Easy 4.6 loop in Cheesequake State Park using the Yellow, Red and Green trails.
Headed over to Cheesequake for a quick President’s Day hike.
It was quite windy at first so it was COLD, but about half-way through we started warming up enough to be removing gloves.
We go to this park a lot and tend to always go the same direction, so this time we did some trails in reverse to get a different perspective, ending up with a figure-8 hike.
Miles: 4.6
Route: YELLOW – RED – GREEN (see description above)
Park info on our main Cheesequake Green Trail page.
The park had gotten a decent amount of snow but its was 95% gone, with only a few compacted patches of icy snow in a few shady spots.
We took YELLOW to Hooks Creek Lake but decided against going on the unmarked trail around the lake because the breeze over the lake was pretty crisp, instead walking along the lake over to the crabbing bridge across from the playground.
After the bridge, we followed Perrine Rd. to the BLUE trail junction, but that was still closed off in both directions so we continued on Perrine instead.
At the junction with RED/GREEN, we always take GREEN here and hadn’t taken RED in ages… so RED it was.
[RED/GREEN are on both sides of the road here, so turn right off the road, but then left immediately to take RED. On the other side of the road the RED/GREEN are combined.]
RED crosses over another park road shortly, then ends up on Perrine near the campground. We turned right onto the park road and followed it past the old GREEN trail to the new, turning RIGHT onto the new section of GREEN. This drops down and goes over a plank bridge.
We followed GREEN the rest of the way back. There is a reroute around the cedar swamp area on GREEN that is a little tough to spot.
A variation of this hike (and some info on the reroute) can be found on our Cheesequake State Park – Green Trail page.