Frelinghuysen Arboretum
We have visited this beautiful arboretum, less than ten minutes from our house by car, several times in the past, to view the flowers in bloom, and to walk around the grounds over which the stately Georgian Mansion looms. But I was never aware of its hiking possibilities. Since Laura was under the weather, and not up to something like we did last week in Harriman, we decided to stay close to home and do more of a stroll. Perusing this map, I realized that there are several blazed walking trails here: blue, red, green, teal, purple and orange. So we headed here today and did just about every blazed trail in the park.

We parked across the street, at the Morris County Library, crossed the street and first followed the Patriot's Path (also blazed in blue) to yellow, which we took west then south back to Patriot's Path. Here we turned right and headed northwest, doing the green trail which skirts a meadow. Here we saw two tree swallows getting amorous. We continued west, through a deer exclosure gate on the PP, along the Whippany River, with Route 287 right across, until we reached a parking lot. It's here that we turned back and walked back to the arboretum grounds. We continued southeast on the PP, then on yellow, then red shortly after. Red skirts another lovely meadow with trees and bushes nicely labeled. We took red east all the way to the orange trail, which we looped. Back on red, we turned right on purple, taking that northwest to blue (but first visited the grounds around the mansion up on the hill to the right). At blue we made a left, then a quick right on yellow. Once we were back on blue we made a right on the walk labeled "Flowering Cherries" and then took the walkway back to our car. We had planned to continue on the PP west of the library, past the community gardens to the Whippany River in the North Tract, but ran out of time.

Total distance hiked today was just over 3.2 miles in over two hours. You can see our track here. You can stay in this place at least two hours more, reading all of the signs, doing some birdwwatching. It's a beautiful park.

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