Date visited: 11/28/2020

This is a nice spot right on the shore, in the Long Wharf section of New Haven. Food trucks line the strip, and even on a cold day at the end of November in the middle of a pandemic, business was booming. The park is a paved walking trail along the shore, with some war monuments, and a pier at the end. We explored around quite a bit. Long Wharf Nature Center is a short trail on the west side of the park, that goes through some marshy land near the shore. You won't forget you're in the city, I-95 is right behind you up a hill a bit. It wasn't that clean, there was a good deal of trash that littered the landscape. I guess that comes with the territory when you're dealing with parks in the city.

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Dates visited: 11/28/2020, 9/19/2021 & 5/11/2024

See Also: New Haven, Hamden, Cheshire, Southington, Plainville, Farmington, Avon, Simsbury, Granby, East Granby, Suffield, Southwick, MA, Westfield, MA, Southampton, MA, Easthampton, MA, Northampton, MA

We walked the entire completed portion of the New Haven section in one trip. The trail currently ends at Temple Street near Yale. Construction has already begun on the completion of the trail, that will eventually end at Long Wharf. This section of the trail is the most urban part of the entire trail. It features some nice painted murals, and also a nice turtle sculpture near Shelton Avenue. The section that goes through Yale is lovely. The trail currently ends at the closed tunnel under Temple Street. We explored a little of the area around the end of the trail.

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We certainly plan to walk the new section as soon as it is built. We did walk the paved trail at Long Wharf already, so it looks like we may have already done some of the planned extension! It looks like the trail would end near the Boathouse at Canal Dock, which is the location of the original mouth of the canal the trail is named after.

As with most plans to build and/or extend rail trails, this project has faced a number of delays. The final portion of the trail in New Haven, connecting Yale to Long Wharf was originally scheduled to be completed by now. For this visit, we followed a map of the proposed extension of the trail. There is already a dedicated bike trail that runs from the planned southern terminus of the trail at Long Wharf, along Sargent Drive, passing the large IKEA, and then west along side Water Street. Here the trail comes to an abrupt end. The map with the proposed route, has the trail heading up Olive Street and along Grove Street, and then following the tunnel under Temple Street. While there are already pedestrian sidewalks along this route, there is no sign of a bike trail in development, so I'm not sure this will be the final route. We walked that path, up to the construction at the tunnel. It looks like the path will actually use part of a parking garage to reach the tunnel. We could see the construction vehicles at this point, and were even able to find a small parking lot from which we could see the progress of the trail, in between the tunnel and parking garage. We also cut through Yale's Temple Court upscale condo complex, between Temple Street and Whitney Avenue, directly over the tunnel. I guess we will have to come back, when/if the trail is ever officially completed.

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Date visited: 6/23/2021

This is one of four parks we visited on New Haven's East Shore. We visited Fort Nathan Hale and Lighthouse Point Park initially, then came back the following week to check out this one and the Pardee Seawall. My expectations were low based on the All-Trails review of the walking path, but I was pleasantly surprised. I thought this was a great park. We came on a beautiful day, mid-seventies, partly cloudy, with low humidity. The walking trail was nice, and there is access to get down to the water. There is a nice view of New Haven. Mandy decided to cool off a few times by laying down in the ocean water. She was being a little over-dramatic, because it wasn't that hot to begin with.

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Dates visited: 6/18/2021 & 6/23/2021

Also known as "Fort Hale Park, Black Rock", this is a nice spot on the east shore of New Haven harbor. This place was used a military fort during the Revolutionary War, The War of 1812 and The Civil War. There is access to the ocean and a small beach, but there was signs indicating swimming wasn't allowed. There were no "No Dogs" signs, so we were able to get down to the water in a couple of different places. We walked a loop around the park, which included remnants of the days this was used for military purposes, as well as some other artficats like the totem pole. People use it for fishing, the main attraction seems to be the fishing pier. We didn't get to the pier because there was too many people. We came back a second time, the following week, since we were visiting East Shore Park and Pardee Seawall, which are on either side of this park. This time it was a nicer day, and we took some of the same pictures again on a sunny day. As with East Shore Park, Mandy decided to cool off by laying in the ocean water.

