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| Hempstead Harbor Shoreline Trail, NY | | -
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| | Hempstead Harbor Shoreline Trail, NY | | | |
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Hempstead Harbor Shoreline Trail, NY
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| Hiking | 5.00 Miles |
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| | Hiking | 5.00 Miles | 3 Hrs | | 1.67 mph |
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none
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| no linked trail guides |
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| no partners | | I found this to be a nice, serene trail. Or more like nice walkway. The Hempstead Harbor Shore Trail consists not of a rugged or dirt trail, but stone and wood chip covered paths, measuring about three feet wide, weaving through a pleasant forest. Pleasant, peaceful in the early dawn, with thick deep green vegetation and nice shade. As the trail does border a body of water, as one goes along the main sections periodic views of the shore break through the forest, nicely framed by the leaves and branches of the vegetation. But don’t despair getting a full view of the bay; the trail features several strategic spurs out of the forest into the open estuary fringing Hempstead Bay. Here, the cover of green vegetation transforms to sunrises over the water, flowing expanses of grasses rising from the bay waters, and intriguing remnants of what appears in a former time to be piers jutting into a harbor. These spurs feature at their water's end decks built fairly seamlessly into the landscape; but one can skirt around the decks and venture onto small sand beaches. Note all the piers have been abandoned. And at the northern end of the main section, the trail offers a few active peers, onto which one can walk for wide views, or of which one can picture or include in a photo.
And then the birds and water fowl. I sense the trail sits in some type of wildlife preserve, as numerous birds of various types are visible all along, and platforms and posts appeared here and there that look like intentionally placed as places for bird nests.
A small note on parking. This trail runs south from a larger beach, athletic field complex and general park, with a large, but not overwhelming, parking lot for users of those facilities (collectively called Bar Beach). But the parking opens at 9 AM, and at my visit in summer required one to be a resident of the local town. I can kind of get that, the people of the local town support through taxes the running and maintenance of Bar Beach. Absent a time limit and residence requirement, one can readily imagine visitors from outside the town filling up the parking lot and thus denying the locals use of the park they support. So, to get to the Shore Trail at sunrise, I parked at a municipal lot in a quaint shopping area in a town about a mile south. The lot had a fee and a three hour limit, but no fee or limit on Sunday. And essentially empty at sunrise on the Sunday of my trip, actually two trips, only one with a route guide. That route guide starts and ends at the parking. |
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