Great walk on well maintained path

As the summer approaches and I start to worry about ticks, I’ll be revisiting this trail a lot. Because it is a former fire road it’s plenty wide without much overgrown foliage, so I don’t worry as much about my dog picking up little passengers.

Also, the fire road has two convenient stations for disposing of dog waste, which I appreciated a lot—I haven’t seen that in other parks on LI.

May. 28, 2021

Excellent Trail, social distancing can be a challenge

This was a beautiful 6-mile walk around the Pond. The trails were cut back and clearly well-maintained. Although the trails are shared with horses, the manure was not out of control. Massive flock of swans in the pond.

However, despite the very aggressive COVID-19 signage throughout the park warning visitors to keep 6FT apart, there are parts on the trail where this is physically impossible—a narrow raised path winds through some wetlands near the south of the pond, and it's only about 3FT wide. About half of the people I saw wore masks.

For me, though, my Collie mix can get very excited around other dogs, so that stretch of wetlands was less a concern because of a pandemic than the challenge of negotiating around other dog walkers in such a tight space—there is quite a sharp drop off the sides.

Apr. 27, 2021

Nice quiet trails, variable length hike

I was apprehensive from the reviews below but on a Friday morning in spring, the horse poop situation was not that bad.

The trails are not terribly well marked—adequately, at best—but there are some trails in the woods that the horses are not permitted on, and these are generally pretty clear of manure. (These tend to be the narrower, winding paths, rather than the flat, wider trails. I also think most of the trail marked with the white trailheads was horse-free from where I picked it up on Reservoir, but not all of it.)

Because there are so many different short trails that cross through the park, you can really customize the length of your walk by making a loop. I parked near the trailhead on Reservoir Rd and made a loop of about 3mi, but it easily could have been a lot longer or shorter.

My cell signal was in and out, but I was generally able to navigate by Google Maps, which helped a lot, since the trails were not always well marked.

Apr. 23, 2021