Fort Tryon Park Snow Day

Today the park screamed:  get outside and walk!  From the stoop I knew it was going to be a beautiful walk.

Mare's tails and contrails 

Walking down one hill to climb another, with my Fitbit http://www.fitbit.com/store?gclid=CLCLw6mxurwCFU7xOgodDQ0A4Q securely fastened,  my goal was to do some serious walking and climbing. I chose to explore Fort Tryon Park. https://www.forttryonparktrust.org/ Unlike Central Park, which is a landscape created by man, Fort Tryon is a "natural" park.  Fort Tryon Park  was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr.,  (son of the man who created Central Park) in the 1920s and built by workers during the Works Progress Administration.  The park contains 67 acres, much of it with breathtaking views of the Hudson River and the Palisades in New Jersey.  

Carriage road to the Cloisters built during the WPA.  Icy Hudson River on the right.

Fitbit clocked 14 floors climbing the hill to The Cloisters, a medieval museum that is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and that sits on a bluff overlooking the Hudson. Housing a collection of some 2,000 pieces of medieval art, the Cloisters http://www.metmuseum.org/visit/visit-the-cloisters is a mélange of sacred and secular buildings from France and Spain, predominantly, that only some rich Americans, among them John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,  could have collected and glued together in an melting-pot way 75 years ago.         

12th-century apse from Spain reconstructed in NYC

South entrance of The Cloisters

Deeper in the Park lies the Heather Garden, the largest collection of heaths and heathers on the East Coast. The many plants in this three-acre site with stunning views of the Hudson and the Cloisters were blanketed in snow, disturbed only by a lonely jogger.

Heather Garden in Winter

Onward I walked, out of the Park,   south to West 181st Street, where I stopped in at a Russian grocery store to eye the caviar and other exotic foods.  Without a purchase, I turned 'round and headed back home via the city streets.  

By the end of the day I had taken 12,600 steps for 5.37 miles, had climbed 46 flights, and  burned 2050 calories.  Plus I got some much-needed Vitamin D with my time in the sunshine.  Yay, Fitbit!