30 Nature Day Trips from New York City Under an Hour-and-a-Half

After living in New York City for a collective twenty-one years, I got a car for the first time in my city living. My wife, Ariel and I bought the car in spring of last year at the start of the pandemic, in part, so we could do something to relieve the stress and isolation of being trapped in two mile radius of our home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In the past, we would usually visit a museum, gallery, or explore other parts of the city during our free time, however, since the start of the pandemic we’ve been taking a lot more short day trips into nature, to a beach or other outdoor setting. Our trips have also been a big inspiration for many of my landscape paintings.

If you’re a New Yorker and have a car or occasional access to one, you might enjoy visiting some of the places we’ve gone to. Below are 30 destinations, all an hour-and-a-half away or less that we’ve recently visited and would recommend. All of these locations are easy visits and don’t require long hikes or steep elevations. I think each location is worth visiting, however I put a ⭐️ in front of our favorites.

In New York City

⭐️ Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge neart Sunset

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge

50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Center is our favorite place to visit. We’ve been here on countless Saturdays during all times of the year. The main trail is only a mile-and-a-half loop but we often spend several hours here because there are so many amazing birds to see and great views of the ocean and city. The loop juts out into Jamaica Bay with a brackish pond in the center and is an incredible birding area. It’s not uncommon to see hawks, osprey, egrets, swans and many unusual birds as they use this area to rest during migration. There are also trails across the street that are worth going to as well. Strangely, there are an unusual amount of cactus growing here, something I wouldn’t expect to see in New York City.

I’ve taken a taxi and a public bus here before, although it’s not the most accessible without a car.

⭐️ Fort Tilden, Queens

Gun casemate in the dunes at Fort Tilden

Gun casemate at Fort Tilden

50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Fort Tilden is also a favorite location with beautiful beaches, hiking trails in the sand dunes and abandoned military architecture to explore. The fort supposedly had nuclear missiles here when the site was active. The missile launch pad is usually behind a closed gate but you can visit most of the old buildings and gun casemates at any time. We’ve also enjoyed visiting the beach in the winter when no one is there expect the occasional dog walker.

You can park in Fort Tilden from mid-September to mid-June. During the busy season, you can park at Jacob Riis Beach and walk over. Fort Tilden is somewhat accessible by public transportation and is a popular destination for bikers.

Rockaway Beach 95, Queens

View of the beach at Rockaway Beach 95, in Queens, New York City. Shells in the foreground, surfer walking with surf board in the background

Rockaway Beach 95

50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Rockaway is a great beach that is accessible by public transportation as well as by and car. We love spending the day here in our beach tent and have recently even seen seals there. There are lots of great food options on the boardwalk and on the main drag at 95th street including the bagels at Stop 1 Bagel & Deli.

There’s free parking in a loop right in front of the beach. In the summer, we just loop around a couple times and get a spot fairly quickly.

Forest Park, Queens

View of Forest Park in Queens, New York City. Path winding through leafless trees in the fog.

Forest Park

30 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

We visited Forest Park on a spooky, foggy, December morning. Although this is an urban park smack in the middle of Queens, there are sections that are completely wooded which makes the park the closest location to get into nature.

Easily accessible by public transportation.

Queens Country Farm Museum, Queens

 

Queens Country Farm Museum

 

30 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

We enjoyed the Queens County Farm, you can walk quite a bit outdoors on the property and see various animals and plants growing, including wandering chickens, but I would probably recommend it most to people with kids.

Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island

Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island. Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island along the bay with the Verrazzano Bridge in the back right.

Fort Wadsworth

40 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Fort Wadsworth is an old fort and park that’s fun to walk around and has great views of the Verrazzano Bridge. It’s not especially memorable but it’s definitely worth visiting if you’re looking for a walk and to make a day trip to Staten Island. I recommend starting at Fort Wadsworth and then heading over to Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden and/or go to Greenbelt Nature Center.

Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, Staten Island

Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden in Staten Island. View of raised lily pond with trees and botanical garden building in the background

Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden

45 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

We really enjoyed Snug Harbor and was the highlight of our Staten Island trips. It’s a botanic garden with different areas including a farm, rose garden and more. They also had food available to purchase and outdoor seating. We’ll definitely come back here. It’s probably not a whole day destination so you may want to visit Fort Wadsworth or visit Greenbelt Nature Center as well.

Greenbelt Nature Center, Staten Island

Greenbelt Nature Center in Staten Island. View of a small lake with trees slightly changing color around the edge of the lake.

Greenbelt Nature Center

45 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Greenbelt is a surprisingly large forest in the middle of Staten Island with plenty of trails and even a lake. You can easily spend the afternoon exploring all the trails here. It’s not the most amazing woods I’ve ever been to but it is nice and very close.

Orchard Beach, Bronx

Orchard Beach in the Bronx, New York City. View of a thin boardwalk in a dry marsh leading to a small island with trees.

Orchard Beach

40 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The beach at Orchard Beach is rather small and not especially inspiring, however if you walk along the nature trail just to the north, you can see a surprising number of birds and walk across a narrow boardwalk to a small beautiful island in the bay. The walk back along the western shore is also nice.

Orchard Beach is accessible by public transportation.

⭐️ New York Botanical Garden, Bronx

New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. View of the large rose garden with various paths surrounded by different colored roses. Large trees are in the background.

New York Botanical Garden

40 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The New York Botanical Garden is the largest and nicest botanical garden I’ve ever been to. You can visit all day and still not see everything. I recommend not missing the rose garden and checking out what art exhibits are currently available.

The garden is somewhat accessible by public transportation.

Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn

 
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. View of the large gothic entrance to the cemetery. The entrance is ornate, with large arches, spires and looks similar to a gothic church.

Green-Wood Cemetery

 

35 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Green-Wood Cemetery which is intended to be both a place to mourn as well as a destination to be enjoyed. We spent all day here and saw a fair amount of nature, amazing architecture, over-the-top grave designs and paid our respects to several famous people including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein and others.

I was really amused to find the mausoleum for the inventor of the hotdog, Charles Feltman. His grave was everything I expected, although honestly the addition of some hotdog sculptures would have been nice. Nathan of Nathan’s Famous Hotdogs was his understudy and later undercut Feltman’s business by selling hotdogs at half the price but not before Feltman made his own fortune in Coney Island.

Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn

Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. View of the tarmac, trees and shrubs growing along the edge of the runway and fluffy clouds doting the large open sky.

Floyd Bennett Field, photo by Rhododendrites

45 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Surprisingly, there’s a large abandoned airfield in Brooklyn and it’s open to the public. Floyd Bennett is across Jamaica Bay from JFK airport and was used prior to JFK being built. You can drive up and down the tarmac when you visit and stop anywhere, including at the end of each runway where there are several rocky beaches I like to explore. The airport also has a rec center at the old air traffic control tower. On the east shore, there is an antique airplane museum (always closed when I visit), and a boat launch which I once used for a small sailboat. At the end of the runway on the north shore is an RC plane club. The remote control planes flown there are fun to watch and incredibly fancy - the planes include beautiful prop planes and jets that probably cost as much as a full sized plane. The airport also has campsites available between the runways.

It’s hard to say what exactly the focus is for a visit here, it’s mostly just fun to drive on the runways and explore all the random ways the airport is being repurposed.

Long Island - South Shore

Long Beach

 
Home in Long Beach. Home is nautical themed with round portholes instead of windows, buoys on the side of the home and a small row boat half sunken in the front yard as decoration.

Long Beach, NY

 

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Long Beach is a nice beach town just outside the city and is only an hour away on Long Island Rail Road. We’ve stayed overnight there at an airbnb several times (without a car) but it can also be a nice day trip. The town feels a little bit like it’s part of the city, but it also has a lot of seaside charm. If you have a car and are visiting Long Beach, I also recommend visiting Marine Nature Study Area.

⭐️ Marine Nature Study Area, Oceanside

Marine Nature Study Area. View of a long green metal walkway cutting through a large saltwater marsh.

