Beverly Triton Nature Park
A few weeks ago I finally bought the Anne Arundel County parks pass that gets us free admission to five parks in the county. In the last five years we have been to Kinder Farm and Quiet Waters Parks, both on the pass, many times but have always paid the daily entry fee. This Saturday we had a free morning so I thought, why not try a park on the pass that we haven’t been to yet - which brought us to Beverly Triton Nature Park.
This park has so much to explore! We spent three hours there and could easily go back and do more (especially with a packed lunch). I had heard from friends that there was a beach on the Chesapeake Bay there so I put the kids in bathing suits and shorts so that we would be prepared when we got to the beach, but I didn’t want to spend our whole time there. When we got to the park, I parked in the first small parking lot and we took the Trident Trail path that is marked as a yellow trail on the map. It’s a flat dirt trail through the woods that is about 3/4 of a mile long - perfect for little legs. Along the water, the Trident Trail merges with the Beach Trail and you get to listen to the water while walking on cool boardwalk paths through the woods. This trail ended at a beach entrance but before going there, we walked up to a big bathroom facility and then over to a small play area. I wouldn’t really call it a playground in the traditional sense but it had fun nature-inspired climbing structures that my kids loved. There was a large covered area with picnic tables next to the play area and a fairy garden on the other side. Next time I will bring lunch so we can eat there. Once we finished in the fairy garden, I grabbed our beach bag (the original parking lot was just ahead of the fairy garden so we ended up doing a small loop from our original entrance to the end) and we headed down to the beach.
One of the wildest things about this whole morning was that the park was virtually empty. It was an 80 degree Saturday in September - probably one of the last really warm days we’ll have - so I expected it to be packed. But you can see from our pictures we barely saw any other people there the whole morning. There were a few dog walkers and a couple taking pictures (such a great family photo spot!) but otherwise we had the whole park to ourselves. That is, until around noon when water snakes started popping up all along the shoreline. I know that water snakes like to live in the barrier rocks along the Bay beaches but it was wild to watch so many of them pop their heads out of the water as it got closer to noon. Maybe they were excited to warm up in that midday sun? I don’t know for sure, but definitely just something to be aware of.
Go check out Beverly Triton Nature Park - you’ll get time in the woods, time on the beach, and maybe even time with 5-10 snakes!
