Cape May Nature Trails – Cape May, NJ

Cape May Nature Trails – Cape May, Cape May County, NJ
Distance – 0.5 miles total
Type – loop
Difficulty: 2 of 10

Website – https://www.capemaycity.com/
Open – Sunrise to Sunset.

Terrain – wetlands and a bit of forest
Surface – paved or boards

Trailheads – N 38° 56.255 W 074° 55.250 (I think! Google Earth hasn’t updated their satellite imagery yet)Directions – Lafayette Street Park, 711 Lafayette St, Cape May, NJ

Parking – Large dirt lot… is this permanent? Not sure!

Dog friendly? “Dogs are not permitted on the nature trails at any time”. Sorry doggo readers… wait, I mean “arf bark bark yip arf”

Stroller friendly? Yes!
Benches? Plenty of benches. So many benches.

Facilities?: Trash cans, bike rack. There’s a port-a-potty located a short walk away by the playground. Need to walk out to the street and down the sidewalk to get there.

Rules –

Markings – Trail is not marked, but very easy to follow. If you find yourself next to to under a boardwalk with wet or muddy feet, they you have gone off the trail.
Map –

Description –

Cape May unveiled this brand new nature trail in mid-June of 2025. It’s a 0.44 mile loop (0.5 once we walked to and from our car) over a marsh. Cape May already has a lot of nice hiking, so another boardwalks trail sounds good to us!

Unfortunately, I’m not driving down the shore over the summer very often, so it took me all the way until November to get here. But Teacher Convention weekend, I made a beeline from the convention in Atlantic City down to Cape May to squeeze in some hiking too!

I started at the “I’m not sure if it’s permanent or just for construction” dirt parking lot. I walked up the paved sidewalk to the official trailhead.

The trail itself is part paved sidewalk and part boardwalk. I opted for the boardwalk, of course, putting up my hood and tightening it down a bit to help with the wind (and to keep my hat from taking off across the marsh). The boardwalk exits the tree line and heads over the marshland.

Will always stop for trees. This is why I don’t have a blog that routinely knocks out 25 mile hikes.

More trees! Pretty bare of leaves even by early November.

Now this is the part where’d I’d usually scratch my head through the bazillion bird species that I can’t identify. But a wind that is trying to take my hat off is also a wind that is keeping most birds nestled up somewhere safe from the wind. Regardless, it’s a pretty walk out over the wetlands, even without the birds.

There are a few observation decks along the way. And I didn’t even need a quarter to see through viewers!

But the wind was winding pretty good, so I didn’t stop for too long looking for hiding birds. Onward!

There were some good mud flats, which you can peer down at to check out who has been coming around to scope out the marsh.

But the wind was still winding, so I could only stay for so long. Onward toward the end of the boardwalk and the protection of the treeline.

Back in the treeline, I could take my hood off and go even slower than I had been (which was pretty slow… it’s a boardwalk!). The trail loops back around to the beginning of the boardwalk, with a split to go to the school building, which you should not take.