Hike #1109; Point Lookout to Hempstead

Hike #1109; Point Lookout to Hempstead

2/24/18 Point Lookout to Hempstead with Stephen Argentina, John Pershouse, Alex Gisser, Vivekan Arther, Jake ?, Gina Zuvich, and Alex’s friend (sorry, forgot name!).

Our next hike would be the next in our Long Island series. The previous hike in the series was aborted after we were told we could not cross the parkway bridges by foot, even though signs told us we could. I could have just changed the hike route, but I was feeling awful.

The group near the start

On that first try, my plan was to head from Nickerson Beach, where we’d left off on the previous Long Island hike, and then head out around the outside of Point Lookout, with the views to the east toward Jones Beach area.

View across from Point Lookout

We did that entire section in the freezing cold, went around Point Lookout, stopped for lunch, and then started across the bridges. We got across the first one, over Reynolds Channel, but then were stopped by a police officer just before we got to the next one. Apparently, people had been calling in saying that people were walking the parkway. I had checked ahead of time, and there were no signs saying that pedestrians could not cross. I also called someone, I forget who, and was told that although it is frown upon, it’s not illegal.

View from Point Lookout

The officer was nice and personable, but could not let us continue walking. I decided to just bag it instead of continuing. The stuff I was going through at the time had me too disheartened to really do any more walking anyway. We covered about seven miles.

Natural causeway

I had to figure out another way of doing the entire section. It was really off-putting for me because I was thinking that after we got to Jones Beach, my intended end point, we’d start heading inland and pick up the Long Island Greenbelt. While I love hiking the beach, it was the prospect of an exciting new area that I’d never experienced. Now, I’d have to go back to the previous bridge and come up with a route to get to the greenbelt a different want. I just wasn’t nearly as excited about doing this with the build up.
When I did look, there did seem to be a stream heading north, as well as some parks along the way. I figured maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Beach causeway

It would take me quite a bit longer to get to the inland stuff, two hikes instead of one, but it wasn’t looking as bad. In particular, this one was looking like it’d be quite interesting.

View toward Jones Beach

The follow up to this one has more street walking at the start, broken up only by a college campus, but the amount of Long Island Greenbelt involved in it could really make up for some of what was looking boring to me.
This time, I decided to meet at a shopping center, where there was a McDonalds. We could then shuttle south to Point Lookout and start off the hike.
Even though I had walked it before, I wanted to do the stuff around the outside of Point Lookout again so that it would be a part of one of the regular numbered hikes, which get journal entries.

Point Lookout

I additionally tacked on a bit of the previous one to Nickerson Beach from Long Beach, some of which I had only done in the dark, so it would add almost seven miles of beach walking to the hike. This would make it both more interesting and more marketable. I was very glad I did it this way.
After meeting in Hempstead, we shuttled down to the start point and found on street parking in Point Lookout near the north side. Alex had a good friend who lived in Point Lookout, and so he called him to join us for the first segment of the hike, which ended up being a great benefit for some information.

Sandy causeway

He told us that there was a natural sand causeway out on the water which could be walked all the way around and back to dry land. As we saw it, it looked like it simply ended at water.

Doesn't look possible to walk...

We were told that the water doesn’t really get above the ankles. That was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was still pretty nice. Vivek, Jake, and I all decided to go and walk it while the others remained walking the shore. I immediately got my feet soaked, and it was freezing.
I pushed ahead as quickly as I could. The water reminded me of how cold the Oxford Tunnel was.
Looking around, it didn’t seem like it was possible to be able to walk so far out as we were, and every step forward looked like it might be a step down to get washed out to sea. But we were fine (apart from cold).

Sand bar walk

There was an island of sand where the bar protruded again from the water, and we took a break on that. It was pretty far out, and I was wondering which way we should go. The sand bar had a sort of arc to it, and I couldn’t at first tell where I was supposed to walk. We were so far out, swimming it and avoiding hypothermia would be impossible. I had to walk this next bit very slowly.
The bar bent almost straight back to the land and a rocky sort of sea wall. I was afraid it would drop right off as we approached that last bit, but it didn’t. It did get up to just about my knees in this section though.

