Our creepiest hike, to date

The weather this weekend was perfect for being outside. Lauren and I decided to jump in the car on Saturday to find adventure in the woods. With the help of our trusty hiking guidebook, we chose to go on a hike in Long Island, at a place called Muttontown Preserve. Given the name "Muttontown" it may seem unlikely that it could end up being creepy, or that at times Lauren and I were both secretly scared, but, alas, it is true. Here is where we started the hike, when we did not yet know what lay ahead. This guidebook (60 Hikes within 60 Miles of New York, a wedding gift from Deb Westcott) has been our tried and true favorite for hikes. It described the "Muttontown Mystery Trail" as having easy terrain (which would be true if you stay on the trails) and taking 1.5 hours to do the complete loop. The big selling point for me was that the trail leads to ruins of an old 60-room granite palace that was built in 1907, then purchased in 1951 by King Zog (yes, that is his real name), of Albania with buckets of rubies and diamonds.

First, the map must have been drawn by a third-grader (nothing against third-graders) and the trail markings were done 40 years ago by their younger sibling; they were impossible to read. These facts coupled with the issue that the park was set to close 30 minutes after we got there led to us making a series of misguided decisions.


Because of my nagging fear that we were going to be told to leave by park officials (though we did not see any evidence that any even existed-but they can be tricky that way) we set off the find the ruins on the other side of the park as quickly as possible, and on the least traveled paths. (First, we had the good sense to move our car outside of the gates to avoid being trapped...more on this later.) This led to some bushwhacking and getting turned around completely. With a map that was almost completely useless, we never knew exactly where we were, or which turns we should make or avoid. After both being scared about getting so lost we finally made it to the ruins just as it was getting dark under the canopy of trees. As we were hiking a long looking for the ruins, not knowing what to expect, they came up out of nowhere. Adding to the creepy factor was that everywhere that we looked there were disjointed pieces of the mansion covered in a sea of ivy. It was like the ivy was taking the building back.
So, we should mention is that the palace was destroyed by treasure hunters who were convinced that King Zog hid Albania's wealth there. Also, the skeleton of a woman curled up in the fetal position was found under a tree in 2001. It was determined it was a murder, and it remains UNSOLVED....Hopefully these pictures give a taste of the creepiness, but truly do not do justice to how it felt being there. It felt as though we were cloaked in a mantel of darkness (sorry, I'm reading Harry Potter right now). And we knew that we were alone because the park was closed...or were we?

After taking some photos and not talking about how we both thought a madman could be lurking, we decided to be brave and make our way back through the park to the car. We passed a walled garden, that frankly we were both too freaked out to try to find the entrance. Finally we made it back to were we started safe and sound. But trapped. I thought there was a break in the fence that we could leave though, there was not. We could see our car on the other side of the locked gates, and all we wanted was to be in it. After two failed attempts to climb over the fence, Lauren scrambled over the gate using the lock as a step. And I, well, you can see...

Once we got to the car, we broke out our beef jerky and decided we had never been so happy to be in the Champ. We decided to drive up to the ocean to cleanse ourselves of Muttontown. We can't wait to go back in the winter with our snowshoes!