A loop around the Cooper River and the dinosaur on Maple Avenue

Cooper River Park (North and South Park Drives between Route 130 and Cuthbert Blvd, with the extension to Grove St) · Cherry Hill, Pennsauken, Collingswood and Haddon Township

The Cooper River Park loop - a fall walk around the lake from Cherry Hill to Collingswood

When somebody new to the county asks me where to walk, I send them to Cooper River Park. The main loop is about 3.8 paved, flat miles around the lake from Cuthbert Boulevard to Route 130, and it doesn't cross a single street, so the little ones can ride the whole way.

The lake is man-made. The county built Cooper River Park between 1925 and 1940, damming the river into a lake about two and a half miles long, and Depression-era crews laid a lot of the stone walls you'll walk past. Go in the morning and you'll catch crew shells coming down the 2,000-meter rowing course by the Boathouse.

The full guide has parking and PATCO tips, the 1730s house on South Park Drive, and where to stand to watch the rowers.

The rest of the country has no word for the night before Halloween. We do. Plus an NJ Transit bus that finally found a way around traffic.

Every Camden County voter gets the same county question on Nov 3, so here's what it actually asks. And there's a corner in Cherry Hill where a farm is coming back and a car wash wants in across the street.

Countywide · Tue Nov 3 · on your Nov 3 ballot

The county open space question on your Nov 3 ballot

Camden County's ballot question asks whether to raise the county Open Space Trust Fund tax from 2 cents to 3 cents per $100 of property value, which works out to $30 a year instead of $20 for every $100,000. The ballot's explanatory statement says the money would go to cleaning up rivers, lakes and streams including the Cooper River, protecting drinking water sources and natural areas, restoring flood-control wetlands, and parks, and it puts the cost at $1.83 a month for the average homeowner. The Inquirer and The Retrospect both report the extra penny would fund a roughly $400 million clean water plan over about 10 years. A yes raises the rate. A no keeps it at 2 cents. Read the full question before you go, and remember it's on your ballot whether you live in Camden or Winslow. Camden County sample ballots · Sample ballot (Haddonfield) · Ballotpedia

Cherry Hill / Voorhees line (Evesham, Springdale and White Horse Roads) · zoning hearing scheduled Thu Nov 12

A farm comes back to Holly Ravine, and a car wash wants the corner across the street

Cherry Hill council voted Oct 13 to lease about nine and a half acres of the township-owned Holly Ravine property to Springdale Farm for five years, so the old Gilmour dairy at Evesham and Springdale Roads goes back to growing food. The Inquirer says Springdale pays $1,000 a year and will plant a cover crop first, and the township says the woods and ravine stay open to the public with new parking. Right across the intersection on the Voorhees side, a developer wants to knock down the old Shell station and a house and build a three-lane car wash. That lot is zoned residential, so it needs a use variance, and the Voorhees zoning board has it scheduled for Nov 12. The one corner gets a tractor and maybe a car wash, which is about as Camden County as it gets. Inquirer: Holly Ravine · Inquirer: car wash

Halloween weekend ends with clay at the Markeim in Haddonfield, and on Thursday a curator walks you through the fall show at Rutgers-Camden's gallery.

Hadrosaurus Park · east end of Maple Avenue, Haddonfield (and the Haddy bronze at Kings Highway and Lantern Lane)

Hadrosaurus Park - the Haddonfield ravine where the world's first mounted dinosaur came out of the ground

I'd walked past the bronze dinosaur on Kings Highway a hundred times before I asked why it's there. The answer is a wooded ravine at the end of Maple Avenue, where marl diggers on a Haddonfield farm hit giant bones and nobody knew what they were.

In 1858, a Philadelphia lawyer spending the summer in town dug the pit back out. Joseph Leidy at the Academy of Natural Sciences worked out that the animal walked on its hind legs, and in 1868 it went on display in Philly as the first mounted dinosaur skeleton anyone could see.

The full story has a myth check on the "first complete dinosaur" line, how a Westmont fourth-grade class made it the state dinosaur, and where to see Haddy now that the Academy's museum has closed.

The Collingswood Farmers Market has four Saturdays left before it packs up for the winter.