Little Acre Farm / Rocky Point Trail / Twin Lights State Historic Site / Mule Barn Tavern

Little Acre Farm

Potted bamboo dapples the fiercest rays of summer sun on our patio, but not all. To expand the protective effect, we need one more plant.  So back we go to Howell, NJ, where we purchased the first two leafy specimens. At Little Acre Farm, we select a sibling, so tall its branches reach into the front seat for the rest of our journey.

Rocky Point Trail

Forty-five minutes later we land in Hartshorne Woods, northeast of Little Acre Farm on a high point above the inlet to the Navesink River. We choose the Rocky Point Trail, a 2.3-mile loop with overlooks of the Navesink where it meets Sandy Hook Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a fine warm day for a walk in the woods.

Twin Lights State Historic Site

A short driving distance from Hartshorne Woods is the Twin Lights State Historic Site. The discontinued  dual lighthouse rises on a bluff in Highlands, a spot we are surprised to learn is the highest point on the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. After climbing both towers and enjoying the dramatic views, we inspect the magnification lenses. Back in the day, they projected light from the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb to seafarers 20 miles away.

Mule Barn Tavern

Then we drive north to the tip of Sandy Hook, where the remnants of a Coast Guard station are slowly being converted to civilian uses. The old mule barn is now Mule Barn Tavern, with casual food served both indoors and out. After lunch, we stroll past former officers’ houses, a movie theater, and the occasional cannon, on paths with expansive views of the harbor and Manhattan.

Café Sabarsky, Neue Galerie, Dashwood Books, New York Public Library & Bookmarks

Café Sabarsky

We begin our day with lunch at Café Sabarsky, which adjoins the Neue Galerie on Museum Mile in Manhattan. Or rather, we begin our day by waiting in line at the popular Café Sabarsky, which takes no reservations. The expected one-hour wait passes quickly as we people-watch and enjoy park views.

Inside the café we are transported to early 20th-century Vienna. With banquettes upholstered in Otto Wagner fabric and a grand piano in one corner, with every seat taken and a bustle of wait staff, the room serves as a reminder of how artists and intellectuals used to gather at the time.

The café serves purportedly the best wiener schnitzel in the city along with an impressive array of German/Austrian desserts and rich kaffee creme.

Tickets to the café enable entry into the Neue Galerie, three floors of primarily German and Austrian Expressionist art, including Gustav Klimt’s Woman in Gold.  We get around the gallery fairly quickly, and it is well worth the visit.

Cafe Sabarsky

Detail of Berlin Street Scene by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

Dashwood Books

New York City is full of small, independent shops (still), and after the Neue Galerie we head downtown to Dashwood Books, a basement-level store on Avenue A in the East Village that deals exclusively in photography books. We buy an oversized volume for our nonexistent coffee table and then head to the mother of all New York book repositories, the New York Public Library.

Dashwood Books

New York Public Library

When visiting the NYPL, we always pop into the Rose Main Reading Room, the largest uncolumned space in America, but our real destination is the Polonsky Exhibition on the ground floor. It features rotating selections from the library’s vast collection of treasures that connect our species’ first written words to modern-day media. 

While seated at this desk, Charles Dickens may have written chapters of Great Expectations.

Leaving via the front steps of the library and crossing Fifth Avenue to 41st Street, we mosey down the sidewalk enchanted by bronze plaques underfoot. Each rectangle speaks to us from a different author, all the way to Park Avenue (actually, they are meant to lead you from Park Avenue to the library).

A word is dead/ When it is said,/ Some say./ I say it just/ Begins to live/ That day. —Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), “1212”

Bookmarks

We follow these plaques one block to Madison Avenue and our final destination (completing today’s art-and-book theme), the Library Hotel. The hotel, whose name trades on its proximity to the NYPL but doesn’t resemble a library at all, has a nifty little rooftop bar called Bookmarks.

New York hosts loads of glitzy rooftop bars, but this one is our favorite with its open-air seating and stone parapets. Drinks in hand, we time-travel back to the 1920s.