Marine Nature Study Area

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Near Long Beach is the Marine Nature Study Center which we loved. There’s a great walkway that takes you out into the marsh for beautiful views of the marsh, ocean and is great for birding.

⭐️ Robert Moses State Park, Field 5, Fire Island

Robert Moses State Park, Fire Island. View of the beach with a house-like building and a large black and white lighthouse.

Robert Moses State Park, Field 5

1h 20m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I have been to very few beaches nicer than Robert Moses. The beach has beautiful views, great walks in the grassy dunes and you can easily walk into the car-free and magical Fire Island neighborhoods filled with beautiful beach houses and thousands of tiny little deer.

Long Island - North Shore

⭐️ Bailey Arboretum County Park, Locust Valley

 
Baily Arboretum County Park. View of the base of redwood tree growing up from the ground. with a woman touching the tree and looking up.

Bailey Arboretum County Park, Locust Valley

 

50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Bailey Arboretum was one of our favorite north shore destinations. I just couldn’t get over the fact there are redwood trees living on Long Island! It only takes an hour or two to visit, but it’s well worth the trip. There are also a few birds in rehabilitation, like owls and hawks you can visit with. There are also many other good spots to stop at afterwords including North Shore Wildlife Sanctuary, Planting Fields Arboretum, Welwyn Preserve, Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.

North Shore Wildlife Sanctuary, Mill Neck

 
North Shore Wildlife Sanctuary. View of a path in the woods during autumn. Most of the trees are yellow and orange.

North Shore Wildlife Sanctuary

 

50 minute drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

This was a nice walk in the woods that included a boardwalk bridge over a pond. We went here after Bailey Arboretum and enjoyed our 1-2 hour visit.

Planting Fields Arboretum

Planting Fields Arboretum. View of a small, neat garden in winter with an old fashioned cottage in the background.

Planting Fields Arboretum

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Planting Fields is one of many former estates built by turn-of-the-century industrialists we visited along the north shore. Planting Fields has a great collection of trees and gardens including a miniature conifer forest.

⭐️ Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve

Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve. View of a woman on a sandy cliff looking out at the ocean. The sky is overcast.

Caumsett State Historic Park Preserve

1h 15m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

A previous estate, Caumsett is an especially large wilderness area with lots of paths in the woods which eventually lead to dramatic cliffs overlooking the ocean. This is a good spot for longer walks in the woods and you can easily spend a full afternoon here. You can also walk down and along the beach. We enjoyed the small cafe on-site.

⭐️ Welwyn Preserve, Glen Cove

 
Welwyn Preserve. View of a man standing in a low tide salt marsh during winter. Sky is overcast, brown and orange grasses surround a little bit of water and dried out inlet.

Welwyn Preserve, Glen Cove

 

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

I particularly enjoyed my walk here because it was low tide and I had lots of fun exploring the tidal inlet and salt marsh around the point. The estate’s mansion was closed when we visited but is home to the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site. View of an elegant home, trees, 20th century American windmill, lawn and in the foreground is a wester style wood fence.

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

1h 15m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Sagamore Hill was the home of Teddy Roosevelt. We walked around the grounds, the woods and beach, and although the property is nice it’s not that large in terms of being a nature destination. I think it would be worth going back here if we were already in the area and/or for a tour of the house which was closed during our visit.

Blydenburgh County Park

Blydenbur

Blydenburgh County Park

1h 15m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Blydenburgh has several historic houses and is largely wooded with a long trail that circles the lake at the center of the park. We were there on an especially cold day in the winter but I think this would be a nice walk when the temperatures are above freezing. It’s a good spot to get a lot of mileage in on the loop around the lake. Blydenburgh is halfway out on Long Island but it actually doesn’t take that long to get there because it’s just off the expressway.

Sands Point Preserve, Sands Point

Sands Point Preserve. View of a large boxy castle in the background with leafless trees in the mid ground and lots of overgrown leafless vines in the foreground. Sky is overcast.

