Posted By auntie on October 2, 2016

4.5 miles; Stamford, CT

Another hike down in the DEEP’s Sky’s the Limit Hiking Challenge. A fellow blogger told me this park wasn’t especially exciting, but that I’d see many multi-million dollar houses, and he was right about that. Stamford is a pretty toney part of Connecticut. Still, it’s a very pretty property, particularly with the trees starting to show their fall colors, and very popular. We had trouble even finding a place to park. Also lots of dogs. LOTS of dogs.

Selfie #1

Once we managed to find parking, we got our requisite selfies at the trailhead and headed out.

Mianus River

The main trail out from the parking area follows the banks of the Mianus River. The state is currently undertaking a shoreline restoration of this part of the park. I was too impatient to read the explanatory signs (more on that later), but I can only presume they cleared the riverbank of invasives and are trying to restore native plant communities.

Gigantic Boulder

My hiking pal is more adventurous than I am, and loved the many gigantic glacial erratic boulders that were all over the park.

Took the Dam Trail

And as is more common than either of us would like to admit, we got turned around (there are a lot of trails in this park!) and ended up in the wrong parking area. But then we noticed a shortcut along the Dam Trail that avoided some tedious backtracking, so we took the Dam Trail. Dam it.

Selfie #2: Treetops Fireplace

And here is the required selfie #2, at the Treetops Fireplace. There’s a long and fascinating history to this property, which I will not go into here. If you’re interested, here’s a great page on it, courtesy of the Friends of Mianus State Park website.

If I look a little impatient here it’s because I didn’t pay attention to the NFL schedule before I planned this trip, and the Patriots were playing at that very moment and I had no cellphone coverage! Quelle horreur! Although as it turned out, if I had to miss most of one of the Pat’s games, this was a good one to miss.

Here is the Connecticut DEEP page about Mianus River State Park, among others (you have to scroll down) which features a trail map.

Categories: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 2–5 miles, CT, Stamford CT