The entrance to this trail (marked only with a horseshoe symbol) is a less than a 5 minute drive from our house in Putnam Valley. I’d been there before but for some reason (which I can’t recall) I hadn’t explored the trail very thoroughly. Today I was looking for a quick walk close to the house so I thought I’d try it again.

I wasn’t expecting much: just the usual bare trees, stone walls, rocks, fallen trees etc. And, indeed, they were all there (see pictures of stone walls below). There were a few pleasant surprises though including:

Yet another stone chamber (one of many to be found in Putnam Country)
Remains of a log cabin (log shed/shack???)

All told I walked for about an hour until the trail petered out at a stream, which I could probably have crossed if I’d been wearing decent hiking boots but unfortunately wasn’t. In any case it was time to return home – it would be two hours round trip and that was enough for one day.

I have two goals for the future: 1) To continue along the trail past the stream; 2) To find a way to trail that doesn’t require driving. It’s not all that far away so I should be able to walk to it if I can find a way into the woods from Lake Shore Road. In fact I already know a way. In March 2013 I was looking for the Baxter Plot: a cemetery abandoned in the woods near Lake Shore Road. Someone had told me that you could get to it from the end of Oakridge Drive. Although I found it eventually (off the south end of Oakridge) I initially tried to find it at the other (north) end of Oakridge. This eventually let me to the Horseshoe trail, but I fear that I inadvertently went though private property to get there. So I’d prefer to find another way.

Some of the walls are quite massive. The wall in the first picture below was up to my shoulders i.e. about 5 feet.