Sands Point Preserve

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The mansion on Sands Point is a straight up gigantic castle that was built for Howard Gould and completed for Daniel Guggenheim in 1912 and looks like it could be a film location for the TV show Succession. I’d love to take a tour inside some day, but on the day we visited, we were happy to walk along the beach and through the estate’s wooded trails. The woods there are a bit overrun with vines, but the trail is clear and we still enjoyed the walk.

Target Rock National Wildlife Refuge, Lloyd Harbor

 
Target Rock National Wildlife Refuge. View of orange salt marsh grasses with some ocean water and beach in the foreground. Sky is slightly overcast with trees in the distant background.

Target Rock National Wildlife Refuge

 

1h 20m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Target Rock has a small path in the woods that quickly leads to the beach. I recommend walking south on the beach down to the point and back. We loved the long beach walk at low tide and found it was great for finding sea worn wood, glass and seashells for our collection. We were told there was a seal resting on the rocks that we just missed seeing.

Cedarmere Park

Cedarmere Park. Close up view of a formal, victorian building. Top floor is made of dark wood, lower floor is made of brick. Dried cattails and grasses are in the immediate foreground.

Cedarmere Park

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

This is a small but beautiful garden estate on a bay that I recommend stoping at briefly on your way to the William Cullen Bryant Preserve which is just down the street.

William Cullen Bryant Preserve

William Cullen Bryant Preserve. Winter afternoon view of trees and water in the distance. In the foreground is a brown yard and formal 19th century home with many small quirky addition added to the back of the building.

William Cullen Bryant Preserve

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Bryant Preserve is fairly large, with hiking trails, a large sculpture garden, and is home to the Nassau County Museum of Art. This spot can easily be a full afternoon destination. We weren’t able to visit the museum during our visit, but hope to come back to see an exhibit.

Upstate New York

⭐️ Rockefeller State Park Preserve

Rockefeller State Park Preserve. Summer view of a light speckled path near a small body of water. Large green trees are arching over the path.

1 hour drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Rockefeller State Preserve was a nice stop for us on our way down from visiting family upstate. The grounds are very large, have lots of great hiking paths and includes the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture which was fun to walk through and see the greenhouse plantings.

⭐️ Washburn Trail at Mt. Taurus/Bull Hill Quarry, Cold Spring

Autumnal view of the Mt. Taurus quarry near Cold Spring, New York. View shows mountain with a quarry. The mountain has largely brown and orange trees. The floor of the quarry has orange grass and a few small green trees.

Mt. Taurus Quarry

1h 30m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The Mt. Taurus/Bull Hill Quarry is just outside the town of Cold Spring and is one of my favorite destinations. You can easily hike up and explore the quarry floor and then take the trail that goes around the side of the quarry and leads to great views of the town of Cold Spring. For a more ambitious hike, I’ve taken Metro-North to the Breakneck Ridge stop, hiked up to the top and then walked down to the quarry and then to the train stop in Cold Spring.

⭐️ Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary, Cold Spring

Constitution March Audubon Center and Sanctuary. Mountains in the background., green marsh in the mid ground and a walkway over water in the foreground.

Constitution Marsh Audubon Center and Sanctuary

1h 30m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Constitution Marsh is a great spot near Cold Spring, with an extensive walkway that extends out into the Hudson River marsh. It takes about an hour to explore and I’ve heard parking can be an issue, but we didn’t have a problem during our mid-week August visit. There is also a waterfall within walking distance of the parking lot that is worth checking out.

⭐️ Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, Pound Ridge

Winter view from a high elevation looks at the clouds, leafless forest and view of a winding reservoir nearby.

Ward Pound Ridge Reservation

1h 20m drive from Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Ward Pound Ridge is great for a longer walk in beautiful woods that feels a bit like the Adirondacks to me. The reservation includes a nice view of the nearby reservoir as well as a large petroglyph rock and a mini cave which was once occupied by a man who made his own leather clothes and was known as the “Leatherman.”

Day Trip Locations

 
 

Hope you enjoyed seeing all the places we’ve visited so far!

Let me know in the comments below if you have questions about where we’ve visited or if you have suggestions for future day trips we should try.

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