Farmington River

Saturday #3

This one includes maybe Connecticut's best series of waterfalls, a mellow bike path along the Farmington River, a great ice cream shop, a castle, a kayak launch and a couple of great bridges. 

I think a really fun way to do this would be if you had a couple of people that wanted to bike an easy, paved 20 miles -- all on a bike path, with lunch in the middle and ice cream at the end -- and another couple of people that wanted to explore the shops in a quaint Connecticut town (and meet for lunch and then ice cream). 

I did the map in the link as a bike route to show where the bike trail -- from the parking area for the Farmington River Trail at 350 Collinsville Road to the ice cream shop -- goes; driving would be a little different but following a similar route would be great.

Countryside Park in Avon features a couple of ponds and a covered bridge. Nice spot. 

The next stop is a parking area for the Farmington River Trail, a 16-mile alternate path of the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail that (mostly) connects Southington, CT, to the Massachusetts border north of Suffield with paved, bike-only trails. There are a couple of short crushed-stone sections and a few spots where the trail follows small, lightly-trafficked roads, and at least one section that is still in the planning stage. The parking area is at the 3.5-mile mark of this map. The trail from here winds along a beautiful section of the Farmington River. It's wide, rocky, meandering and a slight uphill grade as the current lazes toward you. 

I loved the very long railroad bridge and the mill ruins in Collinsville. If you don't have a canoe or kayak but still want to paddle at Lake McDonough (toward the end of this trip), then you can rent a kayak or canoe for $25-$35 a day here at Collinsville Canoe and Kayak. 

It's about a 13-mile ride from that parking area to Benny's of Simsbury, a popular, tasty breakfast place in a bustling Connecticut town. 

Eight miles further along, now along the Farmington Canal Trail proper, is Grassroots Ice Cream. There were three of us and we got Goat Cheese and Blackberry, Rose Chocolate, Blood Orange Chocolate, Honey Lavender, Coconut, Cinnamon. They were all amazing. We also sampled (and loved) Raspberry Cheesecake Brownie, Birch Beer, Black Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup and Lemon Bar. Definitely the most unique flavors I've seen around here. 

A few miles west is my favorite set of Connecticut waterfalls, Kent Falls. We went during a rainstorm, which was great because we had it mostly to ourselves and because the falls were really gushing.

A few miles on is Saville Dam, with its gatehouse turret in Barkhamstead Reservoir upstream and the wakeless Lake McDonough just downstream, there is some great sightseeing and some of the most beautiful flatwater paddling around.

This reservoir is on a Farmington River tributary, so to give this post a little more symmetry, let's continue a few miles to where we started -- at a bridge on the Farmington River. This one is called Church Pool Bridge aka Pleasant Valley Bridge. 

Covered bridges

 Saturday #2: Historic Covered Bridges

If you've got one day in Connecticut and historic bridges are your jam, this trip has got you ... wait for it ... this trip has got you covered.

Covered bridges are a thing in New England, and they're a thing because of ones like the ones on this map. West Cornwall Covered Bridge, Bulls Covered Bridge and Comstock Covered Bridge were built in the 19th century and given roofs to help the wood last longer through the floods and freeze-thaw cycles of New England. They're the only three left from that time period in the state.

Covered bridges are still being built, now perhaps less as a clever solution to a real transportation problem than as a charming photo backdrop. So far, I've come across modern lookalikes at Devil's Hopyard, Kent Falls and Southford Falls, all near waterfalls, all in state parks, and all near a family-friendly picnic area. There's also a nice one in Ellington, near where I live, that was built in 2021 with a similar truss construction style to the historic bridges on this list. 

West Cornwall Covered Bridge, which crosses the Salmon River, was built around 1864.  You can usually drive across this one -- unless it's closed for repairs, like it was this past December and January after someone tried to tow a backhoe through it. 

On your way south to Bulls Covered Bridge, built in 1842, you can pause for gorgeous waterfalls and another covered bridge (of the modern photo backdrop variety) at Kent Falls State Park. 

(Gravel bike detour: At Kent, turn right on Maple, cross the Housatonic and ride south on Schaghticoke Road. It's 4.5 miles of mostly dirt road to Bull's Bridge. You can drive it too but it's kind of slow going.)

