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◂︎ Mandy & Lexi's Connecticut Adventures
Bethel
Enchanted Boardwalk
Trail
Date visited: 5/14/2021
I wasn't happy with our only visit to Bethel (see below), so I decided to come back and walk the Enchanted Boardwalk. I wanted to find out what makes it enchanted. I expected some mystical creatures or plants to appear, but what I saw was a lot of skunk cabbage! The boardwalk itself is nice enough, but only lasts about a tenth of a mile. The trail turns right at the end of the boardwalk and becomes a stone surfaced trail. The trail then is routed around the Plumtree electic substation, so it's not very scenic at this point...unless you like looking at an electric plant! It looks like the trail is supposed to continue to Meckauer park on a mowed section, but it was completely overgrown and tick filled so we didn't go any further. In all, the name is a misnomer....it didn't seem that Enchanted!
Meckauer Park
Date visited: 11/25/2023
We were planning on going to a bike trail in New York on this day, but the traffic on I-84 was real bad, likely due to people returning home from Thanksgiving. We had been driving about two hours already, and the GPS said there was still another hour to go, so I got off the highway and drove to this park to find some place else to go. As it turns out, this park was a good place to stop. There's a short paved walking trail that loops the park. The Bethel Bark Park is also here, but there were no other dogs at the dog park, and the small dog section was super small. There's also some sort of contagious dog sickness going around, so we're taking a break from dog parks for a while anyway. The park connects to Bennett Memorial Park, so we went there next.
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Bennett Memorial Park
Date visited: 11/25/2023
Like Meckauer Park, this a small town park in Bethel. There's a pond and small waterfall, as well as a pavilion area. As well as connecting to Meckauer Park, the park also connected to the "Enchanted Trail" that we visited two and a half years ago. Combined with Meckauer Park, we walked just over a mile at the two parks.
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Stephenson Preserve
Date visited: 11/25/2023
If you read the write-up on Meckauer Park above, you'd know that this wasn't what we planned to hike on this day. I had to find something in the area, and since it gets dark so early this time of year, I needed something close to where we were. This nature preserve was nearby, so we checked it out. The preseve features a two mile loop trail, and the whole thing is a big hill, with about a 350 foot incline. There's a small pond, and some stone walls, but nothing else really exciting here at all. It was all pretty boring. Some sections were muddy, and the leaves on the ground disguised the mud, making it slippery as well. There are some stream crossings on rocks, but in one instance, there were barely any rocks. There was four spots along the route where I had to pick up Mandy and Lexi and carry them over muddy stream crossings. It was a good workout, and we got our steps in, but this wasn't one of our better adventures.
Putnam
Memorial State Park
Date visited: 12/1/2021
This is Connecticut's oldest state park. It is located on the site of General Putnam's winter encampment during the revolutionary war. The camp was used during the winter of 1778 & 1779. The majority of the park is located in the town of Redding, but a small section crosses over into Bethel. This section includes "Phillip's Cave", which I wanted to explore, but the brush was too thick with the small dogs in tow. There's a trail that runs up the rock face, but it gets narrow and very dangerous so we didn't go very far on it. The rest of the pictures from the trip are on the Redding page.
Stony Hill Shopping
District
Date visited: 2/26/2021
While I make every opprotunity to at least visit one specific place in each town, I have ocassionally cheated, and pretty much just stopped and took a picture of the dogs at a random spot as I'm passing through. This was one of those times. We had already done trails Fairfield, Easton and Redding on this day. I had to drive through Bethel on the way home and I stopped at a Dunkin in the Stony Hill Shopping District section of town. There was a nice scenic area adjacent to the parking lot, so I took the opportunity to get a picture of the dogs in Bethel. I guess I actually did stop and visit the Dunkin (got a sandwich to share with the dogs and a drink), so maybe it's not a complete cheat!