The Bookmarks bar atop the Library Hotel

Cliff’s Homemade Ice Cream, Jockey Hollow & Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen

Cliff’s Homemade Ice Cream

It’s still ice-cream season, and where better to visit than Cliff’s, where this sweet treat has been homemade since 1975. Cliff serves it rich and creamy with a menu divided between Original Homemade Flavors and Fantasy Flavors (Whiskey Turtle Fudge, anyone?), along with popular varieties of soft serve. We stick with the original menu and enjoy our repast at one of the shaded picnic tables in back.

Jockey Hollow

Less than a half-hour drive from Cliff’s is a jewel among national historical parks—the 1,400 acres of Jockey Hollow that housed the Continental Army during the “hard winter” of 1779-1780. We pass numerous preserved farm buildings from the era, along with recreated soldier huts, facsimiles of those built by the army that required felling 2,000 acres of trees for construction and firewood.

We follow the yellow trail, starting out behind the visitor center and at the back of the preserved farm. Following the trail counterclockwise through forest for about a mile, we reach the huts, returning to our car via a paved road.

Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen

Though not affiliated with the Jockey Hollow historical site, this Morristown restaurant trades on the name partly because it is housed in the historic Vail mansion. Built in the early 20th century, this Italian Renaissance palazzo-style structure now contains luxury condos in one half of the mansion, with the Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen in the other.  

The elegant white-tableclothed Washington Room was closed for an event on the evening we visited, but we had an enjoyable meal in the light-filled Oyster Bar. Surrounded by marble, we sip our drinks and then tuck into cuisine offered by Michelin-star recipient Chris Cannon.

Old York Cellars, Leonard J. Buck Gardens, The Frog & The Peach

Old York Cellars Winery & Vineyards

Driving through Hunterdon County on a glorious afternoon, we turn onto a dirt road that leads to a favorite winery. We sit under a large tent, drink local wine, listen to live music, and gaze over the vineyards to distant hills beyond. The food is reportedly excellent at Old York Cellars, but we stick to the tapas menu, saving our appetite for dinner and enjoying the warm light.

Leonard J. Buck Gardens

One-half hour away near Far Hills lies a hidden New Jersey treasure—the 33-acre Leonard J. Buck Gardens.  The layout represents the combined expertise of geologist Leonard Buck and landscape architect Zenon Schreiber. Built in the 1930s, this naturalistic environment offers peace and tranquility (with the exception of traffic noise from nearby Interstate 287) to the public, free of charge. We get some good exercise walking the pathways, enjoying the many vantage points from different elevations of the central pond and surrounding rocky outcrops that were scoured out by glaciers over 20,000 years ago. It is a good place to ponder the vast expanses of time that surround the brief moments we exist here.

The Frog & the Peach

We like businesses that endure, and this New Brunswick restaurant has been one of New Jersey’s best since its inception in 1983, known for an extensive wine list and locally grown ingredients. We park and walk around downtown bathed in early evening light and then arrive at the restaurant and sit in its mezzanine section with a view of the bar area below, where we enjoy a sumptuous meal and savor a day well spent.

Southern Catskills (Kenoza Lake), Max Yasgur’s Farm, Narrowsburg & Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct

We’re on another trip to the Catskills, this time to the southern side, less mountainous and way less populated. In the early 1900s, thousands of Eastern European Jews bought the farmland and let out rooms to city dwellers looking to escape the summertime heat. The enterprise turned into big business after WWII, giving rise to the Borscht Belt where 2 million people vacationed annually. Inexpensive airplane travel made other destinations more attractive in the 1960s, and the resorts went out of business, leaving this section of the Catskills relatively unpeopled.

Kenoza Hall and the Stone Arch Bridge Historical Park

We wake up in Kenoza Hall beside Kenoza Lake, a lovely B&B brought to you by the same people who built the DeBruce in the nearby “hickster” hamlet of Livingston Manor.

After breakfast on the porch overlooking the lake, we drive to the Stone Arch Bridge Historical Park that features a grass-covered bridge, small waterfall, and an adjacent park where we idle away the time watching two boys fish (very Norman Rockwell).

