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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—Sue Grafton (b. 1940)
“White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light.... They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters are they! We never learned meanness of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
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Into the Park a-maying!”
—Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)