:30 p.m. to 10 a.m. and will set up near HWP’s Butler Pike entrance, adjacent to its pavilion and restrooms.
Registration for the smoke- and alcohol-free event is $30 for a household of four ($38 non-residents) and $10 for each additional family member. That covers a variety of all-ages activities, a campfire (and the obligatory s’mores), giant screen movie and continental breakfast. Campers have the option of packing their own picnic dinners or pre-ordering meals from Mission BBQ.
“Personally, I really enjoy camping, and I thought it would be fun to introduce it to families who, maybe, would like to give it a try but just don’t know how it goes … where
to begin,” says Joanna Sharapan, program manager at Greater Plymouth Community Center. “Kim [Mooney, GPCC programmer] and I also thought it would be fun for veteran campers … the whole idea of, basically, camping in your own backyard.
“Kim and I will be there to help people set up their tents and answer questions, so it’ll be much more organized than just going it alone, and we think it’ll be a lot of fun.”
Veteran visitors consider HWP one of the area’s best-kept secrets. The 67-acre tract between Narcissa Road and Butler Pike is lush with indigenous trees, grasses and wildflowers, and its bounty of native birds and fowl, deer and foxes makes it “an environmental nature park,” says Plymouth Parks and Recreation Director Karen Franck.
The township used a Montgomery County Open Space Grant to buy HWP’s 40-acre core from philanthropist Elkins Wetherill in the mid-1990s. In 2006, a 15-acre section that included a farmhouse, a number of outbuildings and a stable — called the “homestead parcel” — was purchased, but its status as a “life estate” delayed its actual transfer to the township until Wetherill’s death (which occurred in 2011). The park is named for his late first wife, a Plymouth commissioner prior to the township’s switch to a home rule charter and councilman/woman format in the mid-1970s.
Subsequent grants — including money from Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the state’s Commonwealth Financing Authority — have underwritten the development of on-site walking trails, bird blinds, a streambank observation platform, a butterfly garden, a pedestrian bridge and a playground (adjacent to the park’s Butler Pike entrance). Portions of the spread are farmed.
The township’s commitment to sustainability and environmental protection at HWP earned Plymouth the Pennsylvania DCNR and Recreation and Park Society’s first-ever DCNRPRPS Green Park Award