Stone Bridge

Stone Bridge

The Skinny

A nice, easy hike for kids that ends at an old stone bridge over Stony Brook, a lovely spot for a picnic lunch.

To the Stone Bridge and back is 1.5 easy miles. It took us about 45 minutes of walking time with a 3, 5 and 7 year old in tow and was a short enough walk that they happily walked the whole time (more or less).

Map

(see topo in a separate page)

The Play-by-Play

As you start in on the trail, you see the old town dump off to your right, otherwise known as Blue Bird Hill.

Bluebird Hill (the old town dump)

Along the woods as you pass Blue Bird Hill, you can find some raspberries growing — only a few were ready when we were there.

From there, you find yourself walking on an old railroad path, with steep drops on either side leading to wetlands.

The wide-open trail made for super-easy walking and running with kids going back and forth happily (and stopping to pose by the occasional birch).

After not-too-long-at-all, we arrived at the old Stone Bridge, a lovely spot to take in the beauty of Stony Brook and a picnic lunch.

Judging from the graffiti and the litter (not photographed), it's also a popular spot with area youth: if you think of it, I recommend bringing along an extra trash bag for some clean-up while you're there (we filled up all our lunch containers with trash before heading home).

The side of the bridge offers some graduated stone steps that are fun to climb and play on. The kids enjoyed the graduated challenge of climbing up to succesively higher steps of the bridge.

On the way back, we took the side trail through the Russell Bird Sanctuary, which allows you to climb up an esker, and included some fun balance beams.

Also, I'm guessing if your kids don't loudly climb eskers and play on balance beams, you can probably do some bird-watching here.

Climbing an esker

Balance-beam walking

Review

	Prettiness	Difficulty	Fun	The Best Part
Lila (3)	2	4	3	Rock climbing was the most fun
Clara (5)	"Really pretty"	3	4	Climbing on the rocks
Grace (7)	3	2	4	The funnest part was rock climbing
Katharine (35)	4	1	4	Scrambling on the bridge
Tom (36)	3	1	3	Going from fields to woods to wetlands and back again.

The Data

Open walking data in a separate link.