May 20th, 2021

Well there is Joy and I with cameras in our hands so yesterday must have been Photo Safari Day!  Which means today is the Photo Safari Report!  I am calling this one A Series of Mini-Hikes because instead of doing one long hike, we did four shorter ones!  Two of them we had been to a long time ago, but the remaining two were new to us!  FUN!


We started at the one furthest away (which wasn't all that far).  A hike called the Catfish Trail at Potter Park.  It's a shady little trail that runs behind a large fitness complex.  It's a huge place with a giant multi-laned lap pool, a soccer field, several different playgrounds,  and multiple other buildings that have who knows what inside.  We weren't concerned with that. We just wanted to hit the trail.  It was very a very pretty trail, all narrow and winding.  We started very early in the day so the morning light was beautiful.  There was a bunny and a lily pond and a heart painted onto a bench.  That's graffiti that I can appreciate.

Our second stop was the trail behind the local Presbytarian church.  Turns out the trail has a name! (I never knew that) Bayonne Preserve.  I learn something new every day! Usually most of the trail in Bayonne Preserve are closed due to nesting Eagles.  But we visited 5 days after the official season so we got to hike trails we have never seen!  Awesome!

Third stop was one we have driven by a zillion times but never stopped at.  It's in a strange place with highways on both sides and a big pond in the middle.   It was called the Scherer/Thaxton Preserve.  It's kind of new.  New enough that the trails do not pop up on my new AllTrails App.  Just from our various drives past, we assumed (though one should never) that the "trail" was a path around the pond, which was true.  What we didn't know is that about 3/4 of the way around the pond, suddenly there was another trail that shot off into a deeply wooded area! Interesting!  We opted to tuck that information away for another hike. Especially since there were no trail maps so we had no idea how long it was.  

Last stop was a tiny Preserve just over the bridge called Pocono Trail.  It was charming but very small and does not need to be revisited.  Happy to do it once though :)

Two of the hikes we've voted to not bother to repeat, the first and last.  The other two though, oh yeah, we will definitely be back to check them out again, more thoroughly another time!

Thanks for coming along!  Hope you had a good time :)