Roy H Park Preserve to Hammond Hill State Forest, Dryden
Meet-up: North parking lot of Roy H Park Preserve. This is on Irish Settlement Road about four miles south of Route 13, and about 1/2 mile south of the intersection with Hammond Hill Road. Don’t confuse this with the south parking lot, which is just south of Goodband Road. The north lot has a split rail fence around it, and leads directly to a lengthy boardwalk.
Click here to see the Google Maps page showing the location of the meet-up.
Click here to see a web page describing the Park Preserve — scroll down and zoom in to see a map showing the parking lot and the trail to HHSF.
We spend just a few minutes in the Roy H Park Preserve, but it’s extremely delightful, and maybe the high point of the walk. We start and finish up on a wonderful boardwalk that carries us above a very picturesque and extensive marshy area that you’d need waders to walk through. The effect is really pleasing. Then we plunge into some dark woods that mark the start of the state forest tract. The beginning section includes some really fantastic and atmospheric pine areas. The outbound leg through the first section of HHSF is moderately uphill. We come out on Hammond Hill Road just a few feet from the big parking lot where we usually meet up to hike here. Here we have a choice: Enter the trail system right away, or walk south on Hammond Hill Road — this is dirt and quite rugged, hilly and scenic. If we do this, after a while we can shift to one of the HH trails and make our way back to the parking lot a different way. For the last leg of the walk, we repeat our outbound steps.
More information on the Preserve may be found at:
Roy H Park Preserve North | Trails Less Traveled | Central NY (trailslesstraveledny.org)
Last edit 01-2023 JFR