Like West Cornwall, you can drive through Bulls Bridge, which makes it a little tricky to walk through. It's a one lane road but there are raised beams on either side that you can walk along. Traffic is light and the hills and bends keep it slow. Anyway, it's worth stopping. The channel of the Housatonic River it crosses bounds down both natural rocks and artificial falls -- a spillway for a hydroelectric dam -- and is a launch point for a fairly rowdy section of whitewater. All I did was look, but it's beautiful from inside the bridge and from the trails that head north on the west side of the channel. 

After leaving Bulls Bridge and before you get to New Milford, look left for the Old Boardman Bridge, built in 1887. There are public parks on either end of it, but the bridge itself is completely closed for now. There's another bridge of this style nearby that you can walk across, in Lover's Leap State Park. It's definitely worth a trip -- great views from the bridge and from a high point overlooking a wide branching river -- if you can make a long day even longer.

New Milford is a classic Connecticut town -- gazebo, green, great steepled church, town hall, colonial homes and a thriving town center. Lots of Saturdays, the green is bustling with kiosks selling local food and wares. Theo's Downtown Diner is a good breakfast or lunch stop, they're open until 2 p.m. most days. Walk down Bank Street between Theo's and the green and see if anything catches your eye - we had fun at Play Toys and Gifts and The Hunt, a vintage shop. 

After New Milford is a great stretch of driving, on Highway 109 to Washington, Morris and Thomaston. Great barns, homes, hills, ponds and cemeteries, especially Morris Cemetery. After that, I recommend just taking the fastest way to Arrigoni Bridge, where you'll cross the Connecticut River, then look around at downtown Portland, on the east side of the river. Portland is another town in the Connecticut sweet spot -- quiet enough that I can look around without driving stress, busy enough that there are places to eat and shop if you want, and, I don't know, rich enough that the big, old houses are still there and still nice.

Comstock Covered Bridge is now closed to vehicles, which makes it the nicest of the three to walk through. There are a few miles of trail that follow the river here. There might not be time today if you're following this plan. I jotted that down for later. 

I added the Mystic Drawbridge partly just to end on a cool bridge -- drawbridges are super cool if you ask me -- near somewhere to eat. And Sift Bake Shop is a great place to eat. Unique sandwiches and arty desserts that you might frame if they weren't going to, you know, mold eventually. (They also, ehm, taste amazing.) The only problem with Sift is there's always a line and it's hard to see options until it's about time to order, so you wait too long and still feel rushed. It's open until 7 p.m. most days, so you can probably make it with this itinerary. As long as you didn't add in all the side trips. 

From Sift, walk up Water Street and then right on Main Street to the bridge. On the way, you'll see tons of shops and lots of tourists. I enjoyed Bank Square Books - inviting layout, lots of books and lots of intriguing recommendations from a pretty big staff.  

Polar Vortex

The highs in parts of Connecticut on Saturday were in the single digits. Most of the lows were in the double digits below zero. 

So we bundled up and went looking for frozen waterfalls. 

I don't always mind seeing people when I'm out. One of today's highlights was the woman on the trail around Southford Falls State Park, singing at a very confident volume, who added maybe a two-count rest to acknowledge our presence. But when I saw the headlines about "dangerously cold" temperatures, I definitely thought more about the other people that might stay home because of the weather than I did about, you know, staying home because of the weather. 

Saturday #1:

That map isn't in the order we did these things, but it would be fun this way: 

Breakfast at the Laurel Diner in Southbury. They're open from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays. It was super busy when we were there for lunch but the cook, who also owns the place, still had time to walk over and make sure his mods to the signature corned beef hash met Bettie's needs. 

Southford Falls State Park. Ten minutes up the road from the diner is Southford Falls. Pretty cascades, a frozen pond, a covered bridge and a 1.5-mile loop to a fire tower. The pond, which would have been liquid Friday morning, was frozen hard enough that I couldn't find a rock big enough to break through, but the ice was still pretty clear. And the river was making ice sculptures for us. 

