By Charlie Fineran 

Jenny Jump State Forest offers the visitor many recreational and educational opportunities.  Our photo visit this week focuses  on some of the beautiful Scenic Vistas, including the one here!

These Scenic Vistas, a visitor encounters while hiking along Summit Trail.  Driving in the main entrance, Park Headquarters is on your left, at the intersection, keep going straight and you immediately come to a small parking lot.  There are restrooms, cabins and a kiosk directing you to Summit Trail and several camp sites located just off the trail. Summit Trail, literally traverses along the top of the ridge, heading North, giving the visitor many spectacular panoramas looking both East & West!!

There is one section of the trail, that you simply look west, at the Delaware Water Gap and then, look East over the Pequest Valley, WITHOUT LEAVING THE TRAIL!!   During the different seasons, each season is given an opportunity to display their own, unique perspectives, showcasing the beautiful surroundings, all amid breathtaking vistas!!  Summit Trail ends when it intersects with Ghost Lake Trail.  This hike you will be making a left and then in a short distance you will be on and at the end of the Access Road for the camp grounds.  Follow the road back and it returns you to the entrance road by the Park Headquarters.  There are several buildings along this route, restroom facilities and play areas for children.  You will pass right by the huge boulder, these are called erratics, they were carried along by a glacier and then deposited when the glacier melted.  NOTE: twenty thousand years during the Wisconsin Ice Age, this entire ridge was covered by more than a mile of ice!!!  This area was actually where the glacier ended.  Much of the surrounding area has moraines, large masses of rock, clay and sand all carried and deposited by the glacier.  Great Meadows with all its black fine soil, was created by the melting glacier.  The water from the glacier was trapped by the moraine acting as a dam, creating a large shallow lake.  The fine soil was from thousands of years of leaves etc., rotting at the lakes bottom.  When the lakes dried, the remaining black soil created the Great Meadows. 

Jenny Jump State Forest has many wonderful trails for the visitor to explore and many interesting places such as Ghost Lake and the Fairy Hole, a small cave used by Indians located just off the shoreline of Ghost Lake.  WARNING:  You will be travelling on Shades of Death Road, so keep alert!! 

Take this link to my Flickr site and begin your full photo tour – https://www.flickr.com/photos/charliefineran/sets/72157626210568774 

 Enjoy Your Open Space 

 Charlie Fineran