Guest Park! This Sunday past, we decided that the foliage in Prospect Park wasn't quite advanced enough, and headed up the Palisades Parkway toward Bear Mountain. Squabbling over having missed the visitors' center, and uncertain just where the Bear Mountain exit was, we peeled off into the vast, deserted parking lot of the Anthony Wayne Recreation Area, a spot my family used to visit on childhood car trips. (We liked him because he was nicknamed "Mad Anthony," partly for his bayonet-happy antics in a Revolutionary War battle at nearby Stony Point.) A few hikers headed up into the woods, so we took the picnic cooler and followed them...to our own private meadow.
The sunny space, surrounded by near-peak foliage, was all ours; not a boom box in earshot or another soul in sight. A hawk circled low overhead. The picnic table had cool shelf fungus on it.
After consuming sandwiches, we explored the edge of the woods. Lovely berries ripened in red and black.
I found a pile of these feathers near a stream, perhaps leftovers from the hawk. Whose feathers have such perfect white polka-dots?
And the day's best nature-walk treasure: this dear little mole, whose rigor mortis had just begun to set in. Or, as Spouse remarked, "CSI: Wind in the Willows."
Up next, in Guest Park, Part II: We make it to Bear Mountain, where we find stuffed bats, orbiting raccoons, Japanese tourists, and beer. Stay tuned, especially if you can't get Channel 5 or 9!
I went to Bear Mt last week to see the (not great yet) fall foliage.
http://whatyourdonotknowbecauseyouarenotme.blogspot.com/2010/10/my-mom-came-to-town.html
I sadly fear that we will not have such a great season here in Prospect Park because of the tornado and the hail storm.
Posted by: Chicken Underwear | October 20, 2010 at 05:52 AM