Another Jones Beach view

I was able to step right back up onto the rocks on the other side, and Vivek and Jake were right behind me. For Jake, it came much higher up on him, because he’s quite a bit shorter than Vivek and I are.
We headed up onto shore, and there was a sort of sandy path where I could see the others walking ahead of us.
I was glad we did this, because it was an absolutely different kind of experience than I’ve ever had on the countless beach hikes I’ve done in four states.
We caught up to the others on the sandy pathway and continued to the south.

Sand bar

Point Lookout is the easternmost end of the Long Beach Barrier Island. I suppose it’s somewhat different than the New Jersey barrier islands because it’s oriented east/west length wise rather than north/south.
These barrier islands have been in existence at least thousands of years, although they naturally changed due to tides.
The original residents were the Merrick (or Meroke) native Americans, part of the Algonquin Nation. The first colonists to arrive were the Dutch in the 1640s, followed shortly by the English in the 1660s.

Path on the east side

Point Lookout first is mentioned by name in the mid 1800s, noted as a good spot for whaling, as well as a dangerous spot for ships, which is not surprising considering how shallow those sand bars were, and how deceiving it could be out on the water. After a wreck of the USS Mexico in the 1830s, life saving services were established, and by the 1870s a life saving station was built.
As with all of these beach areas, tourism industry swept into the area in the 1880s. Long Beach had already been a destination, but expanding to Point Lookout seemed obvious.

View toward Jones Beach

In 1881, the “Marine Railroad” was built connecting Long Beach with Point Lookout. The railroad was necessary not only for the tourists, but to bring the materials necessary to build the hotels to the point.
The line purchased two of New York City’s older elevated railway engines and passenger cars cheap, and opened up late season 1881 to the new resort and cottages.
The company lost money the first year, because of the late start and because the winter saw the railroad getting wrecked by storms and the ocean. Repairs need to be done constantly on anything in these islands.

Rail car for Marine Railway

Although Summer of 1882 was successful, the costs of upkeep was too much and there was an overall loss of money again. This continued until 1884 when it foreclosed.

Point Lookout

Track was re-laid again in 1885-86 Winter season under care of Austin Corbin, who was responsible for the success of the Long Island Railroad. The Marine Railway was incorporated into the Long Island Railroad system, and saw some success briefly.
In September 1889, a severe hurricane struck, and the Marine Railway was destroyed, with new inlets created where there were none before.
The cottages on Point Lookout were moved to Long Beach in 1892, and the hotel was closed. In 1894, the hotel burned down. The remainder of the Marine Railroad was sold for scrap.

Point Lookout

Not much happened until 1906 when Senator Williamm Reynolds of Brooklyn led a consortium that purchased the entire barrier island.

Maze of rocks

In 1916, a community called Nassau By the Sea was nearly destroyed by fire. Cottages from there as well as other areas were moved to Point Lookout with new concrete streets. I’m not sure if Nassau By The Sea existed as a spot east of Point Lookout, and is gone or now annexed, or if it was an entirely different island or location.
Regardless, the community was laid out in the 1920s and has continued to grow to what it is now, with the oldest homes being originally from those other communities. Apparently storms haven’t had as much effect in the later years.

Rocks

We continued south and made our way out onto Mineola Ave. We passed a house that used to be owned by a minister they called “The Rev”, who brought a band he had to parade around town we were told.
We then headed out onto a section of concrete retaining walls as we shifted from going south to west.
There was a little public access toward the beach from this corner, and signs saying “no dogs” clearly, but people regularly walking dogs. We descended from the sea wall and went down into a weird maze of rocks that keep the beach at the corner from eroding away.

Rocks on the beach

There were some shore birds diving down into the water. They were something special, but I can’t remember the names of them right now. Some birding people were walking by with binoculars and scopes to watch them as we passed between the rocks.
We passed beyond these and then over a jetty, which took us onto a nice long expanse of lovely beach.
It was here that our new friend left us to head home, because it was the end of the community of Point Lookout to the north. We continued parallel with the Point Lookout Town Park and Malibu Town Park areas. Just beyond is Nickerson Beach.

