March 2011 Blog Posts (5)

This is one of those hikes that I had not considered worth doing. In my mind, it seemed like the hike would be too urban, too crowded, too noisy, a waste of a good hiking day.  Did I want to be looking straight at New York City and Yonkers across the river while listening to traffic on the Palisades Interstate Parkway? But I needed to stay closer to home this past weekend so I did start to consider it and researched the possibilities.  I found myself drawn to the northern section and decided…

We only had time for a short hike today, so we headed over to the Manasquan Reservoir in Howell. It's been quite some time since we'd been to this very pretty park, as it's more of a stroll around the reservoir rather than a hike. But by adding in the Cove Trail we managed to get in about 5.9 miles.



For 5.1 miles, just do the Perimeter Trail and skip…

Decided to check out Stephens State Park once we stumbled on a trail map that showed the potential for long loops here. This park is located right next to Allamuchy State Park, which we'd been to before, but we'd skipped Stephens because the official map only shows a few short trails around the parking lot.



10.2 miles,…

This is a long route in the northern part of Pyramid Mountain Natural Area and around Butler Reservoir. The reservoir and Pyramid is really pretty, but a lot of this route is just so-so. The trail runs near a LOT of houses (which would be less visible when the leaves are on the trees), and there is a lot more road walking than we like... you literally walk on several…

We tried this loop in early February but the slushy snow caused us to cut things short. This time the snow was all gone, and we were able to hike the entire park. There is a nice mix of pine trees and deciduous forest, the Manasquan river, and a lake and swamp area.

8.1 miles. Trail surface is easy and level; this hike is moderate only due to length.…