Hike #1634; Emerson to Woodcliff Lake

Hike #1634: 11/24/24 Emerson to Woodcliff Lake with Justin Gurbisz, Diane Reider, Tom Vorrius, Mike Selender, Dan Asnis, and Everen

This next hike would bring us back again to our Hackensack River Watershed series.

This very enjoyable series has been the focus of the Hackensack River and all of its major tributaries. When we last left off, we had reached Oradell Reservoir, and made our way around to the starts of some of the major feeders that flow in from there.

A lot of these little streams pass through very suburban areas, and don't involve a lot of park land to pass through. Still, there are segmented bits that appear to make walking it worthwhile, but I knew I wanted to save some of these for when the weather started getting cooler.

Little brooks to the north split the landscape parallel with the Hackensack River, and the two most significant ones were the Pascack Brook and the Musquapsink Brook, so I planned routes that would feature each. Two interesting hikes following as closely as we could to these tributaries.

Circa 1910, J. E. Bailey photo, Jim Hutzler Collection, Steamtown NHS Archives

I chose the end point to be Tice's Coner Marketplace which is technically in Woodcliff Lake NJ, municipally, but it is actually a little closer to Montvale than the lake itself.

I found a good spot in the lot to park, and when everyone was together, we shuttled south to get to our starting point.

I was certainly tired at the start of this, because I initially screwed it up. I drove to the Hillsdale Station on the Pascack Valley line and parked. I got the stroller out and we all started walking to the east, and I realized that the station there was an older one, and not where I was intending to start in Emerson!

We all had to walk back and get back into my van to get to my actual planned starting place.

We eventually made it down to Emerson, and I think we found on street parking on Locust Avenue.

Once we were all out, and for the second time got the stroller together to move, we headed to the west and turned left on Kinderkamack Road toward the railroad tracks where I wanted to set up a few then and now history compilations.

The railroad was established in 1866 as the Hackensack and New York Extension Railroad, and became the New Jersey and New York Railroad in 1878. It was leased to the Erie in 1896. 

This was established as a station stop, called Kinderkamack, in 1870. The settlement name was changed to Etna in 1877, and the Borough of Etna broke away from Township of Washington and took the station name. In 1909, the borough changed its name to Emerson due to post office issues, as another town already had the name Etna.

It is said the town needed a name that began with E, because the fire department just purchased new equipment with the letter affixed. It was decided to name the town for the late author and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

The station building appears to be a replacement for the original wooden one on the same site.

Today, the railroad serves as NJ Transit's Pascack Valley Line as far as Spring Valley NY. The line is abandoned beyond, but used to continue to Haverstraw.

I had done a lot of stuff tracing this line in the past going back years ago. On past trips, we had followed the right of way north from the site of Mt Ivy station, now long gone. The first trip, we hiked along it to the Letchworth Village facility, which the line served coal to.

On another hike, we followed the right of way almost all the way to the Hudson River at Haverstraw, and most recently, we had hiked along the Hudson River at Bowline Point Park, where the railroad had a spur that served the brick industry there.

After I got a few shots of the station, we crossed the tracks, and continued south a bit on Emerson Plaza East. I was hoping a train would pass by for Ev to see, but none came at this point.

There was no way through the way we were going, and so we had to backtrack to Thomas Avenue and turn to the east.

In a short distance up Thomas, we reached the ball fields behind the Emerson public library. First we skirted the edge of the fields at a fence, and when it opened, we cut over onto the fields to continue to the east.

We had gone through this way on my previous Hackensack Watershed hike, so I kind of knew where I was going first.

We headed up a steep hill slightly to the left, and came out to High Street. We crossed over this, I think onto Ackerman Avenue, and followed that to the end. There, there was a connection down into the fields of the Emerson High School.

We continued through these grounds, past running fields, and then along the side of the high school. We then continued to the wood line to the east.

On the previous hike, we had followed trails through the woods there, but we had tried to go through a different way. This time, we would go a more direct way to the more pleasant trails.

After just a bit of time along the grassy field edge, we cut into the woods into the Emerson Enchanted Forest, which had some art displays and such along the way.

We meandered through these woods to the north, and then turned hard to the right. Another trail followed along the right side of a trench with a small stream that flows out to Oradell Reservoir.

The trail was pretty easy, but it had a couple of steep spots and up and down. Nothing I couldn't push the stroller through, but I had to hold on tight. Ev was nervous about the steep drop-off to the stream to the left.

