Search Results for: hiking in Connecticut

Children's Museums | City Guide | family travel | National Parks | National Parks Passport Program | science center | Vermont | Woodstock
10 Winter Activities in Woodstock, Vermont
ByJennRecord March 8, 2022September 10, 2023
Woodstock, Vermont is a quintessential New England town. Located one hour south of the Vermont capital of Montpelier and just over two hours from Boston, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, Woodstock has a population of just over 3,000 but swells with visitors in both the popular foliage and summer seasons. Many of the activities center around nature: skiing, hiking, fishing, biking, and swimming, but there are also plenty of historical museums, hands-on centers, tons of family fun, and plenty of beautiful shops (if the kids can be entertained). We visited Woodstock in the summertime many years ago, but found that winter is also a great time to visit when we returned last month. While fact checking logistics, we found woodstockvt.com helpful with places to explore, dining and shopping suggestions, and calendars of events.
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family travel
Year in Review: Highlights of 2021
ByJennRecord December 28, 2021April 23, 2022
Even though 2021 was the second year impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic, we feel blessed to still have had many amazing adventures. We spent most of the winter in Connecticut exploring many local spots; the summer road tripping across Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wisconsin (did we mention the number 4300 miles?!?!); and the spring and fall revisiting some of our tried and true favorite spots for new activities. This post is always one of our favorites each year, as it’s fun to go back down “memory lane” and reflect on the best parts of each adventure. So here is a recap of our (documented, publicly shared) 2021 adventures:
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Connecticut | family travel | hiking | Litchfield | living history | museums
10 Things to Do at the Institute for American Indian Studies
ByJennRecord November 9, 2021July 18, 2022
Located in Washington, Connecticut in the heart of Litchfield County, the Institute for American Indian Studies celebrates the largely unknown Indigenous history of New England. Opened in 1975, the 15 acre complex includes indoor exhibits, an outdoor replicated Algonkian Village, hiking trails, and even a Wigwam Escape Room experience. The Algonkian people inhabited much of the northeastern United States up until the 1700s and includes over 100 distinct groups and communities. The museum is very hands on and docents are eager to share anecdotal stories and explain the significance of artifacts on display. (Definitely ask for an atlatl demonstration!)
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family travel | National Parks | National Parks Passport Program
10 Lessons We Learned from Exploring National Parks
ByJennRecord August 23, 2021September 13, 2023
We just wrapped up a pretty great summer that included an awesome (in the real denotation of that word) road trip from Nevada to Connecticut. We explored nine National Parks, bringing our total to 12 National Parks (read about our adventures at Acadia and Great Smoky Mountains). We wrote a post about why we love National Parks a few years ago and have since added more reasons to explore NPS sites.
In the coming weeks, we will share guides to all nine parks we explored this summer (Zion, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, Arches, Rocky Mountains, Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave, and Badlands). But first, we thought we’d start with some of lessons we learned and how they translate outside of the parks, too:
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Connecticut | family travel | hiking
5 Reasons I Love State Parks
ByJennRecord June 7, 2021July 19, 2022
This past weekend Connecticut celebrated Connecticut Trails Day with almost 200 events in and around many of the 142 state parks, forests, and beaches. Overseen by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, state parks, forests, and beaches cover 255,000 acres of public space and thousands of trails for hiking and biking. One perk of 2020 and 2021 has been our family’s focus on spending more time outdoors, exploring many of these public spaces. To date, we’ve visited about 30 state parks and you can read about our adventures (and trail recommendations and travel tips) in this post focused in Fairfield County, this post focused in western Connecticut, this post focused on central Connecticut, and this post focused on the Mystic area. We’ve also started to amass proper hiking equipment (headline: you’ll want more than just sneakers) and you can read about our hiking supply post here.
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family travel | Pennsylvania | Poconos | resorts
8 Benefits of Multigenerational Travel with the Woodloch Resort
ByJennRecord April 27, 2021January 31, 2022
Our family first visited the Woodloch resort in 2012; it was an impromptu trip after Superstorm Sandy flooded parts of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey and we had no power for almost a week. We had so much fun, we vowed to return. It took a while, but we finally made it back to Woodloch in the fall of 2020 for the most magical weekend- we wrote a full post about the resort and the (seemingly) endless ways to have fun. We met so many people (and have since heard from even more people) who remarked “We’ve been coming here for years, since I was a child” that we thought it would be fun to return with my parents. A resort like Woodloch is the perfect place for a multigenerational trip.
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