Why Don’t Hudson Valley Hiking & Swimming Spots Have More Garbage Cans?

One of the best things about living in the Hudson Valley is that we have an enormous selection of great trails to go hiking on and gorgeous places to go swimming. No matter what part of the Hudson Valley you live in, the odds say that there's a great trail or swimming hole close by, but why aren't there more garbage cans?

Hudson Valley Hiking

There are so many choices from Breakneck Ridge near Cold Spring, Storm King Mountain, to Gertrude's Nose/Minnewaska Trail in Ulster County. Whatever trail you go hiking on have you noticed that there doesn't seem to be a lot of places to throw away your garbage when you are on a hike?

Personally, I don't hike any of the harder trails but I do spend a lot of time walking on the Rail Trail, and one thing I noticed the other day was that there aren't many places to throw away any garbage while walking.

Hudson Valley Rail Trail Walks

A normal walk for me includes me and my dog Smalls and a bottle of water, that's it! We normally walk on the Poughkeepsie side of the Walkway Over the Hudson and most times walk east on the trail from Poughkeepsie towards LaGrange. Now if you walk with a dog you already know that it's a guarantee that they are going to take care of "business" while walking so I always make sure I have bags to pick up after him.

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My problem is that after our walk is done, I usually have at least two bags of "stuff" and there's no place to throw them away. In the parking lot that we park in, there aren't any garbage cans, and I don't think I've ever seen one garbage can along the rail trail, so I've had to put bring the bags of poop in the car with us and thrown them away at home.

It may sound like a dumb complaint, but wouldn't having more garbage cans lessen the amount of litter that we see along trails all over the Hudson Valley?

Hudson Valley Swimming

We have a ton of swimming holes in the area that we locals love to swim at but hate when out-of-towners find out about them because they always seem to ruin it for everyone. The list of swimming spots that have closed because of people not picking up after themselves has grown over the years.

Bash Bish Closed

We just told you about "Bash Bish" closing permanently because of the litter issues and just like hiking trails, wouldn't it be a good idea to make more garbage cans available at these sites to fix the garbage problem?

What do you think? Send us a comment through the Wolf country app.