Harriman and Bear Mountain State Parks

Bear Mountain, which some say resembles the profile of a reclining bear, presides over the four-season Bear Mountain State Park. A beautiful weekend can attract swarms of picnickers, but the commotion rarely extends beyond the lawns and into the wooded trails, which the park shares with adjacent Harriman State Park—a rambling wilderness of mountain peaks, dense forests, and beach-fringed lakes that straddles the Orange-Rockland county line. A 21-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail, including its first completed section, snakes through both parks, traversing nine peaks before crossing the Hudson River via the Bear Mountain Bridge.