I’ve been thinking about doing this trip for a really long time now and finally this past weekend I decided to just do it.
Gateway National Recreation Area is a huge area and has multiple visitors centers. Two just south of Brooklyn, NY. One on the north tip of Staten Island, and the third at Sandy Hook, NJ. It was tough to get the timing right because of traffic and the fact that all the locations are spread far apart. Grrrr!
If I drove my car then I wouldn’t be able to venture into Manhattan with it because it would be really expensive to find parking, the city traffic is crazy, and there are too many pedestrians to keep track of.
On the other hand, taking the train wouldn’t work either because it would then be sort of impossible to complete the trip the way I wanted to complete it. For example: trying to find my way to Sandy Hook without a car would be near impossible I think.
Bottom line, I feel like if I go somewhere that overlooks the New York City skyline I simply MUST take a picture on a street with skyscrapers on it or the trip won’t feel fulfilling.
This trip was really short and the way I word things might only make sense to me. So if you have trouble following I’d recommend also reading the itinerary.
Day 1 – Saturday 7/27
The original plan was to leave at 3:30am on Saturday morning, but when I got up at 3am I did a quick check on Google Maps one last time and saw that the place I wanted to go to had changed their operating hours between when I made the plan and when I looked at the times at 3am. Well, I quickly edited the plan for the day and went back to bed. What can you do about that? :/
Ok we are back! Now it was 6am when I got up again and I got all my stuff ready and was in the car on the road by 7am. The new first stop of the day was the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (Visitors Center). It was about 221 miles from home and just south of the JFK airport.
When I got there the original plan was to walk around for an hour or two and look at the birds, but it ended up taking ages to get there because rush hour was crazy trying to get past Queens and Howard Beach (on a Saturday!!!). I’ll make sure to factor in beach traffic on future road trips.
The wildlife refuge I bought some cards (for penpals), got my park stamp, and attempted to hike a little, but I quickly discovered the biting flies and noped right out of there. It was a good choice too because it was about time to head to the next location.
Next up was the Ryan Visitors Center about 20 minutes away. This is the location that changed their time and messed up my original plan. It is located at an old airport and to get there I had to drive down an old runway. Unfortunately when I walked up to the front door I discovered that it was Google Maps that was wrong and they were actually open from 9am – 12pm! (On Google Maps it said they were open 12pm – 4pm) Booooooo!
After that it was time for lunch…or so I thought. I planned out about an hour and a half to go to the Bayhouse of Breezy Point for lunch. A local fish and chips joint on the beach. Mmmmmm! I instead decided to skip lunch in favor of making it to my next location on time. I was afraid that city traffic would make me too late.
I was right to be worried. On paper it was a cool 30 minutes to Fort Wadsworth from Breezy Point, but in reality it took over an hour! I went from looking at the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge from far away. To looking at the bridge from just a few miles away. To looking at the entrance. To being on the bridge. Then finally being at Fort Wadsworth.
Anyways, totally worth going early! This place was bristling with old fortifications. Mostly dating back to around the 1840s, but also the civil war era when everything was updated.
These batteries were just a deterrent from any fighting since there were never any shots fired.
I decided to take a walk down to Battery Weed to check it out for myself. The gate didn’t open for another 20 minutes so I decided to walk around for a bit first.
Most of the ruins nearby were basically just crumbling concrete slabs so I mainly focused on the bridge construction. Haha
A little while later a park ranger showed up and unlocked the gate. The fort is sort of laid out in a semi circle with big alcoves for the guns. Each room had its own gun. The cannons were massive! One cannon weighed as much as 8 elephants!
They had the cool feature of swinging out be reloaded. Unfortunately I couldn’t go up to the top of the fort because the stairway was deemed too unsafe and some local kids came and vandalized the place. (Broke all the window shutters).
After I walked around for a bit I decided it was time to go to the hotel. It was around this time that I was trying to think of a foolproof plan to venture into Manhattan for dinner. Staten Island has some ok places, but NYC is better I think.
I took a shower, changed clothes, laid down for a few minutes then went back to the car to drive to Jersey City, NJ. I had decided to go into the city and meet my brother Phil for dinner.
I left my car in the garage at the PATH train station in Jersey City and took a train to the World Trade Center metro stop in NYC. All in all it cost me $16 total: $14 for parking + $2 for train tickets. Pretty good! Doing something similar from the Brooklyn side seemed more expensive, plus I wasn’t sure I wanted to try out the city traffic again after NYC trip #5.
Phil picked out Stone Street as the place to be for food. It’s basically a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating back to back. Phil didn’t expect me to actually show up in the city and so he had already eaten, but he got some cardboard flavored calamari anyways. Meanwhile, I got a juicy burger and mozzarella sticks.
After dinner we parted ways and I went back to the hotel to chill for a bit before bed. It had been a long day with a lot of driving and I was tired.
Day 2 – Sunday 7/28
On Sunday I got up around 8am and was out the door by 8:30am. I was on my way to Sandy Hook Lighthouse! On Saturday the park ranger at Ft. Wadsworth told me that the beach traffic here was insane and they often close the bridge into Sandy Hook early in the morning if all the parking spots get taken up. So I was crossing my fingers I had gotten up early enough.
