Rockefeller State Park Preserve — Attraction in Town of Mount Pleasant

This park/preserve is magical. Went this week, in mid October, as the leaves are in the process of changing color and falling. I really recommend going in the fall, if you can, for the foliage. The park is great for beginners as many of the trails are flat and perfect for easy walking or running. We saw a squirrel, a small snake, some horses, and a herd of swine, while we were there. There was a beautiful lake, a ranch, and a barn on the various trails we walked. We chose to take a Lyft from the metro north train station, to cut the travel time, but you could also take a bus and walk 10 mins to the train entrance. There are benches and rocks to sit and eat in the preserve (but you have to take your trash with you as there are no trash or recycling bins anywhere), or you could stop by Tarrytown's main street, which is within walking distance from the metro north station, for some food and drinks at one of the quaint little restaurants or cafes.

Went back to the park a couple of weeks later and walked a different route. One of the park employees (Loren?) was incredibly helpful and showed us how to find our way through the park using a trail navigation app (Avenza), and he also showed us how to find our way out of the park and back to the train station, so instead of taking a Lyft this time, we walked through the park, then through Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, all the way back to the Tarrytown station. We had a great time and would 1000% recommend this park to others, especially...

No true “hiking” but great for nature walks. We went on a Saturday and it was so peaceful. Hardly ran into anyone else, which is amazing for only being 40 mins outside the city by Metro North ($21 round trip from Grand Central). I’m sure it is beautiful in the fall.

We got off Metro North at Tarrytown (an express stop) and caught a ~$10 Uber to the park visitor center. Walked the Sleepy hollow trail to the 13 Bridges Trail, and walked parts of the Eagle Hill, PR, and aqueduct trails on the way back so we wound up in the town of Sleepy Hollow and just wandered through the town for an hour on the way back to the train station. It really wasn’t a bad walk. Finished the day with a drink at a pub on the water watching the sunset before catching the train back.

Overall: Not sure it would’ve been worth the trip out of the city (for $43 round trip for 2 of us) except that it’s so close to Sleepy Hollow, which was a huge added bonus to the end of our day. The whole town gets really into Halloween starting early October and there are tons of things going on if we’d wanted to stay after dark. Definitely recommend for city folks looking to...

This park is underwhelming.

When we visited, the mostly empty parking lot was closed to additional cars, forcing visitors to line the adjacent highway with their illegally parked cars. There were no available maps on the grounds so navigating to a point of interest was nearly impossible, leaving guests like us to just wander the trails. Having walkef for 2 hours, I'm not sure there actually are any points of interest here.

There are no garbage cans anywhere on the grounds, including the bathrooms, yet horse back riders are permitted to leave their horses mess all over the paths they share with pedestrians.

We cut across a small patch of dirt to get onto a new path. And an employee came running over to scold us for walking across the 'flower beds'. Mind you, this was a four foot wide patch of scrub brush with crushed stone for drainage, nothing about this area was manicured, nor was any other spot on the ground that we saw. This same employee chased 4 men out of the park and down the road to their cars to admonish them for making this same offense.

Yes, this is a free park, and I'd say it's worth...