Photo of the Day: Alpine Picnic Area, NJ

The Alpine Picnic Area, operated by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, is adjacent to the Alpine Boat Basin. It is roughly seven miles north of the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge and opposite Yonkers, New York. I took this photo two years ago. I can’t imagine that even these trees offer the kind of relief needed from the intolerable heat wave we’re experiencing now.

Photo of the Day: Pavilion, Alpine Boat Basin, NJ

The image accompanying this post is one of several that I took in mid-July at the Alpine Boat Basin, next to the Hudson River, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ.

On the Sunday when I visited, as you can see from the decorations festooning the windows, a party was being held in this open-air stone picnic pavilion. A number of such celebrations have taken place in this spot over the years. 

For instance, my oldest brother tells me that his class from the late, great St. Cecilia’s of Englewood had a party around the time of their graduation in the early 1970s in this spot. I strongly suspect the proceedings back then were a good deal more raucous than the calm, family-oriented family affair I saw three months ago.

Photo of the Day: Kearney House, Alpine Boat Basin

I took this photograph back in mid-July, when I was visiting the Alpine Boat Basin at the northern end of the picnic area for the New Jersey Palisades. “Kearney House” dates back to sometime around 1761, when the southern part of the house was built at the river terminus of a route where farmers could transport goods from Closter Dock Road through a pass in the cliffs on their way to New York. At one point, it was mistakenly thought this house served as Lord Cornwallis’ headquarters in the American Revolution.

The house gains its name from James and Rachel Kearney, who moved here in 1817. The five children by the couple—then, more decisively, James’ death, which forced Rachel to open a tavern to make ends meet—necessitated an enlargement of the house’s northern end in the 1840s.

The Palisades Interstate Park Commission purchased the house in 1907. In the Roaring Twenties, the commission used this structure as a police station.

Photo of the Day: Rockin’ on the River, Midsummer 2014

This post started out with the headline “Rollin’ on the River,” but the more I thought of the picture, the less likely the action of this speedboat reminded me of “rollin’.”  “Rockin’” was more like it while keeping it in the rock ‘n’ roll idiom that started it all.

Anyway, I snapped this shot of the boat in the Hudson River from the vantage point of the Alpine Boat Basin, on the New Jersey side of the Palisades.

Photo of the Day: Vanishing Point, Alpine Boat Basin, NJ

This seemed like a natural follow-up to my post yesterday showing the Alpine Boat Basin. What caught my eye here were not so much the boats in the background, but instead how the eye was led in that direction by the ditch--a photographic counterpart to the concept of perspective employed by so many Italian Renaissance painters.

Photo of the Day: Alpine Boat Basin, NJ

The Alpine Boat Basin is located about seven miles north of the George Washington Bridge on the Hudson River. I was there on a picnic early this summer without a camera, and was so impressed with what I saw that I vowed to return. I did so a few weekends ago, when I took this picture of the public marina.