Crum Woods

I grew up by the Crum Creek… the Little Crum, a tributary, still runs through my dad’s Yard. I have So Many Fond Memories of time spent hiking, wandering and running through those self same woods in the 60s. Even once when a bunch of the hippy high school kids got chased by the
inept Police Dept from an Orgiastic Keg Party Under the Trestle…
Or being almost caught in one of the frat houses with ‘The Mumf’s” weed one summer… Many Many Great Memories… I should write a book

I didn’t know we could review the woods– I really didn’t know woods had names and addresses, thats kind of the splendor of the wood.
but I love the woods in the Swarthmore college area. Swarthmore is a beautiful town (a tree city USA, I’ll have you know) with a great attitude. The only consistently democractic town in Delaware County. I would prefer to jog through the twists and turns of these woods than run on pavement anyway. There are paths and semi-​paths and no short supply of natural wonder which I feel almost dirty divulging it on the internet.

This probably belongs in «hiking» and «parks» and «pets» if there is such thing…
We were looking for good places to take the dog where she could run around (preferably off leash) in grass or leaves or something. There’s a website, believe it or not, for hiking with your dog, and this spot was in the top ten. I was semi-​familiar with Swarthmore as a college, but had no idea they had all of this random land quasi-​on-​campus that was available for public use. Bonus: apparently it’s Swarthmore spring break. Empty campus + lots of available visitor parking + relatively empty woods = dog in overjoyed exhaustion.
There seem to be plenty of visitor-​access parking lots around, we basically found the first one on campus and wandered over to the Scott Amphitheater. Our limited information indicated that there would be some kind of network of trails in that general region and that once we hit said trails it was kosher to let the dog off leash as long as she was under «voice control.» As we made our way toward what looked like the beginning of a trail, we met a very nice woman and her very nice collie. The collie was on leash, but had clearly just enjoyed a nice dog-​exhausting walk. We wandered a few yards down the trail and let her loose: bliss.
There isn’t really a single trail to a destination or a loop or anything like that. We took several forks, backtracked, wandered down what might have been a trail or might have been just random leaves having fallen in a semi-​path, etc. There’s plenty of space to explore and the trails range from 100% level and easy going to a bit more rocky and climby oriented.
I didn’t see any maps or other signs of civilization/​development, but we followed various trails to what I think might have been the edge of Scott Arboretum. (Five different specimens of twelve different kinds of holly — all labeled — tipped us off.) Near that area is a pretty big meadow/​clearing with some random stone-​henge-​looking arrangements that made a good place to stop and play fetch for a bit. The review we read on the dog hiking site seemed to indicate drinking fountains and dog bowls, but I didn’t see anything like that, so if it’s hot and/​or you plan to be out for a while, bring water (your dog will be fine though, as there’s a fairly clean looking stream/​creek right alongside many of the paths).
We ran into five or six other dogs — all off leash — during the approx. three hours we wandered around. Everyone was super-​friendly and their dogs were excited to enjoy some random play as well. It’s a bit of a hike from Philly (too bad Septa won’t allow dogs), but worth it for some non-​dog-​park variety, I think.