Max Yasgur’s Farm

Then on to Max Yasgur’s farm in the southern Catskills, the actual site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, miles from the town of Woodstock. On the former farm lies the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts and a museum we found well worth a visit. Its exhibits comprise a comprehensive history of the music festival, plus you can walk the land where the festival took place, which is cool, comparing the current bucolic hillside to the mud-soaked Woodstock photos that are an indelible part of counterculture mythology.

Narrowsburg

Then we drive to the hamlet of Narrowsburg on the Delaware River, so named because it sits on a bluff above the narrowest (and deepest) part of the Delaware.  The main street bustles with shoppers of antiques, clothing, and books, and there’s a good lookout spot where you can view the river far below. We opt for lunch on the outdoor porch of the Tusten Cup, a café with a view of the bridge that connects this part of New York to Pennsylvania

Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct

Lastly, we drive south along the Delaware to Roebling’s Delaware Aqueduct, the oldest existing wire suspension bridge in the U.S. Originally designed to help transport Pennsylvania’s highly prized anthracite coal to New York City and environs, the bridge, now restored, serves as a one-lane roadway across the Delaware. It also makes for an enjoyable walk above the river.

USGA Museum, Buttermilk Falls (Bridgewater) & Salted Lime Bar & Kitchen

A summer day filled with golf history, a walk in the woods, and local dining

USGA Museum

The United States Golf Association (USGA), which regulates all amateur golf in the United States (including the US Open), has its headquarters in pastoral Liberty Corner, New Jersey. Extending from the main building is a fine museum with a new wing that walks us through the history of golf.  Superbly lit, the spaces and displays spark interest even in those who aren’t golf fans.

The toddlers among us delight in the massive putting green behind the museum. Called the Himalayas (as a tribute to a similar putting green at St. Andrews, Scotland), the green may be used by the public. Admission to the green comes with putters and a souvenir golf ball. With its extreme slopes, the course reminds us of miniature golf without the windmills. We walk away from the putting adventure like most golfers do from theirs—disgruntled with our performance but in a good way.

Buttermilk Falls, Bridgewater

Next, we drive to Bridgewater’s 1.4-mile trail called Buttermilk Falls. They can be hard to find. If approaching from the north on Vosseler Avenue, take a right turn on Miller Lane and follow that to the end.

 Not to be confused with the more famous and more robust Buttermilk Falls in northwestern New Jersey, these waterworks form only a glorified spillway. They hale from an earlier industrial project, now fenced off to prevent local daredevils from diving in.  The walk down to the falls is somewhat rocky, but the return trip offers a trail enveloped by trees. It is well worth the effort to get there.

Salted Lime Bar & Kitchen

Tired, hungry, and thirsty, we end our day at the Salted Lime Bar & Kitchen in Somerville’s lively restaurant scene.  The restaurant’s plentiful natural light, good tacos, and craft margaritas do not disappoint.

Upper Hudson River Valley: Art Omi, Café Mutton & Olana

So many places to visit, so little time.

Art Omi

We begin at the outdoor sculpture park Art Omi, a few miles north of the town of Hudson. Overshadowed by the larger Storm King Art Center (located closer to New York City), Art Omi’s 120 acres offer a more walkable space with sparser crowds.  Our favorite exhibit is Orange Functional, almost two dozen basketball hoops sprouting from a single trunk. Basketballs lie about, begging to be picked up by visitors and shot at odd angles.

Café Mutton

After working up an appetite, we drive to Café Mutton, a Hudson farm-to-table restaurant open from 10-3 (dinner available on Fridays). We’re not joking about the farm origins of this eatery. You can order lamb head porridge, if the mood strikes. There are scrambled egg and crepe options for those who want to stick to a more traditional brunch.

Olana

Then we’re off to Olana and its 250 acres of sweeping views of the Hudson River. The 1870s house, designed by architect Calvert Vaux (whose protégé and junior partner was Frederick Law Olmstead) and painter Frederic Edwin Church, is a marvel of towers, balconies, recessed porches, and Persian-inspired interiors.

The grounds incorporate Church’s advanced ideas about the integration of architecture, landscape, and environmental preservation.

