My partner and I had a lovely hike here on Washington Trails Day and managed to do 7.3 miles, even with a 2.5 hour late start (whoops).
The trail on Goose Rock is great coming up from Highway 20, with quick payoffs and lots of views. Coming down it's much steeper; a group of folks in front of us was having trouble negotiating the trail in places, I think because their shoes didn't have lugs.
The rhodies were blooming, too, which I was so excited for. We stopped to enjoy them and give the group in front of us a little time to get down the hill before continuing on.
Crossed the bridge on the sidewalk, which was crowded with people out enjoying the SP. Walked down to Rosario Head and enjoyed a little loop there...pretty unremarkable in terms of trail condition, but again, plenty to see and a really nice close-up view of the water, which was really moving (I think the tide was coming in).
We'd originally intended to go see the trails on the north side of the cove Rosario Head encloses but there's a washout blocking hikers from accessing it, so instead we just headed straight to Pass Lake via the connector trail just under Hwy 20. That trail is more rolling than I expected, with small climbs and descents.
Pass Lake had just a handful of people parking in the lot and as far as I could tell no one on trail with us. I loved this section, and wish we'd been able to do the whole thing but we had planned to see a friend's show at the Muse in Conway, and we needed to get back and get food beforehand, so we turned around at the far end of the loop before you can head up the hill or continue straight on the Ginette Lake trail. It was fun to see an intersection that I've done trail work on though, and to finally see how that part of the state park's trails connect in with the rest of them.
Unremarkable hike back, except to say the PNT stretches farther than we realized and we were happy to be able to stay on trail for much more of the return hike; we only had to walk maybe 100 yards from where the PNT links back into the highway before we got on the protected sidewalk on the bridge.
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