This 22,000+ acre (90 km2) park is on top of 2,000-foot-high escarpment, great for hiking, biking and swimming. It has many parking lots and entrances. The 5,400 sq ft visitor center was opened mid Oct 2020, costing $6.1m, is pretty impressive: the wood paneling and the view on to Lake Minnewaska.
Much of the park has carriage roads, bicycles are the best tool to reach far away parts of the park.
The visitor center. The bathroom remains open after the office hours (by the way, the hand dryer is right to the faucet.)
We tried the dotted line from Lake Minnewaska to Millbrook Mountain but chickened out: we’re just city slickers, good for city walking. This ‘moderate’ hike is challenging for us. Instead, we took the carriage path to Millbrook Mountain: its pretty far and the view isn’t as impressive as Patterson’s Pellet.
After a long day at Minnewaska park, this is the perfect spot we’ve wished for. The weather cooperates too. The service is bit slow but the food is great: sweet potato cake, crab cake, gator bits and shrimp on grits.
I highly recommend this one from the Minnewaska Lake over the Millbrook Mountain, which is more than twice as far but the view is less spectacular than this.
This up state college town (SUNY) in New York has about 14,000 population (census 2010), is 80 miles north of Grand Central station in midtown Manhattan (NYC).
This Vietnamese restaurant is spacious with high ceiling. The food is average, so is the service – college kids without much training (??). The floor tiles in the bathroom are pretty.
The park was donated by Mary Averell Harriman (1851-1932), wife of E. H. Harriman (1848-1909), a financier and mother of Averell Harriman (1891-1986), a politician.
Averell had served many important posts, among them was governor of NY (1955-8). He also held ambassadorship from 1943 to 1946, first to USSR (1943-6) and then to UK (1946, April to October). It was during the war time era that he had an scandalous affair with the wife of Randolph Churchill (1911-68), the only son of Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) who led UK to a win during the WWII.
We trekked from Reelves Meadow Visitor Center, anti clockwise, from the white mark to the peak, then blue, orange and red mark back to the parking lot. It’s less than 4 miles because we took the orange instead follow the blue mark to red. Although I enjoyed all the hike but the red is my fave: the entire walk was accompanied by the sound of water rushing. Is it Victoria Fall ha ha ha…
We were driving in the middle of three lanes on the south bound Sprain Brook Parkway. Traffic flows nicely on both sides – but south bound is definitely heavier than the north bound. Suddenly a light green Subaru (?) came behind us from the right fast. In a non stop fashion, it zagged in front of us then jerked to the fast lane to our left.
“Stay away from it,” I said but before I could finish my sentence, I heard the sirens. Two police cars passed us on our left.
OMG … I immediately took our my phone and recording it.
A second later, the green car hit the divider, neatly. The two police cars have it surrounded. Not a single vehicle was involved in the crash because the traffic was not too busy. We moved to our right and drove passed it. All happened in a few seconds.
When I checked my video did I realize that I didn’t take any, but two photos. Oh well, there went my promising movie making career.
It’s a cave, with pretty easy 0.6 miles (1.2 miles round trip) hike from a parking lot, near by.
Some call it Dover Stone Church, some just call it stone church. Whichever, it’s a nice hiking trail in up state New York.
Finding it, is not straightforward and have to going in between two private houses.
1. PARKING google the school parking lot: 3128 NY-22, Dover Plains, NY 12522
2. GOING IN make a right turn out of the parking lot and cross the street. A few steps away, you’ll see the sign, and make left turn between two private homes.
Will return, although the taste is a little bland.
There are a few restaurants near the TR Gallo Waterfront Park, by the Rondout Creek. We readily found an empty parking space by this one, so we went in. We’ve choice of street dining (out door is only good when it’s pedestrian only?) or indoor. The high back wooden benches look very comfortable and the cool air convinced us to stay inside.
Good service, huge portion and could add a little flavors.
A cool car is speeding down the West Strand Street
Broadway is the main drag to the river, Roundout Creek in Kingston
Millbrook Mountain (it’s ok… )
