This Week on Upstater: All Around Bear Mountain State Park

  |  June 20, 2016
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View of the Hudson River from Bear Mountain State Park

This week on Upstater, we’ll be exploring a mountainous area west of the Hudson, and this time, it’s not the Catskills. We’re talking about Bear Mountain State Park in Rockland County, which includes Bear Mountain, Dunderberg Mountain, and West Mountain. The 5205-acre park is managed by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission and includes a ton of summertime family-friendly amenities (swimming, paddleboating, fishing, places to picnic, a zoo, and the historic Merry-Go-Round) and miles of hiking trails ranging from short jaunts to more strenuous climbs rewarded with stunning views. While summer weekends at Bear Mountain Park can get packed with visitors, the size of the park makes it possible to find pockets of privacy among nature.

West Point is also a big draw in the area, as well as the Fort Montgomery historic site, and there are lots of small hamlets in villages around Bear Mountain, like Cornwall-on-Hudson, Highland Falls, Chester, and Goshen, while Putnam County is across the river via the Bear Mountain Bridge. Every time we take a drive to Bear Mountain, we fall in love with the views and lush landscapes during in the summer, although there are certainly challenges during the winter in these picturesque mountainous regions. Still, we wouldn’t mind living close to all the beauty, which is why we’ll be taking this week explore the real estate offerings in areas around Bear Mountain and environs. Stay tuned…

About Kandy Harris

Kandy is a writer and musician/music teacher living in Saugerties, NY.

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