Just like at Jamaica Bay I ended up being behind schedule because of beach traffic. The ranger wasn’t joking! I did manage to get into the park though so that was great.
First stop of the day was the Sandy Hook Lighthouse, which also happened to be the visitors center. Boom! I had my last Gateway NRA National Park stamp! (I also got the lighthouse stamp). I still had a few hours until it was time to leave so I set out to explore.
Just like Fort Wadsworth there are many fort batteries here too (although they never saw action either). Sandy Hook was mainly operated throughout WW2 and then abandoned when the war ended so many of the buildings are in disrepair, but all the stone structures are still walkthroughable. (I made up that word – heh). The lighthouse didn’t open until 12pm so I had a ton of time to explore.
I went to the Mortar Battery first and it looked pretty big, but I couldn’t see the whole thing because it was covered in so many plants.
The guns were gone, but the fortifications remained relatively intact. Since there wasn’t a whole lot to look at I moved on.
Next I walked a fair distance and observed the Nine Gun Battery. It was long and was used as a proving ground outside of combat. (But remember Sandy Hook never saw action so I hesitate to call it combat).
It was suuuuper hot at this point in my walk (87F) so I decided it would be neat to go to the beach and see the ocean.
On my way there I looked across the peninsula on top of an observation tower. From a distance it’s sort of hard to make out the finer details of Manhattan because of all the smog / perhaps wildfire smoke. I saw the path heading to the beach didn’t look as intimidating as it looked on the map and so I headed that way next.
I quickly discovered that walking 1.5 miles through sand with no shade is harder than it looks and so I decided to turn back about halfway down the trail.
Not really sure what to do next and still having an hour of free time I retraced my steps back to the car and put on some sunscreen before continuing on my trek. I was getting pretty hungry and not wanting to leave the park I decided to get some ice cream at the nearby McFly’s On The Hook store. They had just about everything from t-shirts to hot dogs to ice cream to souvenirs. Also air conditioning and shade.
After my break I decided to check out the Parade Ground! This field is bordered by a bunch of buildings ranging from barracks to officer housing to soldier housing.
The Army wanted the troops to feel more at home while on duty so they built a bunch of houses and allowed the troops families to move in with them.
After the war people left Sandy Hook and everything was basically untouched until the National Park Service got ahold of it. Hurricane Sandy didn’t really help restore anything so when you look at the houses most are uninhabitable, but some are prime real-estate for beach housing! (Not kidding, there is a waitlist on renting them out.)
Walking from the barracks to the officer housing seemed like a great place for a BB8 shot. It was cool to see all the houses lined up in a row.
I walked along the waterfront until I reached the Fort Hancock Museum. I waited there until 12 (opening time) and then went inside. The ranger was super nice and informative about everything gun related and I learned a lot.
After that it was about 1:20pm so I made my way over to the History House. It was one of the small houses on Officer’s Row and used to belong to a lieutenant.
I did a self guided tour and got to see what life was like for a relatively well off household in the 1940’s. I’ve been doing a lot of family tree work lately and maybe this is what life was like for some of the people in the tree?
After that it was close to 2pm so I thought I’d walk over to the lighthouse to try to get a tour. *I should note that it was around this time that I started thinking about skipping the last part of my trip: the Hindu temple tour. (Huge temple in NJ that is a hot tourist destination…at least it seems that way on Google Maps.)
It turns out that I needed to sign up for a lighthouse tour in advance and the next one wasn’t until 3pm! (Ahhhh that was the Hindu temple tour time). What to do what to do. I signed up for the lighthouse tour at 2:20pm and waited by having a hot dog and some Gatorade at McFly’s.
The Sandy Hook Lighthouse is the oldest working lighthouse in the United States. It is around 103ft tall and was built on 6/11/1764. The tour was pretty short because it was like a sauna inside the tower.
It was really cool to see the whole peninsula from the highest point nearby.
The glass around the actual light looked similar to the one at Fire Island, NY.
After the tour I went back to my car and mentally prepared for the very long trip back home. It took 1.5 hours just to cross the GW Bridge (North of NYC) and after that I still had to go through all of Connecticut. Ugh! Right before the Massachusetts state line I stopped for a burger at a TA Travel Center. From there it was just over 100 miles back home.
Overall it was a solid trip and I went to most of what I wanted to see so I’d call this trip a success. This hopefully marks the very last time I’ll be driving to New York City on a road trip. It really does suck trying to navigate NJ, NY, MA, and CT in a car. Gateway is quite the beach.
See you next time!
Trip Stats
- Total trip Estimated Mi: 650.5mi
- Total trip mi: 581mi
- Hours spent in traffic: 5
- New park stamps in passport: 3
- Walking distance on Saturday / Sunday: 23,692 steps (12 miles)
- Hotel rating: 8/10
Things I missed
I did consider seeing the old Nike missile base on Sandy Hook, but getting a tour was really difficult so I bailed.
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir (Hindu temple mentioned in the blog)
Gunnison Beach – I didn’t think going there would be appropriate for the blog
H.A.R.P at Hangar B – Looks really cool!!! I just couldn’t fit it into the plan 🙁
Staten Island Boat Graveyard – Didn’t have knee high boots