Great park, lovely rosegarden and easy access to partially shaded Delaware/Raritan towpath for…read morewalking/hiking/bicycling

I really like Colonial Park. It's large, beautifully maintained, and offers so much to do that I…read moremake a point of visiting whenever I'm in the area. Some of the park's attractions include: * Bocce Ball Courts * Delaware & Raritan (D&R) Canal State Park Trail Access * Dog Park * Fishing * Fitness Trail * Golf Course * Large Playground * Miniature Golf * Nature Trails * Paddle Boating (Duck Boats) * Picnic Pavilions * Rose Garden & Sensory and Fragrance Garden * Spray Park * Tennis & Pickleball Courts The park also connects directly to the Delaware & Raritan (D&R) Canal State Park Trail via a pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the canal. I've walked throughout the park and along the D&R Trail. Fitness stations are located along portions of the trail, and it's easy to create a scenic loop that passes the photogenic Stone Cottage and the spectacular Rose Garden area. The Splash Park is incredibly popular with families. On hot, sunny days, parking near the playground can be hard to find. So far, I've enjoyed the duck boats, miniature golf, fitness trail, nature trails, Rose Garden, and Splash Park. Next on my list are the bocce courts, which appear to be in excellent condition. If you're visiting the area, Colonial Park is a destination well worth your time.

Here's a sweet little park located in the middle of the quaint and historic town of Peapack…read more Residents built the park and pond in 1919 to honor veterans of The Great War. Decades later the town placed a memorial to WW2 veterans, and still later a memorial to The Vietnam War veterans. The park is still the site for Peapack's Memorial Day observance as well as other community events throughout the year, like the Fire Department's Classic Car show. My parents brought me here a bunch of times as a kid and I remember really enjoying sitting by the pond and watching the geese teach their goslings to swim. So cute! As an adult, I still enjoy watching these big majestic birds with their fuzzy little ones gathered closely around. The playground here is well-designed for smaller kids, with equipment low to the ground so it's easy for preschoolers to climb on. The entire playground section is fenced in. Parking is conveniently located right next to the playground. The park has a gazebo, picnic tables, and a short walking path. It's not a park intended for runners or dogs (for that I suggest the enormous park Natirar up the road). This park is very small and nice for a quiet, reflective visit in which you sit and enjoy the scenery. It's on Main Street and there's a church, a boutique, a bakery, and a restaurant all within about 800 feet.

This is a little stretch of land west of the Nevius Street Bridge by the Raritan River.You can walk…read morefrom the bridge through here to the Canal Path of Duke Island Park and go as far as that takes you. It's a good long, pretty walk! I posted my favorite creature, a Great Blue Heron who comes to fish here on a frequent basis. Humans can also fish here. Saw someone catch a fairly large trout nearby off the Nevius Street Bridge.Of course you can also go see the statue of war hero John Basilone.

This is a well-maintained little park. On its 7.5-acres park you can walk on a short path through…read morethe trees, play baseball, softball, or volleyball, sit and eat at the old picnic table, and use the swingset and slides. The medium sized parking lot is free. My favorite thing about this park is that free men's and women's restrooms facilities are in an enclosed heated building, with flush toilets, liquid hand soap, running water. I don't know many parks that have that. The park is directly across the street from a large strip mall with the Thai Kitchen Restaurant, a pizzeria, and a Rita's Italian ice.

Really nice and quiet area to walk, with pretty views. We only trekked 2 miles of the trail this…read morefirst visit, but I would enjoy checking out further down the trail sometime. Loved the fun gnome art along the trail. Tip: if you have a fear of heights, there are a few spots in the trail that may make you feel a bit woozy, but never anything unsafe on the path, just large drops on the side of the trail occasionally.

