Grafton Lakes State Park is a state park in Rensselaer County, New York in the USA. The park is in the central part of the Town of Grafton and north of the community of Grafton on NY Route 2.
The park offers a beach, a boat launch and boat rentals, a bridle path, hunting (deer and small game in season), fishing and ice fishing, ice skating, hiking and biking, picnic tables and pavilions, a nature trail, a playground, recreation programs, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, orienteering, ski-orienteering and a food concession. The beach has been rated as the best in the Albany area.
Grafton Lakes also contains the Shaver Pond Nature Center, which offers nature and recreation programs.
The park contains several lakes, including Long Pond, Mill Pond, and Second Pond.
The park has long been used for orienteering. It was first mapped in 1980 by Mark Domonie, and drafted by Bill Jameson. The park was the site of the 1981 US Intercollegiate Championships. A permanent course (called Trim-O) is expected to be placed in the park in 2008.
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“Sometimes the hardest part of my job is the incessant reminder of the fact we’re all trying so assiduously to ignore: we are here temporarily ... life is only ours on loan.”
—Sue Grafton (b. 1940)
“When you get out on one of those lakes in a canoe like this, you do not forget that you are completely at the mercy of the wind, and a fickle power it is. The playful waves may at any time become too rude for you in their sport, and play right over you.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State’s ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
“Linnæus, setting out for Lapland, surveys his “comb” and “spare shirt,” “leathern breeches” and “gauze cap to keep off gnats,” with as much complacency as Bonaparte a park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man is admirable.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)