Olana is popular, so be sure to reserve a tour, otherwise you may not be able to view the interior.

Wildflowers, Antiques & Dinner

Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve

Our daytrip begins at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve south of New Hope, Pennsylvania, along the Delaware River. The brainchild of two 1930s visionaries, the preserve encompasses meadows, forest, and creek banks rich in native wildflowers. The paths are wide, smooth, and mostly flat. Its current 134 acreage features over 700 native species  viewable by the public year-round.

Lambertville Antiques & dinner

Next we travel up the river a few miles and cross the Delaware River into New Jersey on the historic New Hope-Lambertville Bridge. Most tourists and weekend visitors are drawn to New Hope because of its shopping and dining reputation, but we prefer the smaller-scaled, walkable Lambertville. The quiet town offers interesting architecture and diverse shopping and dining destinations.

A popular stop is the People’s Store, a three-story antiques and design center, loaded with affordable and eclectic items for sale and painters working on the top floor. A great place for browsing.

We  get in some walking with a stroll uptown for hand-crafted, premium ice cream at the Owowcow Creamery, then return for a drink at the unique Boat House, a nautical-themed bar written up in magazines like Conde Nast Traveler. The small two-storied structure has been known to fill quickly, so we arrive soon after opening time at 4 pm.

Afterward we walk a few blocks to Anton’s at the Swan for dinner— a lovely restaurant serving “new American comfort food.” The dinner and bar menus feature grilled meats and fish as well as crabcakes and risotto. We sink into comfy chairs along the wood-paneled walls to enjoy an intimate dinner that caps off our day.

Inwood Hill Park, Harlem Renaissance Exhibit & La Sirene Restaurant

Inwood Hill Park

Our New York City jaunt begins at Inwood Hill Park in upper Manhattan where artist Rose B. Simpson has planted her sculpture “Seed” on the alleged spot where Dutch governor Peter Minuit  “purchased” New Amsterdam from the Manhattan Indians for $24 ($900 in today’s money) worth of trinkets. This seminal North American moment is disputed by native historians, and Ms. Simpson’s sculpture captures the tension, with one face turned inward to the woods which represents native land, while the other face points outward towards Spuyten Duyvil, the trade route that brought the Europeans.

The park shines after spring showers, gold and green, full of life. On the way to see the sculpture we spy the striking Henry Hudson Bridge in the distance.  In 1936 it reigned as the longest fixed arch bridge in the world.

The marker honoring Peter Minuit’s “purchase” of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626.

The Harlem Renaissance & Transatlantic Modernism

Next is the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism show. It is a spectacular celebration of African American life developed during the Great Migration (1910-1970).

Pulled to the North, Midwest, and West Coast, Southern Blacks left the fields and small towns of Dixie to replace the white industrial workers fighting in the World Wars and the immigrants banned from entering the US.

Harlem became a Black city, with a pulse of its own. The art that erupted from its residents impacted artists across the globe. On the museum walls visitors can compare works by African American artists with European paintings depicting a similar subject.  On view through July 28, 2024.

Woman in Blue by William H. Johnson, 1943

Scottsboro Boys by Aaron Douglas, c. 1935

Blues by Archibald J. Motley, Jr., 1929

La Sirène SoHo

We close our day with dinner at La Sirène SoHo, a charming French restaurant on Broome Street. The setting is intimate, the lighting romantic, the food classic and exquisite. The hangar steak is cooked to perfection, and the fish balanced and flavorful. (La Sirène prefers American Express over MasterCard or VISA.)

Sunday Motor Co., Raptor Trust, Bamboo Brook Education Center, Taylor’s Ice Cream Parlor

Sunday Motor Co.

We begin our adventure at the Sunday Motor Co. in Madison, New Jersey. Now a popular eatery, the location used to house a gas station. Look no further than the battered Mobil sign for proof of vintage. The menu transforms old favorites like toast to new heights (heirloom tomato, lemon ricotta, everything avocado) while offering newbies like shakshuka and miso ginger salad.

