Turkey Swamp County Park
We hadn’t been to this park in oh 7 or 8 years or more. The last time we were there I don’t recall having a trail map available, and found the trail system confusing. It’s a small park with very easy hiking, but with snow still on the ground and us needing something close-by that day… it fit the bill.
The plan was to start at the Nomoco parking area and connect various trails around the perimeter of the park, which we figured would give us about a 5-7 mile hike.
The Nomoco lot was closed, however. I suppose it’s for the winter… not sure. There is a also a small lot at a maintenance building before the Nomoco entrance, but the trail location was not obvious with all the snow piles so we decided to just change plans and headed to the main entrance off Georgia Rd. Only one of the parking areas there were open, so we parked at Oak Point.
It looked like the trail would have been hard packed, and the dirt parking lot was a sheet of slick, frozen mud… so we opted for traction aids instead of snowshoes.
There was still roughly 5-6″ of snow on the ground, but with the temps in the “balmy” upper 30s and the sun out, (really nice for a change!!!!) the snow became really wet. We ended up cutting the hike short because sinking into wet snow was getting annoying – one foot would sink all the way and the other may go down only a little… not our cup-o-tea.
We thought about heading back to the car for our snowshoes, but I think the snow would have just stuck to them. We tried walking around the lake a bit, but the snow was – oddly – hardly touched and we found ourselves over our calves… our gaiters have surely earned their keep this year.
Our very truncated route involved the Old Lenape trail (GREEN), a little of the Manasquan Trail (BLUE), some Alder Trail (GREEN).
There were trail maps in the kiosk before the main building, and also online at the link below. One big note about the trails and map: all the trails around the center of the park are all marked GREEN on the map, which can confuse things. The trails themselves are marked with a post with the trail name and color, but with so many intersections it was a little tricky orientating yourself. Or maybe it was just us.
This is a small park and there always is a sign pointing you back to the lot, and I imagine most people go here for a bit of a wander around or a dog walk … and not really worry about trying to put a big loop together w/o overlapping, and you would become familiar with the trails very quickly if you went often.
Turkey Swamp Park - park site with trail map, directions, info. Restrooms in the main building were open, and the map notes porta-johns at picnic/playground areas as well.
Bonus: There is ice-skating here, though the sign at the entrance changed from OK to skate to THIN ICE by the time we left. This park is also a good choice for snowshoe or XC-ski.
Nice touch: The Monmouth County park site has a page of updates on winter conditions for the The Monmouth County park system for ice skating, groomed trails etc.
