Milton L Burns Park

Not so nice of a park off Main St in Riverhead. The trails go along the Peconic river. The park itself is not well maintained, polluted and a bit run down unfortunately. Sadly, there were also some homeless people hanging around. I certainly wouldn’t want to walk past or through this park after dark and can not recommend it to anyone. Such a shame because the views of the river are beautiful.

I used to spend a good portion of my childhood here, or so I tried to convince my mother after my return the other day. The revamp is pretty glorious, with wood carvings, benches, checkers & chess tables, various entrances and exits, a bandshell/​platform of sorts, and an «old mill house» containing a downed lightpost (yes, it’s exactly as charming as it sounds). There was — and apparently still will be — a paddleboat running starting in spring, but for now it’s barricaded off pretty nicely. That didn’t stop me, luckily, from walking from the traffic circle entrance through to the back of the bank, cutting the distance and congestion of my walk back to my car near Spicy’s from the riverfront area behind Main St.
I really have no idea why Unilocal arbitrarily assigned Stotzky Park as its address — they tend to do that with LI spots — but it’s located near the (better) traffic circle between the Vail & Peconic Paddler.