Salem Lake Park

Salem lake park is a pretty good park for this area. This park has a good sized lake where visitors can bring their boats and launch them to go fishing. You can also fish from the shore and just have a relaxing day. There is a bait store that sell a variety of different baits for you to choose from. This park also provides a walking/​bike trail for you to enjoy as well. While at this park you may forget you are still in a busy part of the city. I will continue to visit this park for as long as I am in this area.

I love this park. It’s about 10 minutes from my house and I go on a weekly basis. There’s fishing, canoeing, trails, and lots of wildlife. Most of the trail is covered with natural vegetation so even in the dead of summer it’s not too hot when you go running. This place is a great place to take kids if they like the outdoors or learning about animals.

This is a great place for a medium distance run. Relatively flat trail. Great scenery along the entire trail and plenty to do if not running such as fishing and kayaking.

Have walked the trail a few times and love that it goes around the lake. We also rented the canoes here one weekend just for a quick 2 hours. It was fun! Make sure you get a dried out life vest otherwise it could be a little smelly if the previous wear-​er got it wet. If you paddle to the left, there is a little bridge to go under and a great place if you pack a lunch. It looked like there was good fishing too, but we didn’t bring our poles. I think it was $ 4/​hr for one 2 person canoe so a really cheap way to enjoy a canoe! Bring sunscreen!

This park is a nice little gem hidden on the southeastern side of Winston Salem. There is only one trail that goes around the lake and it’s 7 miles long. Which is great if you’re a distance runner because you can run the trail twice to train for a 10K.
The trail is nice and wide and on the weekends can be heavily used by the locals. You can find all kinds of people here: cross country running groups conditioning, walkers, runners, bikers (although not many, it’s mainly walkers and runners), and families with strollers.
It’s a little creepy to go running on the trail during the day, nobody is there and I definitely would not recommend a female to do it. But on the weekends (Friday night to Sunday night) there’s a pretty constant flow of people. The trail is around a huge lake and the views you get are spectacular.
There are mile markers but I will warn you if you don’t want to go too far just do a mile or two and turn around because once you get halfway you’re at the point of no return and will have to finish the trail to get back to your car in the parking lot :-)