GWB & Little Red Lighthouse

Simplicity a la Mount Ivy Environmental County Park

Mount Ivy Environmental County Park (hereafter, MIECP) is one of the most straight-forward parks I've been to in the NY area. The story goes that there used to be a rail line that rain through NY and NJ, but has since been abandoned and the rail bed is now a hiking trail. On a difficulty scale from 1-10, it was maybe a 2. The path was solid, generally wide enough to walk side-by-side with another person and was fairly flat.

Cabin in the Woods (aka Return to Kakiat)

Sunday was about as gorgeous as anyone could hope an October weekend to be. The air was crisp and refreshing, without being overly chilly. The sun was shining. It was a perfect day for a stroll in the woods. The goal was to find the abandoned cabin in the woods that we failed at finding last time. I vaguely remembered its location and we set off to it immediately after arriving. It didn't take long, honestly. A short walk from the parking lot, past the dog park, through some deep piles of leaves, along the Mahwah River, and finally up the hill.

Watchung Reservation...Months Later

I've been sitting on quite a few pictures from trips over the past few months. I figure I should attempt to catch up. So, first up, Watchung Reservation. I took the trip to Watchung Reservation back in March. It is the largest park in Union County, NJ and has a lot to offer. There are stables, horse and hiker friendly trails, a golf course, an abandoned village, a museum,  and a large picnic area complete with a playground. One of the most notable things while driving up was the land bridges that allow wildlife to cross over the highway.

Explorations were mostly limited to the abandoned Feltville, the pine plantation, and some other minor trails.

Not abandoned, but pretty sweet

Return of the MAGICICADA

If anyone lives in the Northern Jersey area and you haven't been to Ramapo Reservation, I have one piece of advice for you: put on your hiking shoes and get your booty there asap. It's got 19.7 miles of hiking trails with an array of things I personally love: waterfalls, ponds, abandoned buildings, and outlooks. With 11 different marked trails there's enough variation for all types of hikers from the beginner to the more advanced. Additionally, if 3,313 acres aren't enough for you, trails connect to Ringwood State Park for even more outdoor fun.

Recently, I had to pleasure of going on a short hike of approximately 2 hours with one of my best hiking buds: Tyger. Unfortunately, this was another time when I lacked my fancy camera. So please bear with the camera phone pictures. The trailhead features a lovely warning about copperheads and timber rattlers. Somehow in my years of going there, never happened to see this sign as I always took a different entrance. It kind of reminded me of my time at Kakiat Park. 

Snakessss

Another Shout-out to the Great Central Park

Being so close to NYC, it's almost a shame I don't make it out to Central Park more often-- or any of the other city parks for that matter but that's besides the point. Every time I go there I discover something new. This isn't to say I've been there that many times (maybe a dozen,) but it's certainly a gem in the heart of Manhattan. Last time I was there was back in February.

Recent circumstances found me staying in a hotel with my boyfriend (the Roosevelt for those familiar with it) faced with the prospect of spending 3 hours all alone in the middle of a sunny Saturday while the dear boyfriend worked. Being only 13 blocks or so from Central Park, it seemed pretty obvious what I was going to do. Armed with my camera, I went on an adventure to explore. 

Blurry selfie in the hotel

Model boats

A Bergen County Hybrid

I have a problem with Pascack Brook County Park. It's not a problem I've had before and it is honestly more an issue with retrospect than anything else. This park confuses me. It's 79 acres with ball fields, playgrounds, and fishing "ponds" (you know, the kind that requires that cute little fountain to aerate it). Inside it also boasts a "suburban oasis" that hosts a variety of wildlife in its riparian habitat. Wild celebrities include the dark-eyed junco,  downy woodpecker, great blue heron, painted turtle, box turtle, & wild rabbit among others. So my confusion lies in what this park wants to be. Does it want to be a standard county park (kind of like Wood Dale, which I mentioned in an early entry) or does it want to be a nature preserve?

Parking was super easy, as to be expected with a county park like this. What did give me a little shock is how much pervious pavement there is. The parking areas and paths have pavers with holes filled with gravel to allow water to infiltrate the ground. So awesome and a bit more environmentally friendly than standard paving.

Look at that paving

Harriman Snake

Harriman State Park: Silver Mine Lake

I was really surprised with this one. For a long time I've been meaning to explore Harriman State Park. The thing about Harriman though is that it is huge. The second largest state park in NY to be exact. With over 200 miles of trails, 31 lakes and reservoirs, an array of camping sites, boat launches, scenic lookouts, and more, it's a lot to pick out one spot to check out.

The Lake

Rutgers Day (Over A Month Later)

Rutgers Day, previously known as Ag-Field Day was an event I looked forward to every year on Cook Campus. It's a day filled with activities, information, and tasty treats. Some highlights include the interacting with really cool insects (like Praying Mantises-- my favorite!), petting wolves, seeing the farm animals (piglets!), watching the dog show, sampling pickled things, getting freshly squeezed lemonade, buying new plants for the garden, or swinging by the Folk Festival that happens the same day on the same campus. All in all, lots of fun!