Pretty soon, this path came out to a parking area at Oradell Reservoir. There is a kiosk there, and a hole in the chain link fence. We had walked around it from the north on the previous hike, and came up to the closed section. It was apparently once open to hiking, probably closed after 9/11.

I wasn't going to go back through what I'd done. The reason I started this hike as far south as I did was in part to cover some of the more formal, and still open, trails of the Emerson Woods Nature Preserve.

Apparently, all we had done on the previous hike was pretty much not legal trails.

We turned to the left, away from the reservoir on a gravel road, and then came to the "official" trail bit, which continues to the west of the reservoir, parallel with Main Street.

After a short while, another trail broke off to the right, and it looked to be an official one. I decided that we would follow this one, because it did look official.

The trail had little crossings of small tributaries and had some stick bridges in place to get across. I had to get a little help over those with the stroller, but overall the trail was pretty easy walking and pushing.

We passed through some nice evergreen woods, but the trail kept moving off farther from where we needed to be. There was a lot of uncertainty in my route, and I didn't want to take any more extra time than we needed, and I would need to come back to this location in the future to continue following the main Hackensack River, so I decided we would follow a clearing we crossed, to the left.

The route was basically like a trail, so it was pleasant, and it was heading in the direction we needed to go.

The area got a bit wet and full of some giant tufts of grass. I considered going through open woods to the left to get out to the more prominent trail, but it got to be a little rough with some fallen trees.

Everyone helped me get the stroller through, and in a short distance we came to the other end of the trail we had been following. A left turn from here led back out to the trail closer to Main Street.

We were able to head directly back out to Main Street, and crossed a small tributary there flowing toward the reservoir lands. The trail or old road continued parallel with Main Street to the back of a house where someone was doing yard work. 

Several of us had to pee pretty badly, so we made use of whatever woods we'd have because we knew there might not be an opportunity for a while.

We headed up Main Street, and we crossed where there was a better sidewalk, then again when it ended on the left side.

We continued north past a shopping center, and then crossed Hook Road. We had to cut through a parking lot and then reached Emerson Road to the left, where we turned right, north.

Emerson Road led us in just a little while to the southern end of Pascack Brook County Park, which would be the start of a bit of nice greenway. A trail connects this park along the Pascack Brook to Westvale Park.

The brook followed the north side of the park, and there was a pretty pond in the center. We went downhill through grass from the first parking area, and then to a paved trail that went out to the pond. I chose the south side of the pond to walk around.

Once we were on the other side, we crossed an access road, and then followed a lovely trail that was done up completely in pavers along the Pascack Brook. At times, there were good views of the brook to the right of us. There was also a sort of trench and wetland of a side stream or something to the left, probably where the stream originally twisted and turned.

Pascack Brook major tributary of the Hackensack River, it's meaning may be of the native Achkinheshcky language, meaning "where the river splits the land". It starts up in Rockland County NY just above the town of Spring Valley where several small tributaries come together to form the brook on its east and west branches.

Pascack Brook and it's tributary, Musquapsink Brook, bisects the lands of Northern Bergen County, parallel with the Hackensack River.

Nineteenth century maps refer to this as "The Great Pascack River", and Musquapsink Brook to the west as the "Little Pascack River".

There is evidence of great alterations done on the streams in some of the most densely populated part of New Jersey. The lower parts of these streams had wide floodplains, and their courses appear to have been deeply dredged to mitigate some of those issues.

It was very pleasant in these woods, and then we headed rather steeply uphill to get into the open area of Westvale Park.

When the trail intersected with the paved trail around the outside of Westvale, we turned left to the south. The trail weaved around the outside of the park, and then we reached a ramp with a connecting paved trail up into Hegeman Park.

We got to there and took a break, because there was a playground for Ev to play on.

There were little drum things and such for him to play on, but he didn't want to climb around and do the slides or anything.

We exited the park and turned left on Sand Road heading south. After a short distance, we reached Old Hook Road with Westwood Cemetery directly across. Unfortunately, there wasn't a way in here.

We turned left on Old Hook Road for a bit, and then reached a point where I could climb over the cemetery fence at a joint spot or something. We took Ev out of the stroller, lifted him over, and then everyone helped me hand the stroller over.

