Ideas for a day out
Where to start exploring the Pinelands, New Jersey's great wild heart.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the middle of the most densely populated state lies more than a million acres of pine and oak forest, cedar swamp and tea-colored rivers, largely protected as the Pinelands National Reserve. It is flat, sandy and quiet, and it rewards slow travel: a canoe on the Mullica, a bike on the sand roads, a walk to an old iron town.
1State Forest · Washington Township, Burlington County
The largest single tract in the state park system, with Batsto Village, the Mullica and Batsto rivers for canoeing, and hundreds of miles of sand roads.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
2State Forest · Woodland Township, Burlington County
Home of Whitesbog Village, where the cultivated blueberry was developed, and the Pakim Pond area, an easy introduction to the forest.
Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
3State Park · Berkeley Township, Ocean County
A restored cranberry-growing village and sawmill on Cedar Creek, with walking trails among the bogs.
4State Forest · Bass River Township, Burlington County
New Jersey's first state forest, with a swimming lake and the boardwalk trail into the Absegami Natural Area's white-cedar swamp.
5State Preserve · Woodland Township, Burlington County
Former cranberry bogs turned into a huge preserve of wetlands and pine forest, with long, quiet trails.
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