Nickerson Beach

Nickerson was where we finished the previous full hike, and where Gina had a taxi drop her off to join up with us. She recently moved back to NJ, and planned to take a train the entire way to the meeting point, but she left too late, or someone gave her the wrong directions for the train that she needed. She was on the beach near Nickerson when we got to that point.
We continued walking from here west, thorugh Lido Beach. This was another one set up by Reynolds during his time as Senator. He had a plan around 1906 to make this and Point Lookout a sort of private club.

Lido Beach

All of the storms and such scared off the potential members, and when he was defeated for re-election, he lost interest in the project.
As we moved on to the west, the towers of the Lido Beach condominiums came into view. They look almost eastern European or Arabic from afar.
The sun started to come out very bright, which was the exact opposite of what everyone was telling us would happen. People tend to get scared off badly by the weather forecasts, but I let everyone know not to worry, that for this hike we would be just fine.

Sun on the beach

We had a good long stretch of nice walking Lido Beach (named for a villa in Venice, Italy) in the sun from here out past the tower condos, and then we entered the area of Long Beach, where we started seeing more people.

View in Lido Beach

We walked to the west past an area where there was some kind of construction as we entered Long Beach.
Long Beach became a real resort community in about 1880 when the railroad arrived.

Historic hotel image on Long Beach

Like most of the other beaches, it suffered the plagues of weather, and was redeveloped in 1906 by Reynolds. The boardwalk was built and houses and hotels constructed.

Long Beach Boardwalk

Of course, Long Beach is beyond it’s heyday now, but it still has a lot of residents and tourism. The boardwalk was loaded with people.
I watched my phone GPS closely as we headed along the beach, and we headed up to the boardwalk a little early, before we had to leave the waterfront to head north.
The fog was coming in off the water to the west, but there were still plenty of people around.
The sky ahead was getting darker as we made our way to Long Beach Blvd where we descended the steps to street level. We walked to the north a bit, and reached the bridge.

Wreck Lead Channel

The bridge spans the Wreck Lead Channel. Many of the bridges have bike lanes and such, but this is the closest one with a sidewalk we were able to cross over.
We had some nice views to the east, out to the Reynolds Channel. In the other direction, we can see to the railroad bridge, now part of Long Island Railroad, and originally the New York and Long Beach Railroad. It has a lift bridge that carries it across the channel.
We continued over, and then walked Austin Blvd to the north for a bit. We were all getting hungry, and started looking for someplace we could stop for a snack or something.

That means you, Mark!

There was a Circle K, but they didn’t want to stop there I don’t think. Or maybe we did. I actually cant’ remember the place we stopped for sure. Either way, the place we stopped had some food in it as well as regular convenience store section. I recall I got a couple of hot dogs.
There was a surprising amount of craft beer in the place, but not really anything I wanted to try.
What I did find was Joose. That was sort of a less popular version of Four Loco that I hadn’t seen in quite a while, so I just had to buy a couple of them. They were in a different can, and they had this berry flavor I thought I might like.
I sat down at the table, and poured my Joose into my empty Arizona can, when I saw a Nassau County cop standing on the other side of the coffee machines from us. Gina and Pershouse also obviously had drinks open in public there while we sat.

The beach at Long Beach

I was just waiting for him to give us a hard time, and so I carefully put my Arizona into my backpack and covered it over with plastic to keep it from spilling. For all I know, we may be allowed to have the stuff open while we’re eating there, but I kind of doubted it.
Once I was all put away, I walked around the counter looking at items and struck up a conversation with the guy. He seemed kind of interested that we were walking as far as we were. Stephen started talking to him too, which was where it really got entertaining.

