Search Results for: hiking

10 Must Have Hiking Supplies
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10 Must Have Hiking Supplies

Byjennrecord

Our 2020 rescheduled road trip is coming up soon and our whole family is getting excited. While we’re keeping our itinerary a secret, you’ll be able to gather from this post, and some of our most recently themed posts, that we will be doing a lot of hiking (which our family defines as walking outside for a few miles on a well marked path). You can read about some of the Connecticut places we have explored for hiking (again, we’re using that term loosely) in this post, this post, this post, and this post. We are NOT serious hikers, and at first thought we didn’t necessarily need anything other than sneakers for a hike.

7 Family Friendly Hiking Spots in Central Connecticut
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7 Family Friendly Hiking Spots in Central Connecticut

Byjennrecord

One of the good things to come out of the COVID 19 pandemic for our family was the desire to spend more time outdoors. While our family has always enjoyed outdoor spots like the beach, the zoo, and various parks, we’ve never really been “hikers.” Until 2020, we also didn’t have many opportunities to explore our state parks. Connecticut has 142 state parks and state forests, covering 255,000 acres of public space and thousands of trails for both amateur and veteran hikers. We’ve been fortunate to have time this past year to “hit the trails”; read about some of our favorite spots in Fairfield County, western Connecticut, and the Mystic area. This week, we’re sharing seven great spots in Central Connecticut. Note: this is not a comprehensive list- there are so many more spots that are on our “to do” list- but it is a good start:

10 Family Friendly Hiking Spots in Fairfield County, Connecticut
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10 Family Friendly Hiking Spots in Fairfield County, Connecticut

Byjennrecord

We’re back with another index of places we’ve explored in the past year. (We’ve previously posted about places to hike in Western Connecticut and places to hike in the Mystic area.) Many of these spots are practically in our backyard and it’s taken us an embarrassingly long time to check them out. They are all free to visit in the off season (October-May), although some locations do rely on donations for upkeep and programming. Most of the locations in this collection are somewhat of a stretch for “hiking” for true hikers, as many of the trails are under three miles and fairly easy to navigate. But we think they’re all great spots for family fun, especially families with younger kids.

Hartford, Connecticut City Guide: 10 Family Friendly Spots
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Hartford, Connecticut City Guide: 10 Family Friendly Spots

Byjennrecord

Hartford, the capital city of Connecticut, is located smack in the middle of the Nutmeg State- less than two hours to Boston, New York City, and Providence, Rhode Island. First settled in the mid 1600s, Hartford has become known over the centuries as the home of authors Mark Twain and Harriett Beecher Stowe, the insurance capital of America and home to several colleges and universities including Trinity College, University of Hartford, and the University of Saint Joseph. 

We’ve lived in Connecticut since 2004 and since having children, we have explored dozens of family friendly attractions and restaurants- see our index of CT blog posts.

This week we are sharing 10 great spots in (or super near) Hartford the whole family will love.

Five Years of Blogging & Ten Years of Road Trips!

Five Years of Blogging & Ten Years of Road Trips!

Byjennrecord

This week marks 5 years since we started this family travel blog. We started road tripping in summer 2012, so it’s a double celebration of 10 years of road tripping and 5 years of sharing our adventures on our little corner of the ‘web.

We’re proud to share that we’ve gained a LOT of followers and readers over the past two years (since we last did a Google analytics deep drive) and we thought this week would be a perfect time to share a blog recap.

15 Free Things to Do with Kids throughout Connecticut this Summer
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15 Free Things to Do with Kids throughout Connecticut this Summer

Byjennrecord

We officially moved to the Nutmeg State back in 2002 and have enjoyed exploring dozens of its 169 cities and towns, many of which border New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and the Long Island Sound. We’re working on an updated master list of all the places we’ve visited and all of our travel tips for later in the summer, but this index, this list, and this list are good places to start. You might also like our City Guides featuring Mystic and Coastal Connecticut.

As summer nears and temps rise, we wanted to share 15 FREE things to do this summer (really, all year, but summer offers some additional perks and better hours) and a few bonus spots we’re hoping to check out ourselves this summer.