Welcome back to National Parks and other public lands with T!

Reposting this entry from 2018 is bittersweet because both dogs pictured have since crossed the rainbow bridge. They loved this park, and would go crazy as soon as we pulled into the lot. We haven’t been back in a while because it would be too stimulating for the dogs we have now.

Ramapo Valley Reservation is a County Park in Bergen County, New Jersey. It was designated a wilderness area in 1972 with about 700 acres and has since grown to encompass over 4000 acres.

It is a dog-friendly park with a few wide, flat trails and some more challenging ones up to scenic vistas.

On this visit, we brought the dogs, so we stayed on the easy trails.

We crossed the bridge over the Ramapo River to the loop trail that goes around Scarlet Oak Pond.

Scrarlet Oak Pond was once a quarry. We’ve seen a pair of swans there in the past, but it must have been too late in the season this time.

Fall foliage was at its peak. We stopped frequently at the water’s edge to snap photos. The dogs were impatient to continue our walk.

When we reached the the section in the loop where we could continue uphill to the reservoir, we noticed a sign pointing to the waterfall that we hadn’t seen before. On previous trips, if we wanted to visit the falls, we had to walk partway up to the reservoir and the clamber down a rock scramble (not such an easy thing when you’re toting a cockapoo.)

This new path was nicely groomed, well-marked and led us over the stream and up stone steps to the falls. I searched online and found that this section was built in the summer of 2017 by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference.

Location: 608 Ramapo Valley Rd, Mahwah, NJ
Designation: County Park
Date designated/established: 1972
Date of my visit: October 31, 2018