On August 13, 1961, Casey Kays hiked to Sunfish Pond for a family picnic and fell in love with a mountaintop lake he did not yet know had been sold to power companies. That first visit would pull a Warren County working man into New Jersey’s defining conservation fight.
A summerlike morning on Long Path Section 4, from Long Cove to Mount Ivy, brought quarried Palisades cliffs, dozens of vultures near the Tilcon Haverstraw Quarry, a climb to High Tor, views over the Hudson Valley, and the final visible curve of the Palisades ridge before it disappears below the surface.
Urban nature has a way of surprising you. This time, it came in the form of a Sandhill crane calmly strutting through a Rahway neighborhood -- and getting close enough to peck my shoe.
Section 3 is all about Hook Mountain, the hands-down highlight of the stretch. After a quick start through suburban edges, the trail climbs to a ridgeline with sweeping Hudson River views and dramatic cliffside stretches before dropping back down to Route 9W.
Yosemite changed how I see the outdoors. I first visited in 2011 and have been back at least six times since — most recently in April 2026 — drawn by its granite walls, iconic views, and landscapes that keeps pulling you back.
Covering about 3.4 million acres, Death Valley is the largest national park in the continental United States. We spent five days there and saw a lot — a temporary return of an ancient lake, sculpted badlands, sand dunes, and volcanic hills streaked with color, along with a ghost town, abandoned mines, and the Racetrack Playa, where rocks move across the surface on their own.