Silas Condict County Park

Silas Condict County Park (10/3/2009)

This is hike #14 ("The Pequannock Highlands") in Hiking New Jersey: A Guide to 50 of the Garden State's Greatest Hiking Adventures (1st edition). We drove out to this park two Saturdays ago. It started raining about half way there and poured when we got there. We waited for a few minutes for the rain to stop but it was unrelenting, so we turned around and went back home. Today we tried once again to fit this relatively short hike into a somewhat tight Saturday schedule. It rained just a bit on the way but started raining really hard about 30 minutes into the hike. But it was nearly noon so we found a protective tree under which to eat, where we began wondering if we would ever get to do this hike! Lo and behold, by the time we were finished it stopped raining! The sun popped out only during the last ten minutes or so, but the cloudy skies made the early fall colors much more vibrant than had it been sunny.

This is a beautiful little park, albeit one with lots of picnic tables and family-friendly facilities. Had the weather been better I'm sure we would not have experienced the solitude we enjoyed on rainy, cloudy day. Even as it poured while we ate lunch, we could see families on the other side of the lake congregating under the protective roof of an enclosed picnic area. And the Casino was in the process of hosting a wedding reception.

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