STL#3—Old Furnace SP
Posted By auntie on July 26, 2018
2.25 miles; Killingly, CT
Ugh. Another “swimming in the air” type high humidity day, with rain threatening the whole time. Had some trouble finding the official selfie spot on the trail, but I wasn’t alone. I met a nice couple from Hartford who had the same trouble. We hiked back to our cars together after deciding “close enough.”
Ditch Lilies!
The directions on the Sky’s the Limit site say to walk through a picnic area from the parking lot to get to the blue-blazed Old Furnace State Park trail. The picnic area was notional at best, in that it was in a sloping, unmowed meadow and had no visible picnic tables or fire rings. It did have “ditch lilies,” though.
Healthy Debate
Nice to see a good healthy debate. PAINTED ON ROCKS IN A STATE PARK. Jerks. Judging by the amount of graffiti and trash in this park, it’s obviously pretty heavily travelled. By jerks.
Pickerel Weed and Joe Pye Weed in Flower
I was sad to see Joe Pye weed already (almost) in flower, because it signals the end of summer to me. Already? Doesn’t seem possible!
Overlook 1
Overlook 2
I think the selfie spot was overlook 2, but it was danged hard to tell from looking at the map. I couldn’t find an overlook at the circled area that was on the map. Neither could Kathie and Kerry, the couple I met. We just kind of guessed it was probably this spot. They’re both fantastic overlooks, by the way, well worth the trip.
Summer Sweet!
A very welcome bloomer, Clethra alnifolia, a.k.a. Summer Sweet. The scent is amazing.
After getting our shots, we decided to find our way down to the shorter orange trail to cut some of the distance back to the parking area. Turned out to be a VERY steep grade down to the dam on Furnace Pond… so steep that I wasn’t about to risk falling, so I basically butt-skootched down the hill. It was muddy. I got FILTHY. Which I guess worked out, because, although I had planned on hitting 2 more STL parks today, by the time I got to the trail head for the second one the skies opened up and I decided to go home and get cleaned up. Maybe tomorrow!
You can find out more about Old Furnace State Park from the DEEP website. For details on the 2018 Sky’s the Limit Challenge, see the STL website. As always, click the image above for details about this hike and to download the gps track.
Ran into someone on the Nehantic trail near Hopeville Pond State Park. Also could not find spot. Nothing remotely resembling a spot supposed to be a waterfall. I wonder if the plotter was on an adjacent wood road directly across from the park rather than technically on the marked trail?
No idea. Wish they’d post gps coordinates for the selfie spots.