Fit Dog Friday - Cool Places to Walk: Sikorsky Estuary Walk, Stratford, Connecticut

It's Fit Dog Friday!  

Fit Dog Friday is a blog hop hosted by my friends SlimDoggy, Peggy's Pet Place, and To Dog With Love.  Check out our hosts and the other bloggers in the hop (see below) for ideas, tips and inspiration for getting and keeping your pups fit and healthy.

Mom and I love to walk.  Whenever we travel, we try to find good places to walk.  So today we're starting a series on Cool Places to Walk.  Each week (or every other week, depending upon when my staff is available to assist me) I will tell you about a new place to walk.

Last weekend we went to the Wigglebutt Wedding in Stratford, Connecticut.  (More on the wedding coming soon.)  We all stayed at the Homewood Suites by Hilton Stratford (which was awesome, by the way - dog-friendly with a wonderful staff), which is very close to the Sikorsky Estuary Walk.  

Mom found the Sikorsky Estuary Walk when she was looking at the area on Google maps, but couldn't find much information about it other than a post from 2010 called Housatonic Greenway Takes Another Step.  We had some free time Saturday afternoon so we decided to check it out.  

The walk started out with dad being silly

Then the trail led under a big bridge

Luckily there were no trolls underneath the bridge

The trail came out on the other side of the bridge

Then looped around to a nice wide pathway on the bridge

The view from the bridge was very nice

That big red building is where they make helicopters

This is the Housatonic River

Obligatory pose for the camera

Found a STICK

Walking across the bridge

Looking for estuary creatures

We enjoyed the Sikorsky Estuary Walk.  It was fun to be able to walk across the bridge, and Mom and Dad enjoyed the view of the river and marshes.  Mom and Dad have a thing for bridges, and find it interesting to see how the Housatonic River was different from our rivers back home.  While I would have preferred a muddy trail with water access, pretty much any walk is a good one from my perspective.

To get there: The trail begins off of Main Street, just south of the Merritt Parkway.  We parked in the parking lot of the Ryder's Landing Shopping Center and walked across Ryder's Lane to the trail.  
Trail description: The trail is short (from the parking lot to the eastern end of the bridge and back was 2.2 miles), paved, and mostly level, with a slight incline going up to the bridge.  The path on the bridge is wide and separated from the traffic by a big concrete railing, so it's not so scary even though there's traffic whizzing by at 70 mph.  There is very little shade on this walk, so keep that in mind if it's a warm day.