***3 1/2 stars***…read more I'm a native of the Kingdom of Hunterdon but this is an area I'm not that familiar with - I grew up on the opposite, western side of the county, so my experience with High Bridge, Califon, etc. is pretty limited. I came here this past Saturday though (with a cameo appearance by one of my chums) to get some non-mountain hiking in on a gorgeous day. It had its moments, but ultimately I'm not crazy about completely flat surfaces and there just wasn't much variety in the adventure. My chum and I set off a little after 9am from the parking lot right off Main Street in High Bridge and just north of their main drag. Again, this is not a town I drive through often but it was very easy to locate the parking area once I'd gotten a quick look at the map. The parking is adjacent to some playing fields, and thankfully that meant multiple port-a-potties. I used one afterwards, which was about as clean as they get. The itinerary was pretty straight-forward - I walked from the High Bridge parking lot north through Ken Lockwood Gorge, and probably got about 15 minutes north of Califon before turning back. It took almost five hours and I would guess was about 12 miles all told (I love my Fitbit but I think it exaggerates constantly). The gorge is by far my favorite part of this walk. The optics are the best here - you're surrounded by high cliffs above and the Raritan River below, and it's pleasant to hear the roaring water in the background as you saunter through this section. There's also some gorgeous old houses off to the side with oodles of character (I made a mental note to look some of them up on Zillow when I got back), including multiple ones with little bridges and chicken coops. There's a makeshift fairy village situation off to the sides of the path, which is a nice little quirk. I think the one over in Maplewood at South Mountain is more intense, but this version covers more ground. And of course because it's Hunterdon, one of the fairy/gnome houses had a Confederate flag decoration. Who says the War of Northern Aggression stopped at the Mason Dixon Line? Once you get past the gorge though, the walk for me is pretty bland. I'm certainly very pro woods and whatnot, but the lack of distinguishing features makes this a bit of a snooze. I did enjoy the quick trip into downtown Califon, especially the little preserved railroad station from the 1800s. It looked like there were a few possible eating options as well a block or two off the trail that I briefly pondered before continuing on my journey. The canine chum situation was excellent - it was truly a bevy of pooches from beginning to end, with a curiously high percentage of German Shepherds. The wildlife situation was active as well, with a great many squirrels and chipmunks scampering around in the unseasonably warm temps. This one was just okay for me. I liked the clean bathroom accommodations and the ease of the path, but I need my walks/hikes to have a little more pizzazz to them.

Very small spot. Pretty area. Short stop to stretch legs and see nature. Not worth going out of the…read moreway for but if you're close stop by.

the place is good for hikers! but i went with family. to get the damn you had to go down a super…read moresteep hill and back up to it. Was not able to get a good view from the distance

