Palisades Scenic Byway and The Catskills

Our little car after "the wreck" A young lady backed
 out into us in the 5 Guys parking lot.

 We landed in New Jersey about 2 pm, got our car, and started looking for this road which has lots of overlooks across the Hudson River to  NYC. It took us a while and I'm pretty sure we paid the same toll about 3 different times before we found it.  It's hard to explain how confusing it is for Texans to get used to everything being so close together. We were in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania all week but we never went farther than a 200 mile area.

These rocky clifts are called The Palisades.

Sometimes I think this was my favorite part of the trip.

At one stop you can see all the way from lower Manhattan to Yonkers, NY.

My camera has a panorama setting. I got some  printed on a 11x14 poster and they look pretty good at that size.

We loved our little cabin with a porch to sit and drink coffee.

We found out "kill' means water.

St. Joseph Church next door, played hymns every morning and evening on their bells.

This makes me think of Nancy Drew.

The creek behind our cabin.

 Minnewaska State Park

leads to this view of the lake.

There are no fish in this lake, but it was full of Newts. There were some girls there catching them who told us about them.I'm not sure I'd ever seen a newt before..I don't think we have them in Texas. We found out later there is a water fall there but we didn't know about it. Since all the state parks are free, there is no place to stop and get a map before you go in.

Trying my panorama setting again at Bear Mountain.

                                              Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson River.

There was a pretty lake and a zoo where they had animals that could not be released into the wild.

The hiking trail was steep

but they had nice stairs.

 

Hiking Trail

There is a beautiful lodge

where we had lunch.

View from a highway overlook...much different from the mountains in the West where all you see is wilderness.

We drove on Scenic Highway 43 beside the Delaware River. Actually we drove down it several times because we got lost. We drove all day when it should have been about 120 miles to our place in the Poconos. Most of the time we did not know what state we were in.

We did find High Point State Park, in New Jersey.

And Roebling Bridge which was an old aqua duct used to transport coal before the railroad.

And the first of these signs at the bridge. We were to see many more in the next week. They couldn't really close the bridge because it is part of the highway, but they barricaded the parking lot and locked the restrooms.