We’d just been to Morristown National Park last fall and did the Grand Loop at Jockey Hollow, but is was not long after Snowtober had made a mess of hiking trails around the state and we wanted to hit the park in the Spring.

Jockey Hollow can be wonderfully dense with green, so we decided to head over on a lovely May day forecast to be in the upper 70′s.

We really enjoy the Grand Loop and always end doing that, but I figured it was time to check out the area south, the New Jersey Brigade area. The Patriot’s Path links Jockey Hollow to the Brigade Area, with options to visit Cross Estate Gardens and/or Scherman-Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary (part of the NJ Audubon Society). Read more…

NJ Hiking Morris County Parks Moderate

We decided to head over to the Black River Park in Chester as we hadn’t been for about a year and a half, and that was during the fall (got a few nice foliage photos too) so we wanted to head over in spring.

Sunny skies and temps in the upper 50s made for perfect hiking weather, but we saw only a few people on the trail and most were along the Black River as we neared the parking lot on our return. We always enjoy this park but it was an especially quiet, peaceful and enjoyable spring morning.

We parked at the Cooper Mill lot and took the Black River trail. A common turnaround spot is the intersection of Bamboo Brook Trail with Conifer Pass, but we kept on going as the Bamboo Brook Trail heads gradually downhill (keep in mind you’ll be heading uphill on your return). These trails feel like deep in-the-middle-of-nowhere woods even though roads actually aren’t far away. Read more…

NJ Hiking Morris County Parks Moderate, North NJ

Sometimes you get so familiar with a place that areas go overlooked.

I was flipping through 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: New York City, yet again, but this time a spot on their Cheesequake hike map caught my eye – “Steamboat Landing”. We’ve been to Cheesequake at least a bajillion and a half times – it’s our go-to park when we need a quick good hike nearby – so I never paid much attention to entries on Cheesequake in hiking books.

I pulled up the relatively new Cheesequake park map to take a look and realized to get to Steamboat Landing meant a right turn onto a boring looking park road that we’d always ignored as we headed straight on the green trail. Part of the allure of Cheesequake for us is that we can go without having to plan a route or look at the map and just hike… but here we’d missed something. For years. Hunh. Read more…

NJ Hiking NJ General Central NJ, Historical, Lake, Moderate

We enjoy traveling as much as hiking, and even on our city-focused trips we try to get at least one hike in. We also have a thing for hiking volcanoes –  I’m not sure why. We’ve been fortunate to have climbed Mount St. Helens in Washington (oh the view!!) and have hiked out to the lava flows in Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii (coolest thing…ever).

So, on a recent trip to Italy we had to hike Mt. Vesuvius.

Mt. Vesuvius is the volcano responsible for covering the city of Pompeii with a blanket of ash in 79 A.D., preserving it until it’s re-discovery in the 1700s. Much of what is known about day-to-day life back then is because of the excavation of Pompeii.

The Hike
This isn’t a long or particularly hard hike, but certainly interesting and worthwhile. We were told it takes about 20 min up and 30 min down… it was less than this. Anyone who has done any hiking at all would have no problems – as long as you aren’t horribly out of shape this is doable. Read more…

NJ Hiking Other

Detailed hike info and directions on our Bass River State Forest page.

This is the first time we’d gotten around to checking out Bass River State Forest. We’d always headed to the other Pine Barrens area parks instead, mainly because I’d never had much info on the trails here. It doesn’t appear in any of our hiking books other than a mention in the New Jersey Walk Book of some short trails, and I’d never located a trail map online. Without a trail map to plan a possible route out ahead, it didn’t make sense for us to drive over an hour to park that may only have a couple miles of trails.

A trail map with descriptions appeared recently on the park site so I was able to plot out a decent length hike and off we went…

The focal point of this park is Lake Absegami, a popular swimming area in the summer. Several trails lead from the lake parking lot, while the Pink trail is on the other side of Stage Road. This park is typical pine barrens… super easy, flat, sand and pine needle covered trails and woods roads. Read more…

NJ Hiking Pine Barrens Easy Hike, South NJ