Dinosaur Trail – Allaire State Park – Wall Township, NJ

Dinosaur Trail – Allaire State Park – Wall Township, Monmouth County, NJ
Distance – 0.75 out and back or 1.2 mile loop
Type – Out-and-back or loop, part of a larger web of trails
Difficulty: 1 of 10 (out-and-back) or 3 of 10 (loop)

NOTE – As of October 2022, many of the dinosaurs have, sadly, been destroyed. There is still some magic in the woods here, but it’s much diminished from the pictures from our first visit.

Website – Allaire State Park Website or ExploreAllaire
Open – Park closes at 8 p.m. Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day weekend; 6 p.m. after Labor Day; 4:30 p.m. in November; 6 p.m. in March.

Terrain – Woods with some mountain biking hills
Surface – dirt

Trailheads – N 40° 08.030 W 074° 07.335

The easy, direct route goes through this gate.

Directions – Allenwood-Lakewood Road, Wall Township, NJ

Parking – Roadside parking, make sure to stay off of the roadway.

Look for the group campground sign and park along the road near it, but don’t block the driveway to the campground

Dog friendly? Trails are all dog friendly, but dogs are not allowed inside the buildings in the historic buildings
Stroller friendly? If you take the out-and-back, an offroad stroller should make it
Benches? Some benches by the dinosaurs
Facilities?: Facilities by the village, but none on this side of the park

Markings – Trail is mostly unblazed
Map –

Map from https://www.exploringallaire.com/ – brought to you by our friends at getoutsidenj

Our trek

For more info, definately check out the Exploring Allaire website, brought to you by our friends at GetOutsideNJ!

Description –

Well, 2020 was something something. To finish it off right, we FINALLY went to check the only place in New Jersey where you can hike to dinosaurs – Allaire State Park.

Now we’ve been to Allaire before (actually, I’d walked these trails before when the Scouts have camped out at the Group Campsite), but back in 2019, a local artist began to construct things out in the woods. At first, it was just huts. But then, she began to create dinosaurs! The site is a work in progress, with the most recent addition (the Stegosaurus) being completed in October 2020.

So the whole clan was off! We drove up, found the parking area (helped that I’d camped here before), and away we went.

Look for the group campground sign and park along the road near it, but don’t block the driveway to the campground

Now there are three main options to get to the dinosaurs, as laid out on the map above that we found at ExploreAllaire. There is the easy, mostly direct out and back route, coviently called “Easy Path”. We opted not to use this one.

There was the longer loop that is paved most of the way through the campsite, labeled “Alt Path 2”. We also decided against this one.

Instead, we took “Alt Path”. To start, we walked up the paved roadway into the camp and made the right turn to head down the trail.

In a short time, the trail made a left turn. Kite Flyer got their first, good job kid.

The trail over here is mostly unmarked bike trails. There are no blazes and the trails roughly follow the map, although there are some alternate paths. I was wearing the Big Fella, so opted for the most level trails possible, while the other kids ran in and out and up and around the hills, bike obstacles, and ravines.

The trail then climbed a small hill toward a promising looking patch of forest. There was some stealth mud here, and someone fell over (it was me) and got muddy. The Big Fella thought this was hiliarious, and is now grounded.

We began to see some promising forests, and the kids headed into them. They quickly discovered some of the lean-to huts , which they had to check out.

The Big Fella was after bigger things though… he wanted dinosaurs!

So we didn’t actually see this sign first, but we’ll pretend that we did because it makes us look more organized…

Suddenly…

We made it!

The five dinosaurs, decked out in their holiday finery, as spread out over a relatively small patch of woods.

Now, I’m not much of an art guy, but these dinosaurs are incrediably well made, and I can promise that these pictures don’t do them justice.

But this also has to be one of the most popular trails in the state right now, because an army of families decended on the area after we’d been there about ten minutes. So it was time to head back. We took the “Easy Path” part of the loop back, stopping for our last balloon of 2020 (somewhere around 40 for the year, I need to keep better track next year!).