Hiking Sleeping Giant State Park in Connecticut
Sleeping Giant State Park is a pretty sweet place for a hike. I’ve got to say, even though this adventure was a lot more crowded/pricey than we were expected, it was well worth the trip!
Sleeping Giant State Park is located just north of New Haven, Connecticut next door neighbors with Quinnipiac University. Not going to lie, I am a bit jealous of the students at Quinnipiac being next to such fun hiking trails. I’m not jealous of the homework and studying though, they can have it!
DOG FRIENDLY
DOG FRIENDLYAs you can see in the picture above, Blaze was happy to accompany us on this adventure. Although this state park does allow you to take you four legged puppy friends with you, be aware that not all the hikes are really suitable for dogs.
I believe the blue trail does have some rock scrambling involved to get some of the cool cliff side views, thus you won’t see any of those pictures here. The main trail going up to the tower is also covered in varying sizes of gravel, just FYI if your pups doesn’t enjoy that (Blaze didn’t).
–> Sleeping Giant State Park Trail Map <–
Luckily this state park is COVERED with hiking trails and it is fairly well marked. I would highly suggest taking a map with you though as it can get confusing with all the trail intersections.
We ended up mostly taking the tower trail on the way up, but we did jump off to a few nature trails to give Blaze’s feet a rest from those pointy rocks. Like I said, there is definitely more than one way to reach the top of the tower as you can see from the map link I shared.
TOWER
TOWERAs of now we don’t have much advice to avoid all the people at the tower itself. 🙂 Obviously it is a really cool landmark at this state park and seems to act as a magnet attracting people…at least it worked on us!
Not to mention the amazing views you get from the top of the tower. Of course heading to the state park on a weekday rather than a weekend certainly would help. We headed to the state park on a Saturday so we had quite the competition sliding through the narrow entrance ramp to the top.
SWEET VIEWS
I ended up heading up to the top of the tower first to get some footage while Deanna took first shift with the Blaze dog. On each floor there is an observation area in case you want to avoid everyone packed at the top. The view is obviously the best at the top but it is kind of hard to complain once you get past the first floor. 🙂
PANORAMIC VIEWS
PANORAMIC VIEWSAfter I made it the top and got my panorama views soaked in and time-lapsed, it was Deanna’s turn to practice some of her amazing photography skills. 🙂 Does anyone else immediately think of Spiderman with that web like barrier in the window next to her? I never did any research on that, but it is a pretty cool design!
After we got done admiring the view at the top of the tower, we ended up taking the red triangle trail back towards the main entrance of the park. We did take a couple side nature trails as well to mix it up and we definitely recommend these if you want to avoid the crowds. Everyone seemed to primarily stick to the Tower Trail at least on the southern portion of the state park.
OTHER NEARBY HIKES
NOTE FROM WRITER
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Adventure On!