Spruce Brook Falls. We actually went here first so it was still very cold. It didn't take too many gloves-off photos for the fingertips to protest. And Bettie's phone froze and stopped working until we got home. But we got what we came for, a different view of a pretty waterfall. 

We drove in on the Cold Springs Road access to the Naugatuck State Forest West Block. Cold Springs Road is kind of rough dirt for almost the last mile. We passed the trailhead for the 0.7-mile blue trail, crossed Spruce Brook and parked on the other side, just outside a gate that is closed for the winter. We walked about a half-mile up the road to where the 0.2-mile white trail leads to the falls. Then we took the red trail to a cliff-top view of the Naugatuck River and the freeway that follows the bottom of the valley. 

On the way home, we tried to visit Sweet Claude's Ice Cream. It's incredible, we went there in December, they make their own really great ice cream. And Cheshire is a cute town, especially South Main Street. But Sweet Claude's is closed for the season. So we persevered and made our way to Sweet Cream's Ice Cream, 20 minutes away, which sells Ashley's Ice Cream, another good Connecticut creamery. 

Not on the map, but other cool things we saw on the way:

Snowman sculptures in Hebron.

A beast of an eagle painted on a huge roadside rock.

Downtown Portland, CT, and the Arrigoni Bridge.

Floating the Green

This trip happened ages ago, but Devin posted some cool pics of it a month and a half ago, so I thought I better "hurry" and tell the story.

So I wrote in 2010 about a trip in June 2008 with Devin and Billie. And just now I noticed this draft... 

Here's what I remember about it now: 

The first night before we put in, at our spot near the confluence of the San Rafael and Green rivers, Billie and I laid on top of the car and looked at the stars. You could reach out and swirl them around with your fingertips, they were so close. There were shooting stars, big questions, long silences. Still one of my favorite memories of being a dad. 

The first night around the campfire, there were bats flying around and we were looking up at the stars and the bats and swatting away mosquitos and I said something like, "C'm'ere bat, there's plenty of food here," and one immediately swooped down and took a pass within 3 inches of my face.

Cicadas louder than I've ever heard. Gorgeous music all day and into the night. 

Pulling the canoes over to hike to a saddle between two bends in the river, and having to wade through a couple of yards of deep, thick mud. Billie watched me and Devin flail through and was a little hesitant, and I said, go fast you'll be ok, and he did just as he was told and the mud sucked his little sandal right off, buried it 3 inches deep and ... I guess we somehow got it out. 

Good times. The best times.

52 Saturdays in Connecticut

Bettie and I moved to Connecticut at the end of August 2022. We will be here for a year or two for her post-doctorate job in ASL linguistics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT. I've never been to New England, not once in my 47 years, and so I'm trying to see some of it while I'm here. As always, I'm looking for the things I love -- waterfalls, viewpoints, ice cream, skiing, old cemeteries, solitude. I bought a gravel bike a couple years ago, so I'm looking for places to ride that. I bought a birdfeeder and some binoculars a year ago,  so I'm seeking birding opportunities too. And we just purchased our first kayaks (they're in the mail), so we're going to try that out as well. 

It's different here. 

The highly recommended view from the Fifty-Foot Cliff has 70-foot trees in front of it. 

There are a bunch of places to go "hiking" -- and they're all beautiful -- but if you see that an area has "16 miles of trails," it's still just a 3-mile diameter patch of woods with less than 500 feet of elevation difference from the lowest point to the highest, it just has a lot of trails spiderwebbing through the tract. 

About half the ice cream shops close for the season after Labor Day and half of the rest close after New Year's Day. 

A "long, pitted dirt road to the parking area" that makes a waterfall hike a "hidden gem" may end up being 0.8 miles long and no problem in a CRV. 

So far, it has basically snowed as much as downtown Santa Fe or Spanish Fork, but if you want to gain 3,000 feet of elevation (the equivalent of driving the 30 minutes to Ski Santa Fe) to find some deeper snow, you have to drive two states away to Vermont. 

But there are plenty of birds, there is way more water, and the old cemeteries are the best I've seen this side of Ireland. 

So I'm attempting to resurrect the blog as a journal of sorts and also maybe as a head start for the next naive Western outdoorsy type that moves to or visits the Northeast.