We arrive at 10:30 am midweek to avoid the crowds. We are served quickly at one of the umbrellaed picnic tables. The coffee is memorable.

Sunday Motor Co. outdoor seating

Sunday Motor Co. indoor bakery selection and menus

Raptor Trust

Fueled up, we then drive fifteen minutes to the edge of the Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge where we visit an array of predatory birds at the Raptor Trust. The quiet helps to rehabilitate injured hawks, owls, and bald eagles, which are then returned to the wild. The facility is free and open to the public.

Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center

It’s barely noon by the time we travel thirty minutes away to our next destination—The Bamboo Brook Outdoor Education Center in Chester Township. This 687-acre expanse was purchased by Martha Brookes Hutchinson and her husband in 1925, slowly emerging as a showcase for Martha’s landscape designs, which are important enough to be on the Women’s Heritage Trail. The terraced grounds welcome a stroll, perfumed by lilac bushes. We advance to a running brook, birds serenading us along the way to a large circular pond and smaller structures below. A quick dial-in at the numbered plaques details the property’s history and horticulture. For a longer walk, take the perimeter trail.

Taylor’s Ice Cream Parlor

The sun and exercise inspire a taste for something cold and sweet, so we drive to nearby Chester (the center of Chester Township) for a scoop at Taylor’s Ice Cream Parlor. This town fixture since 1960 offers over 50 flavors. We share the peanut butter fudge variety, deciding that it makes for a perfectly good lunch.

The Oppenheimer Walk

Our day trip begins in a stunning chapel and ends in an alleged mafia joint.

Princeton University Chapel

We park on the edge of Princeton University campus and walk a few hundred steps to its impressive chapel. Built of Pennsylvania sandstone to replace the older structure that burned down, the 1920s Gothic structure might be considered a cathedral elsewhere. It stretches 277 feet long and rises 121 feet into the spring-blue sky. It’s open to the public every day.

Princeton University Chapel, interior

Princeton Battlefield State Park & Institute Woods

Although now mostly a windswept field where people picnic and sunbathe, the Princeton Battlefield State Park was where, on January 3, 1777, George Washington scored his first victory against British regulars, just two days after the famous Delaware crossing. In the near distance the woods beckon. Owned by the Institute for Advanced Studies, the 589 acres are open to the public.

To reach the woods, we walk from the battlefield parking lot to the Thomas Clarke House at the top of the hill, cutting between the house and adjacent shed and then descending to the woods behind.

Pathway between house and adjacent shed

Although well-maintained, the trails are not marked, but GPS and the Institute Woods map (see below) point us in the right direction.

Once onto Trolley Track Trail, we turn left and continue for a 1,000 feet or so until we see an institute building to our left and a pond between. In a crucial scene from the movie Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer meet beside pond to discuss the risks of atom splitting.

Institute for Advanced Studies and pond

Immediately after the pond we take the first trail (Founders Trail on the map) that appears on our right until reaching the Swinging Bridge over Stony Brook. The bridge is well maintained by the institute and sways gently as you cross it.

Chick & Nello’s Homestead

After our walk, we drive to nearby Hamilton for a delicious dinner at Chick & Nello’s Homestead. This vintage 1930s Italian restaurant is rumored to have once been a mafia joint but we didn’t see any gangsters while there. Every meal starts with complimentary hot peppers and bread (not sure where this tradition began) and continues with classic dishes like chicken cacciatore and steaks cooked over charcoal. The bartender is generous with his pour, and we go home well-fed, tired, and happy.

Chick & Nello’s Homestead restaurant, large-room seating

NY Botanical Gardens, Tra di Noi, Madonia Bakery

Day trip to the Bronx

New York Botanical Gardens

We like to celebrate spring with a visit to the New York Botanical Gardens. Every inch of the gardens is worth the walk. To avoid the crowds, we aim for the Thain Family Forest, a 50-acre expanse of old-growth forest in the northeast quadrant. Our favorite path takes us to the Bridge Trail, which winds through the trees and low brush to a cool bridge that crosses the Bronx River.

Daffodils paint many of the garden’s paths and hillsides in early spring.

