2024 – A Great Photo Walk on October 4
………. (ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on October 10, 2024)
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…………………………………….(click to enlarge when you see the word “PANO”)
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It’s about time I came out of my Summer hibernation (too freakin’ hot & humid!) and did some walking (says my cardiologist). To me, it’s just a good excuse to take more pictures.
(Don’t tell him, but I drove to the starting point……….the Hackensack River Walkway, 4-5 blocks from home.)
It’s my go-to walking track because there are always interesting things to photograph (First thing I see……….is this someone’s dress, high up in a tree?):
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A few feet away, two squirrels were chasing each other around (I should have shot video). The only way the chase-ee could get away was to practically fly up a high chain-link fence:
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Almost immediately after that I found a VERY fat squirrel (you may know it as a groundhog, but they’re very related). Usually, they run away from me, but this one didn’t care. And if HE didn’t, I sure didn’t either and fired away (PANO):
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So far, this is all on the Johnson Park section of the Walkway. Just before I reached the Hackensack campus of the Fairleigh Dickinson University section of the Walkway, I found some color amidst the general drabness (PANO):
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At that point, there’s a river inlet that’s crossed by a small footbridge. Once across, you’re in FDU territory. But while crossing, I could see a Great Egret in the distance, close to the river.
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The Walkway – which had just taken me along the south side of the inlet – now took me along the north side, back to the river (and much closer to this guy, who was no longer in the distance) (PANO):
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Further north, I encountered a patriotic tree stump…………
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…………..AND something that looked like it could hide a very large animal in it:
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To me, this looks like the equivalent of a teenager surrounded by a couple dozen free pizzas:
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A few hundred yards north of THAT is where the pedestrian bridge over the Hackensack river between FDU’s Teaneck and Hackensack campuses is located – right by the big Martin Luther King, Jr. statue – whose installation I documented 10 years ago.
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Below are pictures of the pedestrian bridge (taken on May 2, 2020) and the MLK statue (taken on February 21, 2021). You can see part of the bridge on the left in that bottom picture:

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Side note: That installation was 10 years ago TODAY!
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Here’s a picture I took that day:
This Saturday will be the 10th anniversary of the Dedication ceremony:
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If you’d like to see the whole story – including MLK, Jr., arriving on his back on a flatbed truck, the installation and the entire dedication ceremony, go here:
http://www.hackensacknow.org/index.php/topic,2555.0.html (two pages)
Back to our show……………….and the pedestrian bridge…………..
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I took this PANO shot while facing south in the middle of that bridge. The Teaneck campus is on the left and part of the Hackensack campus is visible on the right:
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I didn’t get to set foot on Teaneck soil. As I headed in that direction, guess what I saw in the water just north of the bridge:
One for Hackensack and one for Teaneck?
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Here’s a closeup of TeanEgret:
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I had to be back home in less that an hour and still wasn’t finished my northern journey on the Hackensack side, so I made a U-turn on the bridge and went back to Hack.
There still was a two-part Walkway leg to make it up to the end (the Route 4 highway), so I started walking past an FDU baseball field, just beyond center field.
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If you look through the writing, you can make out the lighter infield and the two horizontal white lines that are the dugout roofs. Rather than waste time walking around the field to shoot behind home plate to see the writing in a properly readable form, I just flipped the pic (PANO):
.Who would know the difference……………..or care?
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I didn’t have time to continue to Rt 4, so I started to head back. There wouldn’t be much to shoot that I didn’t already have, so there shouldn’t be any delays…….
…………except for HackEgret, who actually changed positions! In the lower one, he appears to be listening to the open mouth of a branch:
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I was about to take a final picture of HackEgret when I heard a disturbance on the ground near me. It was a cute squirrel, who wanted to show me her…………um, bushy tail– yeah! That’s it!
Highly embarrassed, she tried to exit quickly, using only her two rear legs.
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I turned my attention to HackEgret and took a final (obstructed) shot (is that a yellow scrub brush in the water?).
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DONE!
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Well, almost done…………except for a small Teterboro-bound jet crashing into a light pole………..
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I made it back to my car (and home) right on time.
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Now if I hadn’t driven to the walkway, I would have had to walk the 4-5 blocks home and been late.
Think the cardio will buy that excuse?
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The TeanEgret was worth the price of admission.