Everyone got across the fence except for Dan. He decided to walk further down Old Hook Road, and then turned right on a side road past some apartments to try to find a back way in.

Those of us who got in headed directly through the cemetery, then to the right and down over a culvert between two pretty little ponds. We then climbed on the other side up to the upper portion of the cemetery again and went south a bit more.

We paused for a few moments when we saw Dan was coming through the woods to the wetland. He tried to navigate over and around it, as it was rather dry overall, but I think he fell a couple of times in the mud. We all waited for him to catch up.

We also found a grave stone that read "Bong Soon Hoe" which we found juvenile humor in.

We turned right on Kinderkamack Road once again, and headed north to the intersection with Old Hook Road yet again. The Musquapsink Brook was just to the left of the road, and there was a public ball field in to the left, but no bridge across the creek, so we didn't bother to go out and back to that.

Instead, for a better walking experience, we walked up Kinderkamack briefly, and then turned to the left into Westwood Hills Apartments. There are walkways between the buildings that kept us away from some of the busier roads, so this was a nice alternate way to go. We cut through around a fence at the end of this development into the adjacent Valley Apartments, and emerged on Broadway in Westwood.

The railroad tracks were directly across the street at this point, so we crossed directly and then followed the road immediately parallel with them, across the intersection with Park and 1st Avenues.

From here, we headed into Veterans Memorial Park, immediately adjacent to the station on the west side of the tracks. The station was just ahead.

This spot was established as a station stop in 1870. The current Tudor-inspired sandstone station replaced the original wooden structure in 1932, after 25 years of the town pestering the Erie Railroad.

The original was on the east side of the tracks, while the current one is on the west surrounded by the Veterans Memorial Park on the west side.

I had two more then and now compilations I wanted to try to set up at this location, with both the original station and the current one before we moved on.

We checked out the park a bit, and then heard the whistle of a train coming while I was doing the pictures. We hurried and got Ev in the stroller over to the edge of the tracks so he could watch the train rush by.

The train skipped this station this time, and blasted on by quickly, throwing leaves everywhere. It was actually pretty cool to see.

From here, we made our way back around the station building, through the park, and I think we stopped at Lisa's Pizza on the back side of it on 3rd Avenue.

It was a good stop, and we made our way from here down 3rd Ave after we were done eating. We made a left and a right along this route onto 2nd Ave, because I had a route in mind. We probably should have gone a block further so we could have seen a pond on the Musquapsink Brook called Bogert's Pond, but I didn't think of it at the time and just pushed on through.

At the very end of 2nd Ave, there was an opening in a chain link fence and a walkway to the right. The very upper end of Bogert's Pond was just ahead and to the left of us as we skirted the Westwood Regional Middle School.

In a short bit, there was a foot bridge over Musquapsink Brook, which we crossed, and then turned right along the edge of the field.

Just as I got across the street with the stroller, a truck came barreling at me across the grass and then turned right back out toward the exit of the ball field. I was a bit stunned and figured they were going to go after me for drinking or something.

We waited at the bridge for the others to catch up, and Ev was out of the stroller running along and holding Tom's hand.

We continued along a path at the right side of the field, which took us out to a parking area off of 3rd Avenue. We turned left on the road, and it soon merged with 4th Avenue. We continued south on this, and the brook was parallel with this section of road to the right.

The Musquapsink passed under 4th just to the north of the intersection.There were a couple of little options we missed to get off of the main road to the east of here, but I may go back and do those in the future. We just walked the road to the south.

Ev did really well walking on his own this entire stretch of road. He either held Tom's hand while I pushed the stroller, or he walked beside him along fences and barely into people's yards. He also stopped at all of the crosswalks as we told him to.

We kept walking south until we were parallel with the combined Cedar Park and Beth El Cemeteries. This enormous cemetery tract is situated along the south side of the Musquapsink Brook, and so I decided it would be a good addition to this hike.

Unfortunately, as we approached, there was no way in to the corner of the cemetery. We continued walking along the metal fence line, and then we came to one little section of bars that was barely open wide enough to squeeze through.

I didn't think I was small enough to fit through, but amazingly I did. We were able to put Ev through, and then lift the stroller over the top again. Dan Asnis didn't go through, and instead continued up the road to the next regular open area.

We headed directly into the cemetery and started making our way to the extreme north end.

The graves were situated extremely tightly together, but they did have some walkways between at sections, and so we took those rather than the drivable roads. 