The wide gravel walk to the Thain Family Forest

One of many granite outcroppings along the path that remind us of climate change of long ago.

Forsythia outcroppings viewed from the bridge over the Bronx River

The greening of the Rock Garden

Florals in fashion at the orchid show until April 22, 2024

Tra di Noi Restaurant

Leaving our car in the Botanical Gardens parking lot, we amble toward Arthur Avenue — the old Italian section of the Bronx — a 15-minute trek. The streets come alive with music, parents strolling babies, and older couples walking arm in arm. Slightly off the beaten track, on East 187th Street, we enter a favorite restaurant called Tra di Noi, where the red-check tablecloths and the staff greet us warmly. It’s nice to be back in this chef-owned family-run establishment where the waiter soon sells us on “life changing” dishes.

Madonia Bakery

Next we pick up olive bread and pignoli nut cookies from nearby Madonia Bakery, established in 1918, and head back to our car, 13,000 steps and a wonderful spring experience to share.

Grand Central Madison, Rockefeller Center & Lure Fishbar

Grand Central Madison

There’s lots to see at Grand Central—the magnificent ceiling, the clock, the Oyster Bar. But one site that doesn’t appear on tourist recommendations is the newly opened LIRR transit hub. Called Grand Central Madison, it’s a vision of what American transit centers could look like if we started all over. We head there first, via the west end of the Dining Concourse.

Easily as wide as a two-lane road, the Grand Central Madison concourse stretches from 42nd to 48th Street, the walls sporting fantastic murals. Enormously long escalators transport us down the equivalent of 17 stories to the underground train platforms. LIRR passengers are lucky to have Grand Central Madison, unless of course they are late for their train and have to spend several extra minutes riding escalators.

Rockefeller Center

We’ve seen the Rock Center Christmas tree a hundred times, but we go again, as we do every year, and again we marvel. The scene is iconic and spectacular, with the Cartier windows along Fifth Avenue, the skating rink, the crowds, the towering tree. This year the City plucked a Norway spruce, 80 feet high, from Vestal, NY. We sip hot chocolate from La Maison du Chocolat cart while watching skaters circle and twist before wandering inside Rock Center and then across town to First Avenue for dinner.

Lure Fishbar

The so-called “food desert” of Midtown East has a few bright spots, including Lure Fishbar. It bills itself as New York’s first sustainable seafood restaurant. An intimate space with excellent cuisine, the chef offers calamari to die for, lobster curry, and bountiful mussels, among other delicacies.

Liffy Island (Lake Hopatcong) & The Windlass

Liffy Island & Lake Hopatcong

Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey’s largest freshwater lake, began as two natural ponds. Dammed up in the 1800s, it ensured a steady water supply for the Morris Canal, the main conduit for shipping valuable anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to New York City. Several high points in the manmade lake became islands, including Liffy. The island was purchased by the Staten Island Boy Scout Council in 1922 and served as a Scout camping site until 1928, after which Liffy Island became largely uninhabited up to the present day.

Joined to the mainland by a lovely, weathered bridge, Liffy Island features wide trails, an abundance of trees, and broad vistas of sky, earth, and lake.

Liffy Island trails are mostly flat and wide.

To get there, we must first find the trail to the bridge. It begins at the Prospect Point playground on Florida Avenue in Jefferson, NJ. On the other side of the basketball courts the one-mile trail through woods begins. The walk is fairly level, the trail well maintained. Though not heavily trafficked, we do meet people along the way.

The trail starts just beyond the basketball courts.

Traveling across the bridge, we take in the water and sky views. The island itself is a peaceful, uninhabited spot with views of the lake throughout.

The Windlass

Back in our car, we drive a mere five minutes to The Windlass for a late lunch. Back in the 1880s, rail service connected New York City and Philadelphia to the lake. Visitors could enjoy an amusement park and rolling-skating rink. In 1948 the Windlass was built on the site of the rink. The restaurant faces west, where we view the sunset over water while we dine. The menu is solid if not spectacular, but it suits our needs just fine after our quiet walk.

In summer, the dock offers boat tie-ups and dining.