You already know West Milford has great trails and a beautiful lake. Every travel roundup says so. What those roundups skip is the specific reason why, since the summer of 2023, residents are structuring their Saturdays differently — not leaving the township for dinner, not driving to Warwick or Wayne for a meal worth sitting down at. The short version: D'Boathaus opened on Greenwood Lake with 30 boat slips, and a lake that West Milford had always owned as a morning destination became the center of a full day.
That is the change worth knowing. Here is how the day actually goes.
Get to Apshawa Before the Parking Lot Fills
Apshawa Preserve sits off Northwood Drive in the Highlands, managed jointly by the New Jersey Conservation Foundation and Passaic County. The preserve covers 576 acres of mixed oak and sugar maple forest, with more than five miles of blazed trails open for hiking, biking, and horseback riding.
The trailhead parking is a gravel lot. On weekend mornings it fills early. AllTrails users flag it consistently: arrive late and you are parking on a residential street where parking is not allowed. Go before 9 a.m.
The Green Loop is the right call for most mornings: 3.7 miles, 603 feet of elevation gain, a 4.3-star average across 656 reviews as of early 2026. The loop takes you around the 40-acre Butler Reservoir, down alongside Apshawa Brook, past a waterfall and a dam, and through ruins of a water purification system built in the early 1900s — stone buildings and oversized metal tanks that have no interpretive sign, which makes them more interesting. The Outer Loop adds the White and Red trails for a 4.8-mile circuit with 675 feet of total ascent if you want to earn the rest of the morning.
Trails were confirmed open as of February 2025. NJ Hiking updated its guide in May 2025 and notes that the Yellow trail shown on older maps no longer exists.
Drive to Hewitt for Lunch
From Apshawa, Greenwood Lake is about 15 minutes south on Route 511. The lake runs nine miles and crosses the New York state line — West Milford holds the New Jersey shore.
D'Boathaus sits at 322 Lakeside Road in Hewitt, on the water's edge. It opened in July 2023 after a $1.8 million renovation that created 15 construction jobs and now employs 16 people full-time. The architect was David Smith; the builder was Major Renovation Management. The restaurant describes itself as farm-to-table: locally sourced ingredients, modern American cuisine, handcrafted cocktails, and a menu that rotates with daily specials. The outdoor patio faces the lake.
The detail that changes how you use the place: patrons can dock a boat or kayak in one of 30 slips while dining. That is not typical for this stretch of the lake. Before D'Boathaus existed, Greenwood Lake was where you went in the morning. Now it is where you stay through the afternoon, because you can arrive by water, eat well, and get back on the lake from the same spot.
The restaurant is open daily starting at 11:30 a.m. — 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. NJ Business Magazine recognized D'Boathaus in its Good Neighbor Awards, noting the restaurant also hosts weekly live music and community events including industry nights and public service nights.
Stay on the Water
If you paddled to lunch, you paddle back. If you drove, the lake is still the afternoon. Greenwood Lake supports kayaking, paddleboarding, boating, and fishing. The NJ side does not require a boat launch reservation in the same way state parks do; access points exist along Lakeside Road.
This is also where the township's specific geography pays off. West Milford's own description puts it plainly: nearly two-thirds of the township's 80-plus square miles is permanently protected open space. Most of its roughly 10,000 homes surround lakes or sit in wooded valleys. The preserved land is not incidental to the township — it is the structure of it. On a Saturday in spring, that means you are not sharing the lake with a parking-lot crowd. You are sharing it with neighbors.
For those who want more trail miles in the afternoon, Long Pond Ironworks State Park is nearby and connects to the Highlands Trail system. The West Milford Family Pump Track, listed among the township's top attractions on TripAdvisor as of 2026, is a free option for residents with kids who want something between a hike and a sport.
The Evening Has Two Modes
The choice at the end of the afternoon is between quiet and loud.
The Vreeland Store on Union Valley Road is the quiet option. It operates as a full-service restaurant, bar, bakery, and inn out of a historic general store — open Wednesday through Sunday. The kitchen makes everything fresh. The bar pours Stumptown Coffee, local craft beers, and handcrafted cocktails. It seats on a first-come basis. The place has the feel of something that predates the current food-trend cycle, which is the point. It has been here and will continue to be here.
For live music, J&S Roadhouse on Wooley Road runs regular shows — Country Comfort nights, original rock acts, the kind of lineup that draws regulars rather than tourists. Whiskey Wolf Tavern runs its own schedule; Whiskey Crossing on St. Patrick's Day weekend in March 2026 is the kind of recurring event that locals know and out-of-towners find out about after the fact.
Both options are inside the township. Both have been running long enough that a Wednesday conversation about the weekend will include them by name.
What This Actually Means
West Milford has always been an outdoor township. The trails, the lakes, the protected land — those are not new. What is new, as of July 2023, is that the outdoor infrastructure now connects to a food scene worth anchoring a day around. Before D'Boathaus, Greenwood Lake was beautiful in the morning. After D'Boathaus, it is a full afternoon with a reason to stay.
That shift is subtle if you are not paying attention to it. It shows up in how people describe their Saturdays now: they mention the trail and the lake in the same breath as where they had lunch, and they do not say they drove out of town.
The Vreeland Store and the Roadhouse have been part of the evening rotation for longer. But the middle of the day — that was the gap. A 9-mile lake with no place to dock and eat is a morning destination. A 9-mile lake with 30 slips and a farm-to-table kitchen is something else.
If you are thinking about what it looks like to plant yourself in a township like this long-term, the team at The Ramundo Team knows this market across Passaic County and the broader Hudson Valley region. They work with buyers and sellers who want to understand what a neighborhood actually is before they commit to it. Schedule a consultation and talk through what West Milford looks like in every season, not just the one on the listing photos.
