Neshaminy State Park

Elite '09

24

109

alexis g.

Philadelphia, PA

3/21/2008

If you're looking for actual hiking and a semi-wilderness experience, this park is a little underwhelming.  Parking lots and various other paved surfaces seem to outnumber plants when you pull up.  Fortunately, once you walk past the playground, crappy-state-park-y bathrooms, random signposts etc. on the main (paved) path from the parking areas, you reach the Delaware river, where the grassy riverbank area is fairly well preserved (and great for playing fetch if there's no one around to ding you for having your dog off-leash in a state park.. not that I would ever do that).  This was another park found on our dog-hiking quest and one of the selling points was being able to walk along the river.  As promised by the dog-hiking website, there were lots of river views and a good portion of the trail area ran along the bank of the river.  There isn't any elevation to speak of, so I suppose it's a little disingenuous to toss this in with "hiking," but it seems even more inappropriate to toss it in with "parks," when that category is shared by Rittenhouse and Washington Square...

Anyway, the other big selling point was the intersection of river and saltwater habitats.  I can't speak to that specifically, but there is a large sand dune area that's well away from the more "developed" part of the park and so a little more off-leash friendly.  I don't know what it is, but there's something that a dog loves about being able to bound through sand, getting her nose all covered with grit and tossing dust all over the place.  Neshaminy isn't that far away and little dog really seemed to love it, so we may make a return trip or two (and it's called Neshaminy.. which, face it, is just really fun to say).

Most of the trail area was sort of wooded and forest-y -- basically what you would expect of a river-bank environment.  As such there are TONS of great throwing sticks and again, not that I would ever let my dog off leash in state park territory, if you did want to let your dog off leash and play some fetch you'll have plenty of tossing material.  

I mention the state park off-leash standard, but I will also say this: ranger-who-shall-not-be-named sort of gave us the wink wink on the off leash thing as far as s/he was concerned.  S/he didn't speak for the other rangers, but we got the impression that as long as you're not around people who will complain/are annoyed by your dog's doggy antics, you probably won't be cited.

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