Florence Kuipers Park



Florence Kuipers Park (9/24/2017)

Today we visited another park near Budd Lake, this one a very rugged parcel with some serious climbing and descending. And, as luck would have it, a big black bear, right up ahead of us on the trail no more than 50 feet. Luckily he was as unhappy to see us as we were to see him so he quickly ran off the trail, before I could get a photo, which was fine for all parties involved.

Using this map we parked in the dirt lot off Grand Avenue and took the Morris Canal trail west into the woods. The first thing we realized is that since this is a wildlife management area, there are loads of trails that are not on any map. So even though the blazed lollipop on the official map doesn't add up to much more than 3.5 miles, we were able to do 5 miles easily, and could have done probably 2-3 more. We continued north on the Morris Canal Greenway until we got to Harvey Street where there are ruins of one of the stores that served workers of the canal. We turned back and then took Red back. There is a steep climb and many other trails that we explored partially, before a steep downhill back to the Morris Canal trail. But instead of backtracking, we explored some of the WMA trails, eventually taking two powerline cuts back to the car. You can see our track here.

Total distance hiked was just over 5 miles in just over 3 hours.

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