We continued toward the north side, and then headed to the west closer to the brook.

The access road to the north was very close to the brook for a time, but then all of a sudden there wasn't a road on the north, and we had to cut through a tight area of graves, then reached another access road heading west.

We weaved to the south and then back to the north again. It seemed like we were in the cemetery for a very long time. 

At the end of it, we came to one of our very uncertain moments. I could not find a good way to leave the cemetery, but I hoped there would be some sort of informal path if nothing else that showed us the way through.

The baseball fields of the Westwood Regional High School were right across the brook from us and I sort of hoped there would be a good crossing, even if it was some sort of informal thing.

There was nothing. It wasn't even easy to approach the brook at the corner of the field. There was a big semi loop of homes right on the other side of a small tributary to the Musquapsink. 

We continued on the fence line south for just a little bit. I was really concerned at this point, because it looked like we might not actually find a way through this spot.

A very small tributary flows into the Musquapsink just to the west side of the cemetery, between there and the homes. Even if we got through, it was hard to say what we might come across.

Amazingly, just as we walked a little farther, and I had nearly given up hope, there was a hole in the fence to the east, into the woods and brush toward the apartment buildings.

There was really no path through this, and it was rather steep. I think I got the stroller down and the others helped get Ev over the slope, and we switched off.

We got to the bottom, and then it wasn't so bad passing through the low area toward the little brook. It was rather easy to hop across it, and then get up a bit to the mowed grass in the residential area.

Dan had not caught back up with us after having walked to the regular cemetery entrance, but he knew the general area we were going. I sent him a photo of my GPS location where the hole in the fence was that we got through, so he could make his way to us.

Fortunately, he got to us pretty quickly, climbed through, and made it out to us pretty fast.

There were some recreation areas associated with this development just to our right, and we went over closer to that corner to wait for Dan a bit, then continued out to the west. We went around a closed pool and around some ball courts and through the complex out to Pascack Road. We turned right and passed through the fronts of more apartments, and then through the front parking lot of the Knights of Columbus place.

From here, we continued along the road north, to the intersection with Ridgewood Road where we turned to the right. There was what looked like a possibly abandoned home on the slope on the northeast corner of the intersection.

The historic home was known as "Seven Chimneys, or Nicholas Zabriskie homestead, built about 1750.

Wings were added after 1770, and second story above original sandstone structure in 1812. It is the oldest building in the Township of Washington, Bergen County.

The home is said to have been used as a stop on the "underground railroad" helping runaway slaves.

Theodore Roosevelt is said to have been a frequent visitor between 1915 and 1917.

We continued east from here and crossed the Musquapsink Brook on the road bridge. A trail appeared to follow it to our right, back through the property of the high school, but we didn't follow it this time.

We continued up the road to the east a bit more, and came to the Our Lady of Good Council Roman Catholic Church property. There were church buildings and such further in the back.

The house in front appears to be older, and perhaps predates church use. The 1876 C. C. Pease Atlas of Bergen County shows this a home of Charles Brain.

This location is about as close as we could get to the "downtown" of the Township of Washington in Bergen County.

People often like to argue with me about the Washington thing in New Jersey, because so many locations carry the name. I always assert that only the Washington that I live in is a real town, and the others are just generic municipal names slapped on a place for lack of anything else they could think of.

My home town was originally called Mansfield, named for the ancestral homeland of the Bowlby family, and it was changed to Washington because the Washington House, a coach stop, was on the northeast corner of the main intersection in town. So, it was not named for George Washington, but rather a bar that was named for George Washington.

My Washington is a borough with Washington Township surrounding it, but people in the surrouding township, where I grew up, will usually say the village within the township they lived in. The most prominent ones are Brass Castle and Port Colden, and I grew up in the latter.

Also within that township are Springtown, Butler Park, Changewater, Imlaydale, part of New Hampton, Jonestown, and Bowerstown. 

The Washington Township in south Jersey doesn't have a settlement called Washington within it. Someone living in that township either lives in Turnersville, Grenloch, Whitman Square, Hurffville, or Cross Keys.

Another Washington Township is near to mine in Morris County, but no one living there ever says they're from Washington. There is no "Washington Township" post office there, as the post office belongs to Long Valley, and some sections will use either Mt Olive or Hackettstown as their addresses. That municipality includes most prominently Long Valley, but also Middle Valley, Naughright, Flocktown, Schooleys Mountain, and part of Hackettstown. Most people say Schooleys Mountain or Long Valley who live there.

