<<<Hikes in NJ - Trails Less Taken
Helyar Woods at Rutgers Gardens
New Brunswick, Middlesex County
Summary: A small parcel of woods (43 acres) adjacent to Rutgers Gardens and Westons Mill Pond, in New Brunswick, mainly used for dog walking and light walking. The gardens are very nice to wander through as well, and include a small bamboo forest.
This nice area is sandwiched between some busy highways... highrises, highway overpass with grafitti, and even On The Border on Rt. 1 are sometimes visible, plus road noise. The park still makes for a nice, quick hike, however.
2.5 miles. very easy, little elevation gain.
Map: The links above are more of the area and not the trails. Some of the trails are marked, others not, in a seemingly haphazard way... but it's not a large or confusing park. There may be a trail map available but nothing was open the day we were there, and we've located nothing online.
Books: A very brief description of the woods
(no trail info) can be found in the New
Jersey Walk Book
Parking: Rt. 1 to Ryders Lane Exit... directions here. Follow the signs for the woods, you have to make a few turns past some buildings, thru the gardens. The small parking lot is near the Log Cabin.
Restrooms: Unsure if there are any inside the Gardens buildings, as they were closed when we were there. Ryders Lane has lots of stores, gas stations etc.
Hike Directions: From the lot, there are two entrances to the woods: The path that runs close to the water, and the other entrance across the open field to where there is a sign and a mailbox (??? suppose there may be trail pamphlets here in season). We did the main loop and then kind of meandered around another trail a bit, so I am not going to give step-by-step directions here.
We followed the trail by the water... it's not really blazed so much. At one point the trail veers to the left to skirt a somewhat deep drop (the trail looks like it goes down, and it used to). You end up heading downhill more gradually and crossing a stream on a bridge.
It's pretty easy to just follow the trail along. You will get to a dam and an overpass with graffitti in front of you. The trail continues a bit toward a 2nd overpass but after that, it peters out.
We turned around and headed back, at the dam area we took the path to the right and followed that along some fields. A little further arrive at an old Christmas Tree farm... the trees are all in rows and now very tall. There is an area marking it "Field of Heroes" and dedicated to servicemen and women.
A bit further on, Rt 1 and On The Border are visable in the distance on your right.
The trail is a woods road and heads back... we picked up a trail to the right that was marked orange with a green center and just looped around back to the woods road to make a longer hike.
We took the path back towards the lot, it heads left and then ends up at the entrance with the sign.
