Last Friday’s Doodletown walk

There actually is a place called Doodletown! it’s now part of the Bear Mountain State Park, but it used to be a real village.  Doodletown, New York – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Here’s an excerpt from the wikipedia entry, which also explains the name:

The town was first settled in 1762 as a small settlement north of Stony Point. The name is said to derive from the Dutch for “dead valley”, with the “town” suffix added later by English settlers. Most settlers worked as loggers and  miners, and the remains of the mines are still visible today. There were also small farms and businesses. The town was a crossroads for soldiers during the Revolutionary War during the fighting at Bear Mountain, Stony Point, and other locations along the Hudson River. For this reason, it may have been immortalized in the Revolutionary tune “Yankee Doodle”.

Today the area is criss-crossed with trails and footpaths. Brigid and I, along with our friends Maria Abonnel and Kathy Americo, and Kathy’s niece Sarah, spent about four hours walking through the area. It’s easily accessible, about a mile south of the Bear Mountain traffic cirle, on route 9W. Some of the trails are very rough; others wide and well-maintained.

The light made picture taking a little contrasty, but here they are:

Early on, I got myself on the opposite side of a stream from everyone else; Kathy took my picture, and I took hers –

Here are a few Brigid pictures; some water shots and then the “brain trust’ of myself Kathy and Maria trying to figure out where we are –

 

Remember the old story about Daniel Boone? He’s asked “Daniel were you ever lost in the woods?” “Naw, … I was a might confused once for two days, but I was never lost.”

We came across a bird’s nest right in the middle of the trail

And Brigid took this picture – she liked the rock

Here’s a 200 year old+ oak tree – and you can see we’re now on a wide, well-maintained walking path

Maria does a bit of bird watching, and somehow sited a nest with young birds and dutiful parents, just off the trail, next to one of the cemeterys. This is the best we could do photographing the nest, which is right in the middle of the next two pictures –

There are three old cemeterys in Doodletown with graves as recent as 2002, and going back to the early 1800’s.

We then moved on, into the actual town, with the remnants of what were stately houses, evidently razed in the mid 60’s when the Park took over the area

Brigid noticed this centipede –

 

Picture by Kathy; as I do my “If it’s not this way, it’s that way…” routine

Sarah, Brigid and Maria

and Kathy and Sarah

Brigid and Kathy took quite a few of the pictures I’ve posted. It’s a very interesting area, with plenty of other paths and some vigorous climbs, which we didn’t take on. I’m sure we’ll be going back.