Date visited: 2/21/2022

I wanted to come here when I was making my first run through all the towns, but the All-Trails app tagged the trail as "No Dogs". The other issue preventing me from visiting is the parking situation. Evidently, it costs $30-$40 to park if you're not a Bridgeport resident. I happened to see some reviews of this place on other sites which indicated it is a good place to walk your dog. In fact, the "trail", which is just a sidewalk that runs along side the beach for 2 1/2 miles, is dog friendly as they even have a few poop bag dispensers. As for the parking situation, we simply parked on one of the nearby streets that go through the University of Bridgeport campus. The park seems nice. Besides the beach, there is a grassy area with picnic tables and athletic fields, and a lot of statues and monuments, including a statue of P.T. Barnum. I knew he was famous for the circus, but I did not know that he was once mayor of Bridgeport! It was another unusually warm February day, so it was a great day to go for a walk by the beach!

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Date visited: 3/6/2021

This is a nice park in the Northwest corner of Bridgeport near the Fairfield border. I believe there is a frisbee golf course here as well. I did get a picture of the dogs on a bridge in Bridgeport, but somewhow I don't think this bridge was what Bridgeport was named after. There was a couple stream crossings that didn't have bridges and we had to cross on the rocks. Easy for me, but the dogs always seem to want to just go through the brook instead of walking on the rocks.

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Date visited: 12/2/2022

Someone's review of the trail on the All-Trails app describes it as "urban decay", and it's a perfect description. The beach has a long history of alternating eras of revitalization and decay. The placards around the dock area describe the history of the beach, from 1892 when Bridgeport "annexed" Pleasure Beach Island from the borough of West Stratford, to 2014 when the beach re-opened for the first time since 1983. There is a long history of fires at the beach, and one in 1996 burned down the wooden bridge that connected the beach to mainland Bridgeport. Now, there are two water taxis that bring visitors to and from the beach during the beach season. It can also be accessed by the trail from Long Beach in Stratford, which is how we got there. The park area surrounding the beach is pretty run down. It's not really scenic at all. Despite the apocalyptic scenery, we saw a pack of beautiful deer just outside of the boardwalk that leads to the actual beach. The actual beach area itself is nice enough, and we walked the length of it to get back to the trail in Stratford.

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Date visited: 12/17/2022

This park is well known for the zoo that is attached to the park. Obviously, I couldn't take the dogs to the zoo, so we settled for the park. The Pequonnock Greenway traverses the length of the park. The original plan was to walk the Greenway to the point where we left of in Trumbull. First issue was the parking area off Trumbull Road was closed, so we had to start at the park itself. A town permit is required to park in the park, so we had to park on a street outside the park. I don't love leaving my car on a street in Bridgeport, but it was fine. The second issue was part of the trail in Beardsley Park was closed for construction (though easy to get around). The main problem was that the All Trails app had indicated that the "out and back" trail was 4.1 miles total, but we were already over 2 miles at the half way point. While we walked some of the trail in Trumbull, I decided to turn back and just loop the park instead. At one point we crossed a bridge over an access road, only to encounter a chain link fence, so we had to turn around and loop back to the trail anyway. This park wasn't that scenic. I know it's not a scenic time of year, but it doesn't seem like the park would be much nicer even when the weather is better. It was an okay 4+ mile walk on a sunny and brisk December day, but the park is not really worth going out of the way to visit.

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