4th of July Weekend Adventure: Lion's Head Salisbury, CT

Above:

 July 5th 8:30pm

Stonington Borough, CT

Below:

 July 6th 5:30am

Lion's Head, Salisbury, CT

I had this brilliant idea of wanting to see a sunset and then the sunrise next morning.  The location we chose for the sunrise was the Lion's Head trail in Salisbury, CT.  That meant a night hike for us; my first one.  We caught the sunset on the ocean near our house and got maybe an hour of sleep and then headed out at 1am to travel the 2.5 hours to begin our night hike.

We started our hike around 3:30am, armed with glow sticks on our packs, one head lamp and one flashlight.  We got lost once at the start of the trail, not knowing where it started and overshot our lookout by a quarter of a mile but we got to our sunrise location at 4:30am.  Plenty of time for Ryan to make us some coffee and oatmeal with his stove.  I had really no idea what surrounded me when hiking at night; no idea how far up I was or where the trail was meandering through.

We settled in for an hour waiting for the sunrise while eating our oatmeal and drinking our coffee.

I caught some dragonflies in this picture!  The bugs were bad, bring repellent.

Fog was rolling through from the river in the valley below.

Lion's Head elevation is 1738 although we only climbed a little over 500 feet.

On the way down we enjoyed the scenery in the daylight.

Here is a little info about the Lion's Head trail since I scoured the Internet before we went and didn't find much info.

This info here will get you to the hiking parking lot but you don't have to walk down the road to hop on the trail.  The trail now leaves directly from the parking lot.

The hike is approximately one mile up and one mile down, making the total round-trip hike 2 miles.  The trail intersects with the application trail. The first trail you intersect with, go straight.  The second trail you intersect with go right (follow the blue markers).   At the very end you have a choice to go straight up and scramble up some rocks or go left on the blue trail to go around and back track to the views.  When you get to the top you can't see the view go to the right down a little path and it will open up to the view.  The trail is fairly easy to moderate.  It's only a mile each way but there is some elevation climbing.

It is a perfect hike for a sunrise!

We were back to our car at 6:30am and drove home to sleep.

xo

Erin

See more CT hiking here.