Favorite Walks/Hikes to enjoy spring (Boston, Lynn: live, law, safe)

[charolastra00]

Coming out of what felt like the longest winter in history, many of us are itching to get outside! I've never been much of a hiker - or athlete of any kind - but I'm trying to become the type of person who enjoys it! I'm trying to hop off of the elliptical and out onto some trails - though I'm still not up for intense hiking until I'm a little more fit because it just doesn't feel fun. Where are your favorite places to go? Anywhere in Mass!

Minuteman National Park has long been a favorite of mine. Free, plentiful parking, lots of places to hop on the trail, comfortable packed dirt, and it always feels safe to walk alone as a young woman. Not to mention bathrooms every few miles!

The Fells Reservation - especially on the Malden side of 93 - has lots of easy hikes. You are never too far from a street if you get lost, but far enough away that you don't feel like you're only 10 miles from Boston.

Today I hiked around the sand dunes at Crane's Beach in Ipswich. It's my favorite beach and one of my favorite places in the world, but I didn't fully anticipate how hard walking on sand - especially uphill! - would be nor how early the rain would come. You can also walk around Crane's Castle as part of your admissions fee which I had planned to do but after only 4 miles and 2 hours (of which my pedometer registered that I had walked almost 10 miles based on slip-sliding on the dunes), I was soaking wet and packing it in to go home.

How are you getting outside this spring? Where are your favorite places to get away from it all?

[SalamanderSmile]

When we lived in Waltham we routinely did the trails at Stonehurst, Prospect Hill park and Cat Rock Park in Weston.

[in_newengland]

Ipswich--Strawberry Hill where you can see bluebirds.

[missionhill]

If you like Minuteman there's a lot more to explore in Lincoln - Concord - Carlisle. All three have great town-maintained trail networks. Lincoln's trails pass through woodland, pastures and farmland so they're more pastoral than the rugged woodlands in the Middlesex Fells, Blue Hills, and similar reservations (namely Breakheart, Stony Brook, and Lynn Woods). Concord has the Great Meadows wildlife refuge and Estabrook Woods in addition to town trails, and Carlisle has Great Brook Farm state park. I also like Mass Audubon's Broadmoor sanctuary in South Natick and nearby Elm Bank reservation.

Personal favorites in Eastern Mass are the Arnold Arboretum and Worlds End reservation, both laid out by the 19th century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Maudslay in Newburyport is supposed to be very nice, and full of laurel and/or rhododendron which will be out pretty soon. I also like Borderlands in Sharon/Easton, a former estate where the owners created a landscape of lakes, fields and woodlands (the name refers to the ancient border between the Plymouth colony and the Massachusetts Bay colony).

[KellyCrash]

We love to hike through Purgatory in Sutton. It looks really intimidating to hike through the Chasm, but it's not that bad. We've done it with kids. Heck, the husband has hiked it with a kid on his shoulders. If you take it slow and easy it's not a big deal. There are also trails around the park that are easier.

Purgatory Chasm State Reservation