The Amateur Hiker

I am here to tell you that we are the most woefully unequipped people, when it comes to any sort of hiking gear. Let this be an inspiration -- if you are just doing day hikes (we have not delved into overnight camping at this point), there is very little you need.  Right now, our list consists of the following: - Water and snacks - Small backpacks  - Sturdy shoes and socks  - A sweatshirt/extra layer on cool days - A few Bandaids and some Advil - A pair of hiking poles that Dan likes to use for support I am pretty ignorant when it comes to hiking accessories, especially when it applies to clothing. I have even been known to hike in jeans. This is hiking taboo, I know, but if it's an old comfortable pair of jeans and the kind of hike that involves sliding down rocks, they're not so bad. We have no hiking boots right now, so sneakers it is. If the "real" hikers on the trail are snickering at us, so be it. I am not going to wait until I have everything perfect to start m...

  After a weekend off from hiking due to some other plans, we almost missed out on hiking again the following weekend. Chloe had been fighting a cold and the weather didn't look promising. However, after the steady rain didn't materialize and Chloe started perk up, we decided to hit the trails once again.  As we were trying to keep things a little less strenuous, we decided to do two shorter sections of trail that did not have much elevation gain: CT Section 21 and MA Section 1 .  It's really a different vibe, hiking on a gray and gloomy day. In one sense it made the colors emerging really pop; in another, it made areas of thick woods feel even darker. "I'm scared!" Chloe even said at one point, in an especially dark area.  Both sections that we hiked are about 2 1/2 miles in length. Section 21, the last section in CT, meanders through Suffield to the Massachusetts border without too many points of interest. There were the usual ridge views and we kept searchi...

Another weekend, another hike! We decided to start from a familiar spot not far from home. CT Trail Section 18 begins at Penwood State Forest and offers a number of trails, some of which we'd hiked before. Our foible of the day came after trusting our GPS. This time both of them were wrong. Since we'd been to Penwood before, we KNEW that when the GPS announced we'd "reached our destination," we were not in the right place. We were on a side road marked with a sign that read "Private Property." Still, we kept going, because maybe this was a back way we weren't aware of, or something like that? We saw more No Trespassing signs and then the clincher, a last sign that boldly asserted: "Turn Around. GPS Incorrect." At that point we'd reached a house far set back down this road and had to turn around in a driveway where a man with a dog were glaring at us. Apparently we weren't the only ones who had done this.  So after trusting our memor...

By the next Saturday we had (mostly) forgotten our rough start from the week before and were ready to start again. Well, if by ready you mean listening to the kids saying, "No, are we really doing that again?!" and us saying, "Yup!" The funny thing about kids -- and we notice this week after week -- is that they complain and they whine but then they get out there and start talking with us and interacting without bickering, and it's really very nice.  This week we stayed a little closer to home and decided to take on a shorter section of trail ( NET CT Section 19 ) that begins in the village of Tariffville about 15 minutes from our house. Right away we realized that this hike would once again begin with a somewhat brief but rather pointless road walk. We literally parked on a side street where the trail comes out of the woods, got out of our car and walked a half-mile or so on the street, only to spot the trailhead where we needed to enter the woods, with a parki...

The New England Trail is broken into approximately 20 sections each in both Connecticut and Massachusetts. As we don't have an inordinate amount of time to hike, and don't really possess what we need for overnight camping gear at the moment, we decided to take on this trail by hiking a series of section day hikes, point to point, in no particular order.  What made us choose New England Trail, CT Section 12 (Middlefield-Middletown) to start? Nothing in particular, aside from the fact that it was enough of a drive (30 min.) from home to make it feel a little unfamiliar, and enough of a hike (around seven miles) to be a challenge. Or maybe too much of a challenge -- I wasn't even sure the kids could reasonably hike seven miles.  That first day, we learned a LOT.  Our plan with these hikes is always hike south to north (don't ask me why). This involves taking two cars and driving to the northernmost part of the section, leaving one car, then going to the southernmost part ...