Long Beach

Stephen was eying up the dispenser for some kind of thick milk shake thing. The officer said to him “you want the such and such” pointing at something that did sound good, but I can’t remember what it was. Stephen complied and got the thing, and then didn’t want to finish it (I did). He then blamed the officer for making him get it!
A back and forth banter ensued between he and Stephen which was quite hilarious.

Long Beach

Stephen called himself a “leader” in some context I can’t remember, to which the officer said “you ain’t no leader” and gave examples of how he wasn’t.
By this point, the officer was intrigued enough with our group that he walked from out behind the coffee dispensers and stood at our table with us. He asked where we were all from, and was shocked that we were out to walk as far as we were, as well as by the fact that we would travel to Long Island to do such a thing when we have such great places out where we live.

Long Beach

The officer had red hair, but an Italian name on his shirt. Stephen got into it about that with him too, and he asked what the hell kind of Italian last name Argentina was.
The back and forth between the two of them reminded me of the conversations I’d seen between Stephen and his own father, which are probably even funnier.
The officer asked us where we were parked; it turned out he was the officer assigned to Point Lookout, and I let him know. He was convinced we were probably parked illegally somewhere, but agreed we were good when I told him exactly where it was.

Barnums Channel

We all left the place at the same time, and he never said a word to us about the drinks at all. I thought we might have a problem when we walked out and Stephen said something about “donut eating bastard” jokingly as we walked out. Fortunately, this guy had a good sense of humor for sure.
In my experience, most New York cops have been really cool, and that extends to Long Island also. The cop that picked us up on the previous attempt at the Long Island hike was not only into what we were doing, he knew many of the areas in which we usually hike.

Near Oceanside Cove

We continued walking up Austin Blvd from here to the north. It joined with Long Beach Road just before crossing over the Barnums Channel, near it’s confluence with Shell Harbor.
We had to cross a bad traffic spot to get to the west side just before the bridge, and then headed north further on Long Beach Road.
There was tons of litter along this stretch, and there was a guy there picking up all of it with a bag.
It turned out the guy wasn’t an employee, but rather a concerned citizen. I missed the conversation, but he told the others stuff about an adjacent landfill across the road.

Inlet near Oceanside

The land fill he referred to was huge, on the east side of Long Beach Blvd. It had a methane plant attached to it, and he told the others that it was only organic items like grass and leaves and such accepted at these land fills today.
We turned to the left on Daly Blvd, with new apartments on the north side and wetlands on the south. We crossed a waterway entrance and then headed rather steeply up hill to a bridge over another waterway. We had to wait on the top to regroup, because the others had fallen behind while talking to the guy picking up trash.

Oceanside Station

Once everyone caught up, we continued just ahead and turned to the right on Lawson Blvd which headed somewhat down hill and more closely paralleled the railroad tracks to the community of Oceanside.
Oceanside in the first colonial days of the 1600s was named South Bay, and then later “Christian Hook”. That name was not popular in the mid 1800s, and so the name “Oceanville” was decided on because of Oceanville Oysters that sold. When it was found that another town in NY was named Oceanville, they settled on “Ocean Side”, despite the fact it’s a bit inland.

Weird park job

We continued walking up the road, and made a pit stop along the way at a seven eleven store. I recall seeing another Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, and didn’t know at the time that the second ever Nathan’s establishment was in Ocean Side. Unfortunately, the original building for it was razed in 1976 for a strip mall, maybe the one we stopped at.
I don’t recall what I had to eat, but we continued on up the street, and had a laugh at a truck parked ridiculously on the curb. It was amazing he didn’t have a flat tire.
We followed Lawson to the north and crossed over an east Fork of the Mill River.

East Rockaway station

Most of the remainder of the hike I had planned focused on following as closely as we could to the Mill River. Although it doesnt’ have an official greenway along it, there are little parks here and that that keep us somewhat close to it and off of the paved roads.
We continued just a little beyond where I wanted at Atlantic Ave, and I turned back quick. We turned to the west here, and then climbed up onto the platform for the Long Island Railroad East Rockaway station. We walked the length of the platform, which took us right out to Ocean Avenue and crossed the Mill River on the way.

