[Bill Menke's Journal Entry for June 1, 2009, Lake Skanatati area, Harriman State Park] I park in the Hiker's Trailhead lot below the Lake Askoti dam, just off of Seven Lakes Drive. The day is warm and sunny. The air is dry and crisp, with a bit of a breeze. I take the Long Path, blazed in blue, which first follows the shore of Lake Skanatati, and then rises through a chaotic terrain, full of extremely large boulders (some house sized and many bigger than my car) and steep rocky cliffs. This land has been torn up by glaciers, back during the Ice Age. I pass one boulder, about four feet long and right on the Leong Path, that has a curious depression hollowed into it. I puzzle over it for a bit, wondering whether the depression is natural or has been worked by people. Its shape is remanescent of some sort of primitive mill. The rock here is a banded gneiss. Tight folds are exposed on some of the cliff faces. My experience is that few of the rocks in Harriman Park have well-preserved glacial scratches, certainly nothing like the fantastic scratches that can be found in Central Park in New York City, but I come across one section of pavement that has a very faint set - among the best that I have seen here. At first the Long Path is a narrow trail, but it eventually connects with a woods road. At an intersection, I take the Dunning Triul, blazed in yellow, towards the west. It passes the Hogencamp Mine, an old iron mine. I inspect of a small, flooded pit and two small trenches as well as several piles of mine tailings. Some of the rocks in these piles are rusty colored. I lift one and find it to be unusually heavy, no doubt due to its containing magnetite - iron ore. I continue onward, past many more rocky ledges, up onto the gneiss pavement of the Bald Rocks. This area of the park is mostly treeless, and so command a fantastic view of the surrounding hills. Its littered with glacial boulders, twisted and weathered tree trunks, and is very picturesque. I walk as far as the shelter. On the way back, I leave the Dunning Trail and walk along a stream bed that is in the bottom of a very odd canyon, relatively narrow, and containing extremely large, angular boulders, and having very steep rocky walls. The canyon doesn't seem to have much watershed. I can only speculate that it was supplied by glacial runoff, during the Ice Age. I scramble over the boulders, passing small cascades of water and still, reflective pools. The stream eventually empties out into Litle Long Pond. I walk back along Route 106, past several anglers fisking on the shores of the pond, Lake kanawauke and Lake Skanatati. I stop to inspect several different kids of aquatic plants growing in Lake Skanatati. One appears to be free-floating, with a snowflake-shaped leafy base, which floats on the surface of the lake, and a single long stem with yellow flowers, rising up. The loop takes me about two hours.