Tarantula

Neglect

I know I have been failing to update this blog. Honestly, there is no excuse. True, I haven't been adventuring into the woods as often as I'd like, but I have been sitting on pictures for quite some time now. Granted, these pictures are really low quality. I thought I might be able to make it back with my camera. Yet somehow a month has already passed.

 I had gone for a long drive one day to Devil's Tower in Alpine (NJ) and came across this neat little park in the woods across 9W and the PIP. By the way, if you are unfamiliar with Devil's Tower it's a supposedly haunted site. After following a simultaneously rocky and muddy path with several nice vantage points of the Hudson, we came across the remnants of what looked like a road and a few other structures. The most impressive one was this old manor.

 

Central Park

Look at that grading!

Details everywhere!

Horses!

In the great Central Park for a brief, super cold visit. My hands were about to fall off from frost-bite so I refrained from too many pictures. I'm sure Olmstead would understand.

One awesome bonus was meeting up in the Artillery with woman who works for the parks department for a review of the master plan of Fort Washington Park. In the meeting room was the original competition entry for the design of Central Park by Olmstead and Vaux. It was glorious. Unfortunately I didn't get a great picture of it because everyone was crowding around it.

Substandard phone pic

Little Red Lighthouse

I am lucky enough that for my last studio class ever as a last semester senior I get to study and redesign the area beneath the George Washington Bridge near/around the Little Red Lighthouse. The area is called Fort Washington Park for the curious. It's going to be a fun project.

Not a Park

I just wanted to throw this post out there after visiting Atlantic City's Trump Taj Mahal for the past 2 days. Casinos of this caliber, or probably any caliber really, are in a lot of ways the antithesis of any sort of "natural" place I'd be writing about on this blog. They are noisy, distracting, can almost totally make you lose sense of day/time, and can seriously produce anxiety if you are losing your money in high-stakes games. There are only two ways I can see parks and casinos being similar.

For one, parks, particularly obviously designed ones, guide you using a series of tricks such as paths, signage, and strategic plantings to get you to go where the designer wants you to go. This could be a view or, depending on the priorities of the stakeholders, could be something like stores or a food court. Casinos seem to do this too, except, personally, it always seemed to end with me on the casino floor playing the slots, even though I wasn't necessarily there to gamble. (There is a good reason for this.) The second similarity is a stretch. Casino's are jam packed with color and lights. Parks, particularly ones that seem to be popular with a wide array of people (not just special groups like birdwatchers) are filled with a vibrant color and textural palette through extensive use of flowers, shrubs, and even sculptures. Really, though, that is about all I can think of at the moment for similarities of the two.

Between you and me, I'd take the park over a casino any day. Then again, I probably wouldn't end up $20 down from gambling in a park.

The Secret Forest

When I was 16, a boy I had a crush on friend of mine took me to this "secret forest." It had no name and no labels proclaiming it was a park of any sort. Besides the fact that I got to spend time with this friend (which was exciting in its own way), it was wonderfully intriguing to me that so much land (or so it seemed) was hidden away at the end of a pretty unremarkable road only for the privileged few to discover. He led me over a small bridge that went over a creek and explained to me that there used to be houses back here but they were knocked down. If we looked hard enough we'd be able to find the remnants of them. Traces of humanity in "natural" places have always fascinated me and still still do to this day. I was giddy at the thought of stumbling onto whatever might be left behind-- a foundation, rusting cars, whatever...though we never did really look.

Small and Mundane

Visiting Wood Dale County Park in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, was a trip down memory lane. It is the suburbanite's classic park: water feature, walking paths, a playground for the kiddies, a picnic grove, and if you cross a little cement bridge you can access an off-leash dog park and tennis courts. I took the two family dogs to this little park yesterday, even though that wasn't my original intention. I wanted to go to "Pascack Brook County Park," but google navigation took me to some neighborhood with a dead end. Classic. Honestly, this has happened to me about 3 other times before where the navigation would take me to some dead-end street and direct me to off road through the woods. I might have a jeep, but I'm not that ballsy.

Kakiat Park

This time up: Kakiat Park! This one was a new one for me. It is located in Montebello, New York. It boasts 376 acres with a great dog park, 2 scenic lookouts, an old mill, a neat log cabin, and three specifically marked trails, one of which leads to Harriman State Park. Usually, when I go to a park that involves hiking trails I vaguely glance at the map, see if there is anything worth making sure I see and remember the color of the trail. That's about it. No carrying along trail maps or compasses or any of that jazz. If I end up on another trail accidentally, so be it. (So long as I don't get too lost.)

A Walk In the Park

So everyone has their thing. Your cousin is really into bodybuilding. Your best friend is really into finding a good deal (on things they don't even need but that doesn't stop them). Your roommate is into painting. We all have a thing. I guess mine has always been parks. Maybe a few other things too but mainly parks. I even decided to major in Landscape Architecture because I wanted to design parks that people could enjoy as much as I have enjoyed other parks. The jury is still out on whether or not I am actually that creative. Go figure.