How to join the NYS parks hiking passport program this spring
Connetquot State Park office educator Charlotte Bernhard and Jennifer Bartlett, of Brightwaters, walk with a hiking group at Hallock State Park Preserve in Riverhead. Credit: Morgan Campbell
If your Long Island state parks hiking experience usually runs from a parking field to a beach blanket, widen your hiking horizons by participating in the recently revived Passport Through Parks program this spring.
The monthly hiking series resumed in January after a year’s hiatus and "aims to get people outside and enjoy the beauty of our state parks while improving their health," state environmental educator Katherine Schnepp says in a statement. The guided group hikes, held once or twice a month and commemorated with stamps in a passbook, have been selling out so fast that beginning in March, the group size limit was increased to 40 from 25, Schnepp says.
Five hikes have headed out so far, the first hitting the trail in January at Connetquot River State Park Preserve in Oakdale. Seventeen hikes remain in the 22-hike schedule, which resumes March 29 at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park and includes 12 parks and preserves from West Hempstead to the East End, where the series ends in December. The hikes range from accessible routes (2 to 3 miles on a flat or paved trail) to 3 to 5 miles over more challenging, steeper terrain, according to state officials.
Participants receive a passport booklet to stamp after they complete a hike. Credit: Morgan Campbell
"I’m going to do my best to do them all," says Jennifer Bartlett, 53, a writer, photographer and corporate financial planner who completed her second hike last month at Hallock State Park Preserve in Riverhead. "There is a calmness that comes from being out in nature," Bartlett explains.
The program is similar to the United States Lighthouse Society passport stamp program. Participants receive a green passport booklet containing hiking tips, the schedule and other information. Upon completing each hike, stamps are awarded bearing the park’s name and images of animals found locally, such as the piping plover, eastern mud turtle and North American river otter.
Emma Buckley, 16, left, Elizabeth Buckley, and Sarah Buckley, 11, of Bay Shore, walk on the beach at Hallock State Park Preserve in Riverhead. Credit: Morgan Campbell
"It’s exciting to discover a new part of Long Island," says Helene Schorr, 51, of East Northport, assistant director of accessibility services at New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, who is taking on the Passport Through Parks challenge with her husband, Ken Schorr, 58, an elementary school teacher in Queens. The couple earned their passports and first stickers at Connetquot, where the guide discussed the preserve’s history and geography, Helene says. Although the couple had visited Connetquot and its fish hatchery before, "One thing I never knew is that there are river otters there," she says.
Last month, hikes at Hallock State Park Preserve in Riverhead — one accessible and the other challenging — introduced participants to one of Long Island’s newest state parks. Hallock opened to the public in 2017 and is one of four preserves in the 28-park Long Island region, according to state officials.
Preserves differ from other state parks because they are on "land that is protected for nature, and human activity is secondary," says Kevin Kelly, Hallock supervisor and hike guide. At Hallock, "bird watching is one of the primary activities," Kelly adds. "And if the weather is warm, a groundhog might pop up."
Kelly says he led the group along the park’s "sandy, grassy, unimproved, marked and maintained trails." He pointed out Hallock Pond, a kettle lake formed thousands of years ago by a melting glacier, and continued on to the park’s mile-long "classic North Fork rocky pebble beach," on Long Island Sound. It apparently was too cold for groundhogs, but hikers did see shorebirds and a bald eagle, Kelly says.
How to join a hike
Upcoming hikes include Sunken Meadow State Park, Kings Park, 1:30 to 3 p.m., March 29; Hempstead Lake State Park, West Hempstead, 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., April 5; Bayard Cutting Arboretum State Park, Great River, 9:30 to 11 a.m., May 17 and 24; Planting Fields Arboretum State Historic Park, Oyster Bay, 10 a.m. to noon, June 7 and 28.
Register up to two weeks in advance on the NYS Parks Long Island Environmental Education Eventbrite page. A $4 per person fee is collected on the day of the hike. Parking fees ($8-$10) begin April 4.