The place we were walking through is referred to specifically as "Township of Washington", which has to go on the address specifically, because mine is the only one that is specifically called "Washington NJ". The Bergen County one is odd because it apparently never had any little designated center. It was just a spot that got developed out, sandwiched between Westwood, Ho Ho Kus, Paramus, and Park Ridge.

We continued ahead and turned the next left onto Woodfield Road heading to the north through a development of homes.

Pretty soon, we approached the edge of Schlegel Lake, which was private and pretty much shut off from any contact with it at all.

Originally called Schlegel's Pond, as it was owned by a dairy farmer by that name, dating back to the early 1900s. It is often called Washington Lake.

There was one park with access to it, but it was closed for the season, so we didn't bother trying to get in.

We continued up the road to the north a bit, and after the end of the lake, there was a bit of a trail to the right, which came in from the other side at Cleveland Avenue, and crosses the Musquapsink along the way. I was hoping there would be a good connection from there, so we went out to have a look.

We made our way to the bridge, and the views of the water were impressive. We had a good look out to the waterfront, which was quite pretty, and there were some friendly ducks. 

We stepped back off the bridge in the way we had come from, and then were able to go around a fence and to the right a bit to get into the back of the property of the Bethany Community Center. We were soon in the parking lot and heading northwest along its edge. This brought us very nicely right along the edge of the brook, into the grass at the end of the lot, and out to Pascack Road where we turned right to cross the brook.

I had hoped to go further along the brook behind this Chelsea hotel thing, but unfortunately they had it all blocked off by a large white fence that was just under construction. It looked like previously there had been some sort of path there.

A little further up, we were on the west side of Pascack Road, and we reached Seasons Catering, which looked to be an upscale venue in addition to being a catering service. We walked through their lot, which had incredibly beautiful landscaping all over.

There was a fake waterfall and manicured bushes all along the way as we walked through the lot.

We exited the lot out onto Washington Avenue, and then turned left along the sidewalk heading west.

Going this direction was a gamble, because I wasn't sure if we'd actually be able to get through any of the properties I had been looking at through Google Maps, but it actually ended up working very well.

We crossed the Musquapsink Brook again on this road, and I wanted to have a look at the bridge. This road was a rather old one, and I wondered if any old crossing infrastructure was in place.

I jumped a fence and climbed carefully down to see that there was a handsome stone arch that carried the brook under the road, completely obscured from anyone's sight.

The bridge has a look of antiquity at first glance, but it has concrete inside the arch. It seems great measures were taken on aesthetics, which no one passing along the road ever sees. Perhaps it was a WPA project long before any of the surrounding development existed.

I climbed back up, and we turned right ahead onto Beechwood Drive to the north.

Thankfully, my plan worked out. A little side road to the north of this road led to a dead end with an entrance Lincoln Park.

The quaint little park has a tree identification trail as well as an informal path weaving through it. We entered the woods, and it wasn't even hard to get the stroller through.

There was one out of place looking glacial erratic in the Musquapsink when we came back into view with it, which was cool.

The trail went gradually downhill to the brook to our right. There was no trail going across, but I could see through the trees that there was another informal one on the other side. I got some help getting the stroller across the brook, which was small and easy to cross by this point, and we were soon on the trail on the other side, heading to the left in the narrow swath of land between developments.

At some point in here, Dan decided to Uber out. He had fallen behind on some of the road section and I think some of his phone battery or something had ran out, and rather than run into trouble, he got out.

We made our way to the dead end of Hillsdale Ct and headed north to Hillsdale Ave.

At the end of the street, we turned left on Hillside Avenue only briefly, and then turned right onto a narrow paved trail after crossing over the brook yet again.

There was an odd sign at the approach reading "caution keep away from brook", as if touching or approaching it would give us diarrhea or something.

I found it rather odd that in this residential area, they didn't want any kids playing in the brook.

The trail passed through a pleasant segment of woods, and then emerged at the corner of Plymouth Road and Fairhaven Drive. We continued straight on Plymouth to the north, which was parallel with the brook to the right.

We turned left and headed out to Werimus Road, which rather closely parallels the Garden State Parkway. I was hoping there would be opportunity to enter woods parallel with it and keep off of the road, but nothing like that was possible. The road was possibly the worst we followed of the day, with almost no shoulder. I had to use extreme caution walking the short bit to the north.