New Jersey has a lot of excellent hiking spots. It's understandable that most of them are in pretty…read morerural areas with tons of room to roam/explore. So when I found out there was a 5.7-mile hike in the immediate vicinity of Bridgewater/Somerville, I was pretty skeptical. This is a pretty chaotic section of the state, with a lot of major highways interconnecting and a mall and heinous traffic circle thrown in for good measure - it's not the first or 100th place I'd think of for a hike. That remains the case. You can't force the design of a hike, and this is a clear example of a situation where you should have had, say, a mile's worth of trails and left it at that. My chum and I came here on Saturday to take advantage of the unseasonably warm early December weather. It was mostly cloudy throughout the hike, but the temperature steadily rose and the sun was largely out by the end. It had been raining pretty steadily the prior day so we were expecting and encountered a lot of mud and some mild rock hopping, but nothing egregious. Both of us opted for running shoes over hiking/trail shoes; it was a LITTLE rockier than I expected and in hindsight I would have gone with the latter for better support, but I didn't suffer any consequences for the decision. Our trek started at the entrance/parking lot off of Newmans Road (spacious, easy to spot with a pretty clean port-a-potty; there were drops on the seat but that's people being animals and not a reflection on the park) following the red trail running roughly parallel to the Washington Valley Reservoir before crossing Chimney Rock Road and heading up and down the orange trail in a quasi loop that runs alongside the East Branch Reservoir before another brief foray on a road (this one Gilbride Rd) and then doing another loop on the yellow trail that goes up to the Chimney Rock Outlook before circling back to Gilbride, at which point you basically complete the prior orange loop and then head back on the other side of the Washington Valley Reservoir to the parking lot. If that sounds overly complicated, you're right. There are two huge issues that mar this hike for me. One is that whoever designed the trails/blazes for this place had no idea what they were doing. Literally every possible trail and offshoot is painted with a blaze, always the same color as the "main" trail. As such, it's incredibly difficult to follow an official hiking itinerary because every fork in the trail has two choices with the same color blaze. Incredibly foolish and short-sighted. We had to VERY carefully stop each time, look at the map in our book AND double-check the GPS/map on the AllTrails app (which I hate doing) just to make sure we were on the right path. There's no reason to put a blaze on literally any walkable route like that; no idea what they were thinking. The other problem is what I alluded to earlier - this is a populated area with minimal room to hike so you end up by definition having to cross and briefly walk alongside busy roads. Chimney Rock was incredibly busy midday on Saturday, and cars were whizzing by us the entire time (the first section was probably about two minutes long, while the second was five minutes - believe me, it felt longer). I'm stunned people don't get hit there, especially since there's not a lot of room off to the side for pedestrians. If you're at the point where you're brainstorming a hiking trail and you can't avoid having the hikers come into contact with moving vehicles, that's probably a clue to scrap the plans. The big selling point of this hike is Chimney Rock, which was apparently a lookout point for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. That's all well and good, but for the money they spent to put up a protective fence and pave the trail here, they couldn't be bothered to maintain the actual rock, which is covered by broken beer bottle glass. And I'm sure General Washington had a much prettier view back in the day than we did; we were treated to the gorgeous scenery of the Stavola Bound Brook Quarry - crushed stones as far as the eye can see! The best part of the hike by far was the last section on the northern side of the Washington Valley Reservoir, and this is the part I'd actually preserve for walking, etc. It definitely helped that the sun was out at this point, but there was a cute bridge and a lot of bird activity. My chum is an avid birdwatcher and will likely be returning to this part with her camera. We also encountered a fallen tree (picture attached) that was taken down by a beaver. Very cool sighting. Head over to Watchung Reservation if you're in the area and want to commune with nature. You may hear the sounds of Route 78 but at least you won't be crossing that highway as part of your hike.

The Washington Valley State Park parking lot is basically a hidden driveway with a small,…read moreinconspicuous sign that suddenly pops up out of nowhere after you've been driving for a while on Newmans Lane. Recommend using GPS to navigate lest you miss the entrance. The park is also accessible from Vosseller Avenue at Millers Lane, though Google Maps will default to Newmans Lane when you chart a route to "Washington Valley State Park". The Newmans Lane entrance seems to be popular with mountain bicyclists and dog walkers. The highlights of this park are the Washington Valley Reservoir and raptor watching in autumn. Otherwise, the trails are pretty low-key (boring even) which make for some relatively quiet walks, which are only interrupted occasionally by the sound of scurrying chipmunks and teenagers jumping into the reservoir in the summer. As another reviewer noted, some of the more remote parts of the trails are not thoroughly blazed, but you should be able find your way even without trail markers. Be sure to grab a park brochure from the wooden bulletin board at the trailhead if you need help navigating. The brochures are also great for swatting away gnats. The red trail has a lot of rocks/gravel and multiple changes in elevation, so you might want to wear shoes with sturdy soles and firm grip. The reservoir does not have a boat ramp but has various trails and rock formations for shoreline fishing (license required, of course). Random trivia: back in 2015, a convicted sex-offender was sighted here fishing before being arrested. With that being said, remember to curb your dog and be sure to leave before the park officially closes 1/2 an hour after sunset.

This is a really pretty park that's mostly a spacious grassy lawn. Most locals call this 12 acre…read morepark "The Far Hills Fairgrounds" but the official name is "J. Malcolm Belcher Fairgrounds." Mr. Belcher was a WW1 veteran who was Mayor of Far Hills for 28 years. He died in 1987 at age 100. A huge rummage sale run by the Visiting Nurse Association takes place in this park every spring and fall. That always draws a crowd. There are basketball courts and a swingset. The track around the perimeter is flat and easy. It's a nice relaxing place to walk, run, push a stroller, or walk a dog. On one side of the Fairgrounds is the Raritan River, which is stocked with trout. People fish there. The park can also be used for private events. For an event involving 8 or more people, the town requires the event organizers to complete the Use of the J. Malcolm Belcher Fairgrounds Application.