Mill River in East Rockaway

We turned right at the end, and cut into a parking lot ot the right, which had a little trail at the end of it to a peninsula into the Mill River. I had hoped it would go through to the north, but it didn’t, so we had to turn back and walk to the north on Ocean Avenue.
We passed the intersection with Pearl Street, and there are ball fields and lands associated with the East Rockaway High School to the east, but we couldn’t find away to cut into them. I had hoped to walk this section and avoid more of the roads, but it was impossible. We continued north from here on Ocean Avenue.

Mill River from Bligh Field

We tried walking in the front entrance area to East Rockaway High School next, but it didn’t look like there was going to be any way of getting to the waterfront and then getting out another way. If we could even make it back, it would be an out and back trip. We turned back the way we came, and once again continued north on Ocean Avenue.
We continued to a right turn on Oceanview Road, which we followed through a residential area to the north. We followed this to Mill River Avenue and turned right, and at the end left on Riverside Road. Bligh Field was on the right.

Trail along Mill River

I walked over to the waterfront, where there was a nice view with the homes close to the other side. We all started walking along the edge of the ball fields beside the river to South Park Ave.
Beyond this crossing, there was a good paved trail that continued along the river to the north, along the edge of Barasch Field.
Google Maps refers to the area both as Mill River Complex Park, as well as Lister Park.
I got ahead of the others at this point. I’m not sure what they were doing, but maybe trying to navigate the fields trying to avoid the incredible amounts of goose shit (impossible).

Path at the park

I continued ahead of the group on the paved pathway until I reached a nice little outlook platform to the right over the Mill River, and decided that to be the best place to wait up.
It started raining a little at this point, but it wasn’t too terrible.
We were now approaching the settlement known as Rockville Center, another historic area first settled by colonists in the 1630s, but historically the native lands of the Rockaway native Americans (Rocouwacky) and the Massapequa. The natives were forced out completely as colonies expanded, and both disease and inter-tribal disputes ended them.

Mill River view

The town was dubbed “Rockville Center” after a local Methodist preacher named Mordecai “Rock” Smith in 1849. The town further expanded with the coming of Long Island Railroad.

Paved path

We continued walking to the north past more ball fields and tennis courts and such. I had a laugh when I saw a family to the left, and a little girl was picking up something from the ground. The father screamed “DON’T PICK THAT UP! THAT’S SHIT!!!”. The little girl was picking up morsels of goose droppings. The man turned and continued walking, and the girl leaned over and picked it back up.
The paved path came to an end, but had a little dead end spot like they were planning to continue it one day. We kept to the left and out to a parking area.

Mill River

The trail ended but we were able to walk to the right along Merrick Road. There was a fishing spot we couldn’t find how to get to down along the Mill River to the right.
We continued ahead to a nice foot bridge over Merrick Road, where another paved trail from the other side of the Mill River intersected.
We ascended and crossed the foot bridge, and the paved pathway continued on the other side, beneath the westbound lane of Merrick Road, and then parallel with Rt 27. We followed it only a short distance, and could see a traffic light to cross ahead. It wasn’t too busy, so I decided we’d just run across.

The paved path

There was a good walkway on the other side, and we turned to the left past a store and residences, as well as a Hampton Inn.
We then passed beneath the active railroad tracks, where we could take a break for a few moments to go over the maps on my phone.
We’d have to be opportunistic with what we found, and when we came out from under the tracks, there was a trail going off to the right along the edge of Smith Pond. In retrospect, this would have been the better choice to follow. It would have taken us out ot a ball field and paved paths, then up to Peninsula Blvd, but we didn’t know yet.

The foot bridge

The officer earlier had recommended highly against walking along Peninsula, and said there was no shoulder to walk on. I now know he was totally wrong, and there is actually a trail along it, but I let that recommendation sway my decision to continue to the left, to the south and east sides of Smith Pond and Morgan Days Park.
We turned right on Ocean Ave, having found no more trails into Morgan Days Park, and walked that to the north. I figured there must be something in there, and so we bushwhacked off of the road and into the park parallel. There was nothing.

