While connecting two bustling villages and passing through three others, it is primarily a country road and offers a variety of scenery and points of interest, from fields and meadows to a riverside stretch and orchards devoted to apples.

Eventually the land surrounding the highway once again becomes more wooded and it goes through a short tunnel under the railroad tracks shared by Norfolk Southern and Metro-North.

It passes the west boundary of Stewart State Forest, goes over a little-used rail spur, once part of the Wallkill Valley Railroad (WVRR) and then enters Maybrook, which it serves as the main street.

A feature of this town is the large Yellow Freight terminal in its north end, continuing a tradition of importance in transportation that began with the village's origins as a major regional rail hub.

After crossing the old WVRR main line, now the north end of a lightly used freight spur, it becomes Orange Avenue with a mix of residential and commercial properties.

In the center of town NY 52 comes in from the east at an oblique angle more like a merger than a junction; traffic at rush hour there is made more difficult by vehicles attempting to cross 52 and enter the adjacent Hess station as well as a local one-way side street.

This takes the traveler past some of Walden's older homes and Most Precious Blood Catholic school before finally leaving the village at the Tin Brook bridge, whereupon it almost immediately bends westward at the Lake Osiris Road junction for a short distance, curving north again when it reaches the Wallkill River.

Immediately east of the hamlet's business district, at Wallkill Library it turns right onto Main Street and takes a more easterly course out of town, past some rolling fields and John G. Borden Middle School.

While remaining two-lane, the roadway itself is a little wider here, encouraging drivers to accelerate as the woodlots surrounding them give way to the cornfields of Wallkill and Shawangunk state prisons and the panoramic view of the Shawangunk Ridge across the river valley that continues most of the way to New Paltz (Sometimes the summit of Slide Mountain, the Catskill Mountains' highest peak, is visible over the ridge).

As the drive continues, the Catskill Aqueduct crosses and recrosses the road several times and orchards become the primary agricultural use of the adjoining land.

The campus of SUNY New Paltz starts to form a distinct skyline to the north, and to the east the ridgeline of Illinois Mountain complements the Shawangunks.

After some tight curves and bends, SUNY's athletic fields to the east herald entry into the village of New Paltz, where NY 208 becomes South Chestnut Street.

[12] The village of Walden noted in its 2005 Comprehensive Plan the difficulties created by the oblique intersection at the southern end of the NY 52 concurrency.