Date visited: 5/11/2023

This state park is on the site of an old boys camp called "Camp Mooween." The camp ran from 1921 to 1960. After that, the area became known as Red Cedar Lake State Park, before being renamed Mooween State Park in 2000. Now, the primary feature of the park is Mountain Bike Trails. In fact, the trail featured on the All-Trails app here is a 9 mile loop full of zig-zags and switch backs. It also looks like ATV's are using the park, despite the "No Motor Vehicles" sign. We decided to bypass most of the crazy Mountain Bike trails and walk a rocky trail that hugs the lake. We were able to make it a loop by utilizing one of the "main trunk line" trails that leads back to the entrance. The trails are not blazed well. The trail around the lake wasn't blazed at all, and I saw sporadic blazes on the other trail. Instead of trail blazes, there are some rather strange and creepy graffiti on some of the trees. The lake is beautiful on a nice sunny spring day. If it wasn't for the lake, this would just be a rather boring walk in the woods. There is an odd basketball court that we came across sitting in the middle of the woods. Maybe this is leftover from the old camp? We hiked a little over a mile and a half here, and it was a pretty nice walk.

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Date visited: 7/22/2021

I'm not sure why it's named Pigeon Swamp, there does not seem to be any pigeons! This is another Joshua Land Trust property. There are many in this area of the state. The trail-head is at the end of a dead end street that starts in Windham. The last third of the dead end is in Lebanon, meaning anyone who lives on the street has to drive into Windham whenever they go anywhere. The trail itself was nice. There are two options to hike, the 1.5 mile loop, or the longer 2.5 mile loop (includes most of the shorter loop). I planned on doing the longer loop, but man, there were a lot of bugs. About a half mile in, I changed my mind and we did the shorter loop. I'd like to say that someday we'll return and do the longer loop when it's less buggy, but realistically, that probably won't happen. It's not a bad trail by any means, but probably not good enough to warrant a return visit.

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Date visited: 12/30/2020

We walked the loop trail around the Lebanon Town Green. There are some historic buildings around the green, like the old War Office that dates back to 1730.

Dates visited: 8/21/2020, 9/23/2021 & 1/1/2022

See Also: Portland, East Hampton, Colchester, Hebron, Lebanon, Windham, Chaplin, Hampton, Pomfret, Thompson

The day we reached the end of the Hop River Trail, we made it to the bridge over the Willimantic River into Lebanon on the Air Line Trail. We came back a year later, and walked from the parking area on Kingsley Road in Lebanon to the trail head on Bridge Street in Willimantic. We returned to the Kingsley Road parking lot, and walked the other direction on New Years Day. New Years Day is traditionally a hiking day, but in 2022, the weather wasn't great. The Weather Channel app indicated it wasn't raining, but it actually was. We wound up only going down to the next parking area at the crossing with Village Hill Road, before turning around for 2 miles in total. It wasn't the best New Years Day hike!

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