Date visited: 7/19/2020

I remember this being an extremely hot day. Instead of going for a hike, we just went for a ride in the car. I passed U-Conn a couple weeks prior, and saw some spots that looked like cool places to take pictures. I am really pleased with the pics I took at the U-Conn sign. We actually had to wait in line to get to the sign. There were a bunch of teen-agers in front of us modelling in front of the sign.

Dates visited: 7/5/2020, 9/5/2020, 1/19/2021 & 8/28/2021

We attempted to hike the loop trail on July 5th. I didn't realize so much of the trail was going to be on the levee with absolutely no shade. Mandy got very hot and started limping as well (she's had that problem in previous years, but usually the daily Glucasomine treatment keeps it in check). Not to mention, I started getting an upset stomach, and thought I was going to have a problem. I wound up turning around and carrying Mandy back to the car and calling it a day. She was fine as soon as we got home, and so was I! Anyway, we returned two months later when it was cooler, and finished the trail. It was a much nicer day! I'm not sure I have ever seen sky so blue. I really love how the photos came out. We went back one more time, in January, and hiked some trails on the other side of the lake.

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Date visited: 6/11/2021

These two Nature Preserves are connected to each other via the Nipmuck Trail. A friend who lives in the area went with us for this three mile hike up to Wolf Rock. The trail was well marked and easy to hike on, but there were a few muddy spots. There's a nice view from the top of Wolf Rock, but I didn't pose the dogs on the edge because it goes straight down!

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Date visited: 6/9/2021

This is a Joshua Land Trust trail in the woods behind Downtown Storrs. The main trail is a relatively flat loop. The land trust trails connect to something called the "Mansfield Town Trail" which is a half mile loop that leads to the shopping area across the street from U-Conn.

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Date visited: 6/9/2021

This is the shopping area across the street from the U-Conn main campus. The Mansfield Town Trail starts here and connects to the Joshua's Land Trust Whetten Woods Trail.

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Date visited: 4/13/2022

Shelters Falls Park is a wooded town park in Mansfield. It connects to UConn's North Eagleville Forest. There is a one mile trail that goes through all of it (two miles out and back), and also connects to a waterfall near the beginning of the trail. We couldn't get to the waterfall at first, because a bunch of kids, probably from UConn, had camped out there. They had a hammock and everything. They also had a cat with them. So we hiked the trail and took more picture of the falls on our way back. Other than the falls, it was a pretty ordinary walk in the woods.

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Date visited: 5/24/2022

This is another very nice preserve in Mansfield. There are two main trails here, the shorter, white blazed trail that goes up the hill, and the blue blazed one that follows the river. We hiked the shorter one. The payoff for the climb is the pile of rocks at the top of the hill. We'll have to come back to hike the other trail on another day.

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Date visited: 4/21/2023

This is a Joshua's Trust property that features a maze of trails. Many of the trails weren't present on my GPS-enabled map, and the main yellow blazed trail has been re-routed from an older alignment that was on my map. I think the trails cross over into Schoolhouse Brook Park. The trails in this section had different names like "Barrows Trail" and "Bird Loop". There were a few muddy spots, one of wich Mandy stepped right into! We also hiked out to Kay's Meadow, a nice grassy area on the east end of the property.

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Date visited: 5/14/2023

This was an okay trail, with a pretty good hill. There's no real payoff for climbing the hill. It's just more woods. The only real notable thing about this preserve are some cool rock formations on the southern side of the loop. Some of the trail was already pretty overgrown and it was only mid-May.

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Date visited: 5/14/2023

This is directly across Route 89 from Simpson-Wood Preserve. Like that preserve, this one also had some spots that were overgrown, especially the sections that circle the grass field. Also, watch out for ticks here! This wasn't as bad as our adventure a few days ago, but I still found a few on the dogs. There's a picnic area on one side of the pond, but that was a bit overgrown as well.

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Date visited: 8/2/2021

This sancutary consists of an inner loop trail around a pond, and an outer loop trail through the woods. We hiked both. The outer loop was unremarkable, but the inner loop had some cool things like the stone bridge and the man made waterfall (which the lighting made very difficult to photograph). The trail also featured a spur that exited out to some U-Conn off-campus housing.

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Date visited: 6/20/2021

This is a nice park. The trail starts out as a paved walking trail, but gets more interesting when it veers into the woods. It follows the Willimantic River over the course of the trail, with some nice views of the river.

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Date visited: 8/28/2021

This is another Joshua's Land Trust property located in the Eastern part of the state. This one is pretty nice. The trails were well maintained, with only a couple of minor obstacles due to recent storms. The trails were also dry. We also hiked some connecting trails that were also Joshua's Land Trust, but I don't know if they are considered part of Buchanan Woods or not. One was named the "Hugh M. Hammill Jr. Memorial Trail." This trail goes right up alongside Echo Lake. There is another connecting trail that goes to Mansfield Hollow State Park that we hiked to add some additonal steps to our trip.

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Date visited: 6/20/2021

We came here early to beat the heat. The trail runs from Hunting Lodge Road to the U-Conn campus. This is pretty much an old dirt road with some placards on either side explaining the various wildlife and flora in the surrounding woods. There are some side trails, one was labled "UConn Nature Trail", but that one was terribly overgrown. This wasn't that interesting.

Date visited: 7/17/2021

This is a town owned trail. We walked the short loop, which is a little over a mile. This is pretty much just a simple walk in the woods, with not much to see.

Date visited: 11/25/2021

Our Thanksgiving Day hike was the Knowlton Preserve, a Joshua's Land Trust property in the towns of Ashford and Mansfield. The property resides on both sides of Knowlton Hill Road, and features a mowed grassy area near the parking area, and a wooded section that runs along side Knowlton Pond, but never gets real close to the water.

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Date visited: 9/27/2022

I don't have a lot to say about this one. We walked the loop trail that was about a mile long through the woods. The trail was nice, but there was nothing notable or memorable about it. It served it's purpose as a nice place to take the dogs for a short hike after work.

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Date visited: 8/3/2023

This was a short hike through the woods. The scenery here is pretty typical of wooded hikes in this area. There are large rocks, rock walls, ferns, stream crossings on rocks, etc. It was all nice enough, but nothing that really sticks out from similar hikes in the woods. It's not a bad place for a quick hike, just nothing that memorable.

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Date visited: 9/3/2024

There is a parking area next to the dam, and a boat launch area for smaller boats like kayaks. There's a very short stone dust walking trail here as well. There's a smaller parking lot and a similar boat launch directly across the dam on the Coventry side of the Willimantic River and Dam. On the other side of the road, is the Eagleville Preserve Trail, featuring the Les Mehrhoff Invasive Plant Walk. There are informational signs about the different types of invasive plants found here. They are so invasive in fact, that most of the trail was too overgrown to pass! Between the trails and the boat launch areas, we were only able to walk about a mile here.

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