Category: hiking

free activities · hiking

The Silver Sand beach in Milford

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The Silver Sand beach in Milford is about 20 – 30 minutes drive from New Haven. It is completely free, with free parking. It is beautiful and massive. The only catch is that you need to walk 15 minutes from the parking lot to the beach, giving you plenty of time to admire the massive marsh land and the numerous crabs under the bridge.

Besides the beach, you can also walk on the long trail near the beach that connects to the Walnut beach in milford. The beach is also connected to Charles Island. When the tide is low, you can even walk to it. But it is a bird preservative place, so you can’t go to the inner parts of the island except for on the offseason.

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free activities · hiking · park

Wadsworth Falls in Middletown

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This park is located in Middletown, and is not too far away from Lyman Orchards. So it is about half an hour drive from new haven.

It is a beautiful park for hiking, and for picking leaves in the fall.

It also has a waterfall. There is also a strange beach area. I think in the summer time, the rain accumulates into a swimming hole, in which we even found tadpoles. But the rest of the time it was just a giant sand box.

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free activities · hiking · park · Uncategorized

Edgerton park in new haven

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It is a very quiet park and usually only has a few people in the entire park. It’s located on Whitney avenue, almost cross the street from the hike entrance of the Easter Rock trial. It’s a quiet paradise that’s still so close to the city.

We first heard of the park in 2007, when my friend kindly gave us his ownership of a patch of land in the community garden. At the rear entrance of the park, there is half an acre land of community garden. So people living in apartments could still enjoy planting something and watching it grow. People plant amazing things there. Giant sunflowers that were 10-feet tall, beautiful flowers that I don’t know the names. And of course vegetables, like tomatoes, squashes, pumpkins. We rented the garden for two years till we moved farther away from the area.

If you go in from the rear entrance, you will pass the garden, then just lawns and trees. When you find your way towards the front entrance, you will see this humongous grass area with a long hill. It’s so large that it makes you feel so small.

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hiking · museum · paid places · park · playground

Stamford Museum and Nature Center

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Stamford Museum and Nature Center locates in Stamford, so it is a big of a drive, like 45 minutes from new haven without traffic. But it is such a fun place to spend a day with the kids. The admission is very affordable (adult $10, 4-17 yrs $5 as for 2017) and it is totally worth the price for a whole day of fun.

When you get in, you will first be amazed by what a giant park it is. You’ll first see the beautiful lake on the left side with ducks, geese and swans. On the right side, up the stairs, there is a giant castle, that used to belong to someone rich and now is a museum and kids can do crafting in it.

 

Keep walking down in the park, you will see some friendly otters, who really enjoys their meal time. Make a left turn, you might see turkey/chicken/unknown animal running around, away from the chasing kids. There are all softs of farm animals, pigs, goats, cows. Up on the hill, there are also horses!

 

In addition to the farm animals, there is also a vegetable garden and an indoor museum for snakes, frogs and turtles. The people who work there are super friendly. My 5 yrs asked so many questions and got so much fun!

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And there is more. If you walked straight after the lake, you will arrive at the one of the kind playground. It is mostly made of wood, and in the original wooden color. It takes advantage of being built on a hill and arranges in four levels! The top level has a big ‘bird nest’ for adventurous kids to go in and use it as a watch tower. The second level connects to a tower that goes up to the first level, and some slides to naturally go down to the third level, which is the ground level. Then below the ground level, hidden behind, there is a giant pirate ship! The playground is such a unique design and also so much fun.

 

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There is also a hiking trial around the area of the convenient store and playground. You can enjoy the quiet time listening to the little brook throughout the woods.

The center is like a combination of zoo, park and awesome playground. A great place to spend a day!

free activities · hiking · playground

Fort Hale Park at the east shore in new haven

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The Fort Hale Park is the park that is almost next to the East Shore Park that holds the Hannah’s Dream playground.

The playground has free parking. It is not under the shade. It is right next to a fishing pier that got destroyed in a hurricane, and was said would get fixed soon. The playground is tiny, with a tiny play-set, and only two swings.