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Date visited: 6/23/2021

This park borders Fort Hale Park. We parked at the pull-off style lot just outside of Fort Hale, then proceeded to the first section of the walking path which consists of a decent climb up via a set of stairs. There are nice views at the top. After a short distance, The path goes down a set of stairs, and then proceeds along the Pardee Seawall. This is probably the least interesting of the four East Shore parks, but was a nice walk none the less.

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Dates visited: 6/18/2021 & 12/12/2021

Just down the street from Fort Nathan Hale Park, is Lighthouse Point Park. It seems that they usually collect a fee to park in season, but the booths were empty when we arrived, about an hour before sunset on a Friday night. There was a private event going on, but we still managed to get some photos near the lighthouse. Surprisingly enough, we also saw three deer here! We came back a second time in December. There was some sort of event going on this time as well, and cars were lined up at the entrance. I was going to turn around, but the guy manning the gate saw my pups in the backseat and waved me through, since I was just there to take the dogs for a walk. I'm not sure what the event was during the day, but at night this time of year, they have "Fantasy Of Lights", and the lighthouse is all lit up. The sun was the only thing causing light for this visit! This time, we walked the full loop trail that we didn't get to on our first trip. The loop is quite nice, as it both hugs the beach and goes into the woods and marshy areas around the park.

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Date visited: 11/27/2021

This is a pretty nice park in the Westville section of New Haven. I was actually here back in May without the dogs. I walked around the duck pond area before an Umphrey's McGee concert at nearby Westville Music Bowl. This time, I returned with the dogs, and explored the whole park. There is a lot of variety here. We started on a standard wooded trail before it reached an open field (that was a bit muddy). We then hit the nature area and duck pond. We completed the loop on the paved trail that featured a graffiti laden bridge, before making it's way to the skate park and tennis courts (also graffiti laden). We walked a total of three miles here.

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Dates visited: 10/28/2022 & 10/29/2022

We visited the Wintergreen Lake section of this park in Hamden two years ago, but this time we checked out the main section of the park. We drove up and parked at the South Overlook, then walked a scenic trail to Judge's Cave. The cave was not that impressive, but we haven't encountered many caves in Connecticut, so it was something different. We continued on the trail, and climbed a bit to the point where the trail is on the portion of West Rock over Heroes Tunnel on the Wilbur Cross Parkway. The fall foliage was still nice here, so there were many photo opportunities along the way. We actually returned to the park the very next day. We were a couple towns over and it was a bright sunny day, so I decided to come back and take some more pictures at the South Overlook.

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Date visited: 5/2/2023

This park is split between New Haven and Hamden. The pictures below are from the New Haven section. You can read more about our visit on the Hamden page.

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Date visited: 8/19/2023

I once again randomly picked a place to visit without realizing a festival was taking place. There was a full blown concert happening when we arrived, and it was very crowded and loud. It was too loud for the dogs. Not only that, they constantly tried to eat random droppings off the ground. The festival was on the Chruch Street side, so it was less busy on the College Street section of the Green. We wakled around for a bit before continuing our walk through the nearby Yale Campus.

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Date visited: 8/19/2023

Since much of Yale's campus is on public streets, it's possible to walk through a great deal of it. We had actually been through a section of the campus two years ago when we walked the section of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail that goes through the campus. In fact, we took a very similar picture on the bridge over the trail last time. We mainly walked through the Hillhouse Avenue Historic District and the section near the Peabody Museum (currently closed) and Trumbull Street.

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Date visited: 5/11/2024

This is the area around Wooster Square Park, and Wooster Street in the Little Italy section of New Haven. The park is known for it's cherry blossoms, but we were a couple weeks too late for that. The area is also known for it's pizza. Two of the most famous pizza places in the country are here: Frank Pepe's and Sally Apizza. Even at noon, there were people waiting to get in. The smell of delicious pizza was making me hungry! We also visited a Farmer's Market that is held on Saturdays at New Light High School. We walked around some of the neighboring streets, passing the Union Street Dog Park. Union Street was lined with trash. There was garbage everywhere, but just a block away or so, everything was nice again. After that, we headed along the proposed path of the future extension of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail out to Long Wharf. This was a pretty interesting walk through a historic section of the city.

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