I grabbed this baby on the way to work this morning. I would give it two more weeks before the leaves are changing in full force. I always say that the changing leaves are prettier after the second half. I mean, instead of half green, half colorful, the leaves look better half colorful, half bare. That’s when they really stand out.
Here is a great shot I got from Rt.52 of Sam’s Point, high up on the Shawangunk Ridge.
Yesterday was pretty fun. We did something that I have been waiting a while to do…to go hiking at Sam’s Point in the Hamlet of Cragsmoor. If you remember, we went up there on Christmas. That was pretty cool, but I didn’t get all that many great photos.
I have been suggesting that we head up to Sam’s Point again and I guess my suggestions paid off. Laura was gingerly excited about the hike. With the hike, came nice pictures, so here you are…
Here we are, down in the parking lot, looking up at the cliff. I thought I really wanted to do the whole walk around Loop Road, but at that point, I was thinking about just getting to the top of the cliff and coming back down. Laura made me do the whole loop. She is a woman of power and not to be underestimated.
At the top of the mountian, past South Gully Trail and High Point Carriageway and about half way through the almost three mile walk, I took a few photos of Lake Maratanza. Using my awesome Photoshop skills, I pasted them together.
A bit past the lake, there was a trail down to the ice caves and Verkeerder Kill Falls. We didn’t walk down that way, but it was a good opportunity to get a shot of some mountains, probably the Berkshires, because we were facing East.
After we made almost all the way around, I begged Laura to take a picture of me. Here it is.
These are some pictures I took of the Sam’s Point lookout. There were a bunch of shots, but I had to narrow them down to these. They all kind of look like each other.
This was a cool big rock we passed on the way back down to the lodge (if that’s what it’s called). Again, I pasted a few shots together to get this one.
This is the bottom of the trail, back at the lodge. Prett cool, huh?
We have a new Christmas tradition in our house. We are going to go for a hike. Now, I completely understand that this may be a one year tradition because this year’s Christmas tempurature was in the 50s, but if this Global Warming thing is correct, there may be a few more years to go. By the way, wouldn’t you just love to see Al Gore and George Bush in a boxing match?
Anyway, we decided that Sam’s Point Preserve in the Shawangunk Mountains of Ulster County, New York would be the best place to start, because it is fairly nearby.
We drove up RT.52 towards Ellenville and made a right at the sign that said, “Cragsmoor.” After a few miles of crossing the top of the ridge, we found and parked in the parking area. I took a walk over to the big map and saw that there was a lake about one and a half miles up the trail. Ok, let’s go see that.
We walked for a while and could see the cliffs on the right. They were getting lower and lower to the ground as we continued on. When we finally got to the top, I took Holly (the dog) and jumped up on top of a rock for a view.
The first thought I had was, “What an odd place.” Right from where I was standing, you had a 360 degree panoramic view of the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. Also, there was the lake all right…in the middle of this short pine tree forest. I felt like I was either walking on the moon or walking in Florida somewhere. Again, very odd.
I took Holly down to the edge of the water and came across a weird little area. It must be a spill over or something. It seemed a bit out of place because I was wondering how they would get any machinery up here. I guess it must’ve been a while ago. Also, I was wondering if maybe there was any cave entrances around. I kept my eyes peeled.
We totally forgot what the map looked like, so we only continued to walk for about another mile. We walked out and turned back for the two mile trip back to the car. When we got back there, we realized that a loop actually went around the lake and we were closer to the car at the point we turned around. Whoops. Next time we are going to take the trail from the other direction and take some nice pics from the top of the cliffs.
Till then!
