Today, we went back to Devil’s Hopyard State Park in East Haddam for what turned out to be a grueling two mile hike. It felt good, but there was a lot of sweat involved. We went uphill and downhill and everywhere in between. You should’ve seen me huffing and puffing like a fat guy at the tops of the hills. All this hiking should get me in better shape though.
We hiked the entire orange trail which brought us up to the vista, which was very nice. Then, the trail brought us down to the river again and past the Devil’s Oven. We walked back up to the bridge and past the falls to the car.
I took some more photos of various areas of the orange trail. I really have to stop taking so many pictures. Laura is starting to call me a tourist. Hey, this is the way I live. I am on my third digital camera because I like to use them so much. Also, somebody has got to like these things besides me.
As I have mentioned before, Connecticut is the place to be if you like parks, hiking, mountain biking and recreation in general. We are learning that people around here take this stuff very seriously. When driving around, it’s hard not to see people jogging, riding bikes, playing golf…whatever.
Last week, we decided to drive down to East Haddam to visit Devil’s Hopyard State Park. I looked at this park’s trail map online and it looked good. The thing that really attracted me was the waterfall. As usual, I opened up Google Earth and checked it out from above. Well, all it looked like was woods. I don’t know, after seeing the satellite view, I didn’t think it looked all that great. We went anyway. I am usually wrong about these things.
I was really wrong about this one. I have been to many state parks in my life and I have to say this one was the best so far. The water does it for me. It’s a very low-key park. There are no highways around and it’s tucked back in the woods. The waterfall is great and the river adds a lot to the hike. This park is going to be on our list for a long time. They also offer camping, which is cool.
I took a bunch of pictures and will add captions where I think they would fit.
We parked on Helon Cone Rd., right off of Hopyard Rd. This was the enterance sign to Devil's Hopyard State Park.
