Arundel's Trail Challenge Only Works If You Leave Arundel
September 3, 2026
September 3, 2026
How many trails does a town need to keep a kid outside all summer? If you live in Arundel, the honest answer is not enough on its own. That is not a knock on the place. It is the whole design of the Tommy McNamara Trail Challenge, the code-word hike currently running through three towns, and it closes in exactly one week.
The challenge asks kids in grades one through eight to visit trailheads across Arundel, Kennebunkport, and Kennebunk, find a small sign with a hidden code word, and log it in a nature journal. Miss the September 7 cutoff and the journal stays half full. Finish it, and there is a celebration waiting at Emmons Preserve on September 13, complete with a custom Klean Kanteen water bottle for every kid who made the cut.
Here is the detail that turns this from a nice summer activity into something worth understanding about where you live. The three organizations running the challenge, the Arundel Conservation Trust, the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust, and the Kennebunk Land Trust, have listed 16 qualifying trails between them. To finish, a family needs to log at least 10.
Arundel's own contribution to that list is four trails:
Four trails against a ten-trail requirement means the math simply does not close inside town lines. A family that only ever hikes in Arundel cannot finish this challenge. They have to drive into Kennebunkport or Kennebunk to make up the difference, whether they mean to think about it that way or not.
None of this is a criticism of Arundel's trail system, just an honest read of its size. Welch Woods, at 227 River Road, is an easy half-mile loop along the shore of the Kennebunk River, the kind of walk you can do before dinner without much planning. The Yellow and Red Community Trails connect the Arundel Municipal property on Limerick Road to the Eastern Trail in a 1.6 mile loop, with parking right behind the municipal building.
That same lot backs onto something a little more unusual: a mountain bike flow trail, reportedly the first of its kind in Southern Maine, winding through the woods just past the playground. It rewards a wide range of skill levels, from a kid on training wheels to someone who actually wants the banked turns. It is a small system, but it is not a throwaway one.
Once a family crosses into Kennebunkport, the scale changes. The Kennebunkport Conservation Trust's Smith Preserve alone holds over 1,100 acres and roughly 10 miles of trail, more than the rest of Arundel's system combined. The Learning Trail and Storybook Trail sit near the Trust's Emmons Preserve headquarters, built with young hikers in mind, while the Batson River Trail winds through the Tyler Brook Preserve toward the coast. The Trust is also assembling a newer holding, Meadow Woods, 371 acres straddling the Kennebunkport-Biddeford line that will eventually add dog areas and more trail mileage to the map.
Cross into Kennebunk and the Kennebunk Land Trust adds four more qualifying stops: Wonder Brook Preserve, For All Forever Preserve, Alewive Woods, and Tributary Preserve, part of a system that protects more than 3,400 acres of forest, marsh, and farmland across town.
Put together, the 16-trail list only makes sense as one connected system, not three separate town programs that happen to share a name. That is worth knowing if you have ever wondered why Arundel's own trail map feels compact. It was never meant to stand alone.
For families still working through their journals, the clock matters more than the map. The Tommy McNamara Trail Challenge opened June 5 and closes September 7, which from today gives exactly one week to collect any remaining code words. The celebration follows on September 13 at Emmons Preserve, with light refreshments, family activities, and the water bottle handout for everyone who completed the trail count.
The whole program is run in memory of Tommy McNamara, a young member of the Kennebunk community, through the Tommy McNamara Charitable Foundation, which built the initiative around a simple idea: kids who spend time in green space tend to handle stress better and feel steadier in general. The three trusts did not need convincing on that point. They needed a reason to get families across town lines to see land they might not otherwise visit, and a code word taped to a trailhead sign turned out to be enough.
There is one more piece of this fall's calendar worth flagging, because it says something about how these towns actually operate. The Kennebunkport Conservation Trust has canceled its own long-running Trail Fest race for 2026, citing the changing capacity of its volunteers and staff. In its place, the Trust is pointing people toward the Arundel Conservation Trust's own annual Trail Fest, a 5K, 10K, half marathon, and kids' bike race held on the Arundel Community Trails and the Eastern Trail, plus the Bobcat Ridge 25K as a second option.
That handoff is not a small thing. For years, the bigger neighbor ran the marquee race and the smaller one ran a supporting event. This year, Arundel's race is the one carrying the fall calendar for the whole area. If you want the exact date, keep an eye on the Arundel Conservation Trust's own events page, since the trust states it as the third Saturday in September in one place and a specific late-September date on the local lodging calendar, and the two have not been reconciled publicly yet.
The takeaway is not complicated, but it is easy to miss if you only ever check your own town's parks page. Living in Arundel does not mean your outdoor life stops at Welch Woods or the pump track behind the municipal building. It means your actual trail system runs through Emmons Preserve, through the Smith Preserve's ten miles of ridge and river crossings, through Wonder Brook and Alewive Woods a town over. The challenge just made that fact impossible to ignore for one summer, one journal, and one code word at a time.
If you have a week left before the September 7 deadline, that is still enough time to knock out two or three more trailheads and make the party at Emmons Preserve worth the drive.
For those of you thinking further down the road, whether that means more land to explore or more land to own, Marika Clark has spent years learning this stretch of coast trail by trail and property by property. Reach out for a private consultation when the question turns from where to hike to where to live.
Marika Alexis Clark brings unmatched insight, care, and dedication to every home journey. Whether buying, selling, or simply exploring possibilities, her integrity and passion ensure you feel confident every step of the way.