Tanglewood Road

We ended up having to come back up the hill and to the corner of Peninsula Blvd and Ocean Ave.
We went north from this intersection and turned right onto Tanglewood Road. I figured the best route would be to enter Tanglewood Preserve, just to the north, hike it’s length, and then head to the east.
We got to Tanglewood Road and found it to be one of those old concrete laid streets. We followed it down hill, and could soon see the trails of the preserve, only they were closed in behind chain link fences. We could get in if we went back up through apartments, but I didn’t want to bother with doing any of that. We’d just find another route.

Trail at South Pond

Stephen jumped the fence and had a look at the preserve, but he had to come back around to meet back up with us. We continued parallel with it, but then turned to the right on Maine Road, which was a rather nice road surrounded by woods to the east. This took us back to Peninsula Blvd, which we really should never have left.
Stephen caught back up with us at the intersection, and the rain got a bit harder for a short while.
When he arrived, we continued on the east side of Peninsula heading north. There was a paved trail along side the road on the east, and I soon found a shopping car along it.

Small lake

I took my pack off and put it in the cart, and started pushing them along the sidewalk to the north for a bit.
When we got to the intersection with Lakeview Avenue, there was a crosswalk and trail continuing on the other side, now parallel with South Pond.
This pont was one of a couple of them, with the main one being Hempstead Lake, within Hempstead Lake State Park, our next point of interest. There is the main Hempstead Lake to the north of this, and South Pond is the larger of two secondary ponds the water from the main lake flows into.

Hempstead Lake

Hempstead Lake was first proposed in the 1870s as a water source for Brooklyn, but when New York City annexed it in 1898, it’s use for that purpose declined.
In 1925, the Southern State Parkway was laid out to cross the reservoir’s grounds, and the lands were designated a state park. In later years, the parkway was changed and straightened, as it used to pass around the southern short of the reservoir. A causeway now bisects the northern quadrant of it.
We walked the path along South Pond, closer to Peninsula Blvd, which was at this point part of the original Southern State Parkway, and then cut down to the small pond below the main dam of Hemstead Lake. We continued to the current Lakeside Drive crossing.

Hempstead Lake

There was a woods road to the right that served as the main perimeter trail around the lake, but there were fishing access paths down closer to the lake to the left. We opted to follow these routes instead because they looked so much nicer.

Hempstead Lake

There were some really nice little sections of beach along it, and the trail weaved between the smaller trees and shrubs nicely.
There is apparently an athletic complex at some point along the lake above us, but we were so far down below it that we’d have never known it was there.
We took a couple of breaks to check out the lake front, and continued to the north to where the informal trail connected with the official perimeter trail, adjacent to the Southern State Parkway. We turned to the right on the official trail and followed it up to Peninsula Blvd again. Most the group continued ahead and I had to call them at the turn off to cross Southern State Parkway.
We turned left to follow Peninsula to the north. There was always a good walkway beside it.

Hempstead Lake

We passed the Hempstead High School, and then everything transitioned to retail space as we neared where we were parked.
Along the way, we stopped by Taco Bell for some food before heading back. It was a great little snack to finish the day off with.
We knew we were almost back when we could see the McDonalds. It actually went by pretty quickly.
From here, Stephen, Pershouse and I got a ride with Jake back to Point Lookout, and Alex, Vivek, and Gina all walked the short distance to the train station to get back to where they all had come from.

This would conclude our beach hikes on Long Island for a while, because we’ve reached the inland at this point, but that’s exciting in it’s own ways. Further, through studying the mapping for the future hikes, I have found what I believe to be an abandoned branch of Long Island Railroad, completely clear and used as a utility easement, that will get us all the way to Long Island Greenbelt with almost no road walking.

Good times

As long as we can keep people interested, this series will probably only get more interesting. Until I reach the actual Pomenauk Path portion of Long Island, planning will remain somewhat complicated. Beach sections are segmented by bridges illegal for pedestrians to cross, so hiking to them will require permissions. But we’ll try!