Red Dot, Wawayanda

Red Dot Figure-8, Wawayanda State Park (6/22/2013)

Today we returned to Wawayanda for the first official summer hike of 2013. The park was quite different from our last visit just three months ago. The trails we traversed today were closed for at least six months due to damage from Hurricane Sandy but reopened not long ago. I'm glad too, since this is one of the loveliest hikes I've done in Wawayanda, especially if you like solitude and huge swamps.

Today we parked at the eastern boat launch in the closest spot to the trail head possible (not sure how this happened since the lot was getting a bit crowded even by the time we arrived at 9 AM). We headed east along the northern bank of Lake Wawayanda, picking up Double Pond trail which we took east to the Red Dot trail. We headed south on the Red Dot, following the eastern leg at the lollipop in the middle, then continued south on an 'unmaintained trail' where the Red Dot heads east then south. This unmaintained trail is amazingly well-maintained and has one of the loveliest spots of the entire hike, on a sturdy wooden bridge that passes through a gorgeous wet area. The feeling of solitude here is amazing. Continuing south we headed east on the Cherry Ridge trail (a woods road), before heading back north on Red Dot taking the western part of the lollipop in the middle. The short stretch between Cherry Ridge and the inner lollipop has another fantastic spot, overlooking a huge expansive swamp to the east near a stone bridge apparently erected by someone named Nature Jim in 1993. We continued north on Red Dot, this time taking the western leg of the lollipop in the middle. We then traced our path back to the car.

One aside: during our short jaunt along Cherry Ridge Road we noticed a nicely maintained (though unblazed) narrow trail heading south (east of the Old Coal trail, which it seemed to parallel). We walked it for a few minutes before turning back, since it wasn't on the map. When I got home I learned that there is a network of trails here that doesn't appear on the NYNJTC North Jersey Trail map #116. So of course we'll be going back one day to check out those!

Total distance hiked today was 6.3 miles in just over 3 hours.

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