If you want to check on the hikes that I completed so far as part of this challenge, go here.
Prologue: A hiking challenge is going on this year by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEEP) in the state of Connecticut where I live, “Sky’s The Limit”. We have to finish a hike in the chosen 20 Park and Forest locations before December 3rd this year Each location has some specific points of interest that the departments asks us to take pictures of and document them. Most of the Parks and Forests are located in an hours of driving distance, except a few. I decided to take this challenge and hopefully will be able to complete all of them. Here we go!
Next up is Devil’s Hopyard State Park. This is # 16 on the list provided by DEEP. I am not following the order they have listed. I am just going to any hike I can whenever I can from that list. 🙂
Located in East Haddam, Connecticut; this 860 acres of park land comes with birding features; waterfalls; potholes; popular fishing joint; and several hiking & biking trails along with camping and picnicking. The terrain is rocky and at some places steep enough make me think this as the most difficult hike I did so far. We did a little less than 2 miles trail but took almost 3 hrs to complete because of the level of difficulty for me.
The name “Devil’s Hopyard” has several sources and stories; more fiction than fact. The closest story that is acceptable is about a man named Dibble who had a garden for growing hops used in the brewing of beer. It was called Dibble’s Hopyard which over the time transformed to “Devil’s Hopyard”.
We began our hike at the Chapman Falls and walked on the no blaze trail to the start of the Orange-Vista Trail at the covered bridge over the Eight Mile River. The Chapman Falls are formed on this river when it passes over series of stone formations.
Some of the scenic vista points we saw along the hike beginning with this stone bridge made of these large smooth stones.
Love these wooden bridges that I have been seeing all through my hiking of various trails. I had my friend pose for me at several of these that we came across.
We saw pretty flowers; fungi; and this cute little caterpillar.
One of the optional point to visit along the trail was the Devil’s Den. Unfortunately the trail to the actual location was too steep for us to try. So we took a pic of the location from a fellow hiker’s pic on his phone. 😛
As we got to the scenic vista point on the trail, we saw these rocks being piled one above the other. I never understood what people piled rocks like this and created pillar formations.
Now the scenic point. The entire hike was worth it once we saw the view here; despite the difficult level.
And finally the gorgeous Chapman Falls. Watch out for a separate blog post regards to these falls coming up soon.
Galavant Reflections 