For a quick but deep escape from the grind, you can’t do better than Madison’s Hammonasset Beach State Park. Of the park’s many attractions—the campsites, the boardwalk, the nature center, the salt marsh—the popular headliner is the two-mile westerly beach, where the sand seems impossibly fine for Connecticut’s scratchy coast.
But just to the east, past a thicketed bluff and the Hammonasset Point overlook, lies a more interesting asset: a “boulder lag beach,” where large rocks congregate like walruses and waves of pink-orange shells break with a crunch underfoot.
Here’s the thing, though: there aren’t that many feet walking this beach. At least there weren’t on a moody early spring afternoon, when a plush gray sky gradually glowed amber, then finally revealed its ember heart to an admirer below.
Hammonasset Beach State Park
1288 Boston Post Road, Madison (map)
Daily 8am to sunset; free for residents with valid CT license plates
(203) 245-2785
www.ctparks.com/parks/hammonasset-beach-state-park
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. This updated story was originally published on April 10, 2019.