However the two swings might be the best I have ever seen. The are tall, adult sized swing. And they face the ocean. When I push my kids up on the swings, they always shout that they were flying over the ocean! It is just so nice to swing high up facing the ocean feeling like you are flying.

You can take a small hike from the playground. It brings you on a little hill, around a small dog park. The top of the hill has fences. When you stand near the top of the hill, you can look down at the rocky beach watching the waves rushing on to the shore. At the end of the hike is another surprise. It is the Seewall park!

I can’t recall very well, maybe in the middle of the hike, you also pass a large green area that holds a very large pavilion. Behind the pavilion there is a secret patch of lawn that drops down from the ground level, and surrounded by bushes, a perfect picnic spot for us.

free activities · hiking · museum · park · playground

The Ansonia Nature Center

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I want to give my very first blog to the Ansonia Nature Center. We got to know this place in 2016 and we felt in love with it. Even though it’s not in the city of new haven, the drive to ansonia probably takes less than 20 minutes for most areas in new haven.

It has an awesome playground. It was built in 2016, and renovated in 2017 (in which they removed the cool hill slide). The playground is mostly made of wood, like a rise-up platform with wooden bridges connecting little chambers. It has a median sized tunnel slide, a cool spinning plate that can hold 5-6 kids, a sandbox, a tire swing. Kids from toddler to maybe 8 would have great fun here. It has several picnic tables and rows of benches to sit on. The only downside of the playground might be that the sandbox is the only place that is in the shade.

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Although not being in the shade is not a problem for the center, because it has a whole building for playing inside! The nature center itself as a full bathroom, which is such a plus for some pregnant moms who are not fans of porta potties. The center has several resident animals, a very cool-looking owl, a bunny, a genie pig, a bird, several snakes, turtles, fish, bees (in a safe hive) etc. Kids can just walk in (during the center hours) and admire the animals. The center also has a play room with stuffed animals, a puppet show frame, and X-ray pictures, an activity room with books and crafts. All the stuff, unless they are reserved for some events, you can just walk in and play!

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Let’s go back to the outside again. There is a little pond near the building, and once we saw many lazy turtles bathing under the sun. There is also a soccer field right next to the playground, which brought great entertainment for my kids’ birthday party in the pavilion right next to the field. (I was first disappointed that we couldn’t use the field, then I found out that the little kids rather watching the big kids play soccer).

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And all the fun is free! (except the birthday parties). What’s more, the center does a lot of kids activities throughout the year. It even has a summer camp. You should really check out the website, which is constantly updated with new activities. And the website itself is very respectable in the modern tech world.

I just realized I never really took good pictures of the playground itself. So I’ll come back with some pictures.

free activities · hiking

The Farmington Canal Trail – the vertical park

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I didn’t know about the Farmington Canal Trail at all even after 10 years living in New Haven. My husband recently discovered it because he was taking a walk around the doctor’s playground (waiting for the rest of the family to be done with the playground). Then he saw signs for going on the trail. He went on and walked a couple miles, and couldn’t wait to share the news with me.

The trail was built on abandoned railroads and canals. It can last for 84 miles and go all the way from New Haven to Northampton, MA! It is generally sized, with a width of 1-2 car’s width. It is nicely paved, with trees on both sides. So most of the trail is in the shade!

While in New Haven, the trail has to cross streets from time to time. Once it goes to Hamden, it goes long without any stopping. Since it was built upon used railroads and canals, the path goes through neighborhood, commercial district, farms, woods etc. On the section of the path that is parallel to Dixwell Ave, it is hard to believe, that right next to the busy street, there is such a peaceful oasis for people to enjoy the nature.

It’s a great place to walk, jog, and especially to bike! It doesn’t have bathrooms, but you can hop out from to nearby stores for bathrooms. It doesn’t seem to take up much space at all, because it is a long linear path. But it seems like infinite amount of space. It’s the vertical park.