Winnekenni Park
Castle Road
Haverhill MA, 01830
Date/Time Visited: Friday, July 30, 2021 at 11:00 am
Bathrooms: Public bathrooms available
Parking: Plenty of parking
Shade: Limited
Benches/Tables: 4 benches and 3 picnic tables
Additional Features: Trails and tennis court
Winnekenni Park is located off of Kenoza Ave in Haverhill. This park is a conservation area which is over 700 acres. It is a nice location on Kenoza Lake with lots of open space and benches. In reading about the park, I learned its name comes from the Algonquin dialect and means "very beautiful" which is definitely true.
There is plenty of parking available just a short walk from the playground. There is a parking area to the right of the main entrance and you can also park on the road after the entrance. There’s another parking area further from the playground which is closer to the walking trails.
Right by the parking area is a building that has public bathrooms. There are also tennis courts located right by this building.
The playground here is one of the smaller playgrounds we have been to. There is one play structure, with a double slide and a tunnel slide. There is a bridge the kids can walk over and a few different stairs to get up to the structure. The bridge moves as you walk on it; my daughter was scared of it at first but quickly got comfortable with it.
There are some educational pieces like a clock and a tic-tac-toe game that are attached to the structure. The playground isn’t fenced in, but there is a guard rail at the edge of the property near the street.
There isn’t shade on the play structure but the play structure itself has a couple covered areas that provide shade. There are also lots of benches and picnic tables around the playground and a couple of those were shaded by the trees at the time we were there.
The swing set is one of the bigger swing sets we have come across. It has 8 big kid swings and 2 baby swings. It is right in front of the water, so it is a really nice view. Both the swing set and the play structure have wood chips under them.
I think this playground is geared more towards younger kids. My daughter is almost 5 and she lost interest in the playground after about twenty minutes. We weren’t ready to go home yet so we decided to check out some of the walking trails.
There are a few different trails around the property. We wandered around the trails and ended up walking a little over a mile. We learned afterward that there’s a map of the trails on the bathroom building. It definitely would have been helpful to have taken a picture of this so we could have known where we were going. Luckily, the trails we were on were pretty easy and family friendly as we were all in sandals since we weren’t planning on walking the trails today.
The historical Winnekenni Castle is on the property. Due to Covid, the castle is currently closed but we still enjoyed looking at it. The castle is up on a hill, so we decided to drive up to see it as there is a road that leads right to it. I was glad for this option after our walk on the trails.
Lots of people were at the park today and walking the trails. We saw people mountain biking and running with their dogs. Everywhere we explored today was clean. It’s a very inviting area and would be a great spot to have a picnic either at one of their tables or on a blanket by the water. We will definitely come back to this park and next time we come, I’m going to have everyone wear sneakers so we can better explore the trails.
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