We had one hour to spend in Saint John before we had to get back to Fredericton. It was a beautiful spring day and I had my two sons with me. I was itching to go on a small hike. This winter has lasted way too long. We could explore Fort Howe and check out the view of the City. We had been up there the night before but the fog was so thick you couldn’t even see the cars passing below. We could take a walk on the upper part of the Harbour Passage near the reversing falls. I wanted to check out the angles of the city looking under the bridge for some future night photography. We could go explore the Cedar Mazes at the Children’s Forest in the Irving Nature Park. I told the boys the options and from the title of this blog post you can probably guess what they picked.

Saint's Rest Marsh View
Saint’s Rest Marsh View
We parked along the road across from the snowed in parking lot overlooking the trail. We first looked around the parking lot for a trail leading down to the mazes. We quickly realized that the road accessing the mazes was not accessed directly from the parking lot. We walked up the road a short distance and started following the road down over the hill.

As we walked I enjoyed the warmth of the sun while the boys had fun breaking through the thin ice that had froze on the road the night before. We crossed a small bridge and passed a couple walking their dog. I had to convince the boys that the road would lead to the maze. They could see the maze through the trees and wanted to take a shortcut. After a sharp turn to the left the view’s opened up of Saint’s Rest Marsh below. The Peninsula that forms the main part of the park can be seen across the marsh. The trail is actually a gated road so we soon came to a parking lot and picnic table that were positioned to enjoy the views.

Fenced in Maze
Fenced in Maze
Shortly after the small parking area we came to the entrance to the large maze on the left. As we approached I could see that the maze was surrounded by a fence with a gate. I feared that the boys would rebel if we couldn’t get into the maze. We walked up to the gate and found it was locked. After the boys made a few failed attempts at climbing the gate I convinced them that we could come back in the summer, and that they might have more fun at the playground we could see through the trees.

After the boys tried out everything at the playground I told them we were running out of time. They came quickly, not because they are well disciplined, but because the reason we had to get back to Fredericton was to see the new Muppet Movie. We checked out the other maze across the road and realized it was more protected than the first. We continued on the road and finally came to the pavement. My sons were a bit dismayed that we would have to walk up the long hill to get back to the car. It seems that the winter has been hard on them and that I will have to get them out exercising more. Once again I used the Muppet Movie to keep them focused.

Maze View
Maze View
After climbing the hill you could see the mazes from above. Once back to the car we quickly got in and were off to the movies. We would definitely have to come back in the summer when we could bring the whole family and get them lost in the mazes. I won’t tell them that you can cheat by looking at the mazes from above on Google Maps.

One thought on “The Children’s Forest Trail

  1. hi my name is jennifer london me and my children were playing at the children’s forest playground and we love going the kids always wanna go to that park they perfer that park over any other in the west side area but while we were there we found that a piece was missing off the round climbing thing to lead up to the slides

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