Tom and I got way ahead of the rest of the group, and tried finding a way through at a turn off to the left, but it didn't work out. Just before reaching the Woodcliff Lake Park, there was a paved side road going in to apparently where there is a community garden. We entered here, and then cut to the north through some trees and then into open lawn north to the Woodcliff Lake Arboretum area and tennis courts.

From the tennis court area, a paved trail ascended slightly parallel with Marc Rinzler Memorial Field, a baseball diamond. Mike was falling a bit behind, so we waited for him to catch up.

It was starting to get a bit darker, and so I decided we would have to do our group shot here, since Dan was no longer with us and it would be too dark to get anything good.

Once we were all together, we continued along the paved trail uphill just a bit, and came to a parking area. We walked north past the Major Field, and then the little league field.

To the right of us, at a slightly lower elevation than these fields, I spotted what appeared to be another historic Dutch style sandstone construction house.

We had to have a better view of it.

This was the Westervelt-Lydecker House, built in 1756. It is a significant example of Dutch-Colonial architecture, and has been preserved, as per the signs outside the structure. However, the big red X marks around it says that it is also condemned.

It looked like somewhat recently, the structure was used as a daycare center, and it even had a little playground next to it, but no evidence of any recent use.

The front of the place seemed to have a memorial to the modern people involved, on a stone epitaph, but nothing at all telling the history of the building itself or why it is significant. I had to look up all of that myself.

Directly across from this house was the local swimming pool. Google maps shows this as Old Mill Pond, as the mill pond pobably occupied the site where the pool is.

We turned to the right and skirted this fenced in area, and ten cut a corner to the left. We continued north along Werimus Road, and then passed a closed sort of concession building at the corner of Saddle River Road. We turned left here.

We walked this road downhill just a bit, and on the right was Storm Pond, where we crossed the Musquapsink brook I suppose for the final time.

I figured this was just about the very end of the headwaters of the stream, as there is one more smaller pond area just a little out of sight, but there was in fact a little bit more, and my planned route took us by it just to be sure.

We continued along the road and soon passed beneath the Garden State Parkway. Just after this, there was a side road that went uphill to the right, into the BMW of North America property.

There was a little mowed path to the right which goes over to a retention pond, but I wasn't sure if there would be a way through there, so we took the first right. We headed uphill a bit more, and then there were signs saying to keep out. Discouraged, we headed back a bit. We then turned into the retention pond area and tried to get through that way.

At the end of the pond, there was no way to push Ev through on the stroller. Justin still managed to walk through, but I needed another way.

We all decided we would try to follow the road through this area anyway. There had apparently once been a pedestrian pathway for employees within the trees, and crosswalks were still in place to them, but they were too overgrown to use at this point. We continued on the access road or adjacent grass to the north.

Toward the north end of the property, we cut into a meadow, and then to the left, and reached a mowed trail that continued north from the main part of the property. This nice path descended somewhat, and there was a pretty pond to the right. This was more the headwaters of the creek I believe. 

The mowed path went all the way around the pond, but we kept to the west side. At the north side of the pond, there was a bit of an informal path through the weeds that led back and forth a bit, and then out to a second, more manicured little pond.

Mike was missing when we got there and stopped, and so I ran back through the path and up the hill looking for him. When I couldn't see him coming over the rise, I knew that he made a beeline to the road to go back more directly.

We continued to walk from the pond up along a parking lot, and then along a nice walkway along the edge of one of the BMW buildings. This concrete sidewalk transitioned to a narrow, paved walkway that continued to the north through the property.

Hillsdale Station we passed on the drive back

It was now dark. The path skirted the right side of the property with the Garden State Parkway just to the east of us. We continued is it went a bit more to the left, and then descended through open grassy area to connect with the sidewalk near the intersection of Glen Road and Chestnut Ridge Road.

From here, we just had to go across Chestnut Ridge Road at the intersection with County Road to the north, and then into the Tice's Marketplace lot. I caught up with Mike walking near the very end at the lot and confirmed that he decided not to meander into the dark where we went.

This had been a really cool trip through diverse areas, and really definitively covered much of this stream that probably almost no one ever considers.

It was a great addition to the Hackensack Watershed series, and I really can't wait to experience more.