Highland Lakes State Park

This place takes your breath away.
It's a gem hidden away in Middletown, only a 10 mins hike inside Highland Park.
There is something magical about being the only person in such a serene, beautiful place.

My pup and I stopped off here for a quick hike while in the area. Based on that short visit, it’s worth a stop, but is not a destination. We parked in the designated Tamms Rd lot and walked thru obvious trails to Tamm Lake, a picturesque body of water. The area is a mix of woods and old, overgrown fields, but trails are not blazed in any way. Print and take a paper map.

Highland Lakes State Park is a true diamond in the rough. It’s beautiful, rough, rugged, and happily for me, underutilized. You can easily spend the day here and cover miles and miles of trails without encountering another person.

The trails are challenging but seemingly not clearly marked (truly my only gripe with the park). The park offers stunning views and connection with different types of experiences of nature, from rough rocky trails to green meadows, to wooded deer paths-it really does have so much to offer and it’s close to everything.

Gently rolling hills with well spaced deciduous woods separated by wet lowlands and multiple lakes nestling at different elevations make Highland Lakes one of my favorite places for an afternoon ramble. The fieldstone walls, forest roads and water channeling structure ruins let me imagine the kind of balance between people and landscape that may have existed in the area between the Gunks and the Hudson before our means of production overwhelmed nature. Unfortunately now much of the lovely open forest floor is rapidly being choked by invasive Japanese Barberry shrubs.