Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary

Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary (5/26/2014)

The last time we hiked in this gorgeous sanctuary was nearly five years ago when we were following a hike in a now-obsolete edition of 50 Hikes in New Jersey. That hike used parts of the Patriot's Path and Brigade Trail to visit the Cross Estates and then had us bushwhacking to get back to the wildlife sanctuary. So even though this sanctuary is relatively small, its majority of trails were still left for us to hike! We returned today to hike just about every trail in the joint, and to do some wildlife viewing to boot.

Using this map we once again parked in the lot (enough for at least a dozen cars) on Hardscrabble Road and headed up, up, up the mountain on the red-blazed Dogwood trail (in a clockwise direction). We then continued on the yellow-blazed River trail to its end, taking the green-blazed Field Loop trail around the perimeter of the field north, then went south visiting the swampy area far south before continuing once again north on the Dogwood trail. We took this all the way to its intersection with green, headed west on green through the gate that keeps out the deer, circled the beautiful visitor's center (closed for Memorial Day), before taking the red spur to the Interpretive trail which we took south back to red, and then back to the car.

We didn't see many birds, but we did see a huge snapping turtle and a handfull of frogs. It was a very enjoyable morning, away from the crowds and parades.

Total distance hiked today was 3 miles in 2.5 hours.

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