[Journal entry for Aprl 6, 2013]. Dallas and I parked at Alpine Boat Basin, off of Exit 2 on the Palisades Interstate Parkway. The day is clear but blustery. The Hudson Palisades Cliffs, towering above the Basin, are dramatically lit by the morning sun. We first walk around the Boat Basin. Much of the erosion from Hurrican Sandy (Oct 29, 2012) has now been repaired, but most of the buildings, which had experienced flooding, are still boarded up, including the historic old Kearney House. We stand at the beach of at the north end of the Basin; the waves are three feet high. We then walk up the trail (really an old woods road) to the top of the cliffs. The trail is blazed in orange, though blazes are few and the path hard to miss. The vegetation is still pretty bare, but some bushes are budding and the myrtle is blooming. The trail swiches back and forth serveral time. As a southern switchback, perhaps half way up, we notice an old stone ruin built on the steep ground, consisting of two rectangular structures connected by a steeply sloping stonework tube, perhaps one hundred feet long. We walk over and spend a few minutes puzzling out its purpose. We are uncertain if it is a mill, a furnace, or some sort of water-works. The lower part of the structure contains steel beams, so we suppose that it was build no earlier than the early twentieth century. We continue onward, cross beneath Henry Hudson Drive via a pedestrian tunnel, and join the Long Path (blazed in blue). We take it south, past another pedestrian tunnel beneath the Palisades Interstate Parkway. We take an informal trail over to a north-facing overlook at the cliff edge. The view of the Hudson River is very nice. We notice some old grafitti, the phrase "101 G G 1871" chiseled into the rock in characters about three inches high. We then reverse our route and head back. We sight a cardinal as we descend. About an hour.

I later learned from historian Peter Oliva from the Palisades Parks Conservancy that the ruined structure was a 1934-vintage trash incinerator built for getting rid of garbage at the picnic area.