Around 7:30 a.m. I’m woken up by our mother asking if we are still heading out on our latest weekend adventure.  You wouldn’t think one would need to wake up that early to head to Connecticut, but our initial goal was to head to Massachusetts.  I changed the schedule last minute by picking something a bit closer and a trail I knew our mother would enjoy, as she wanted to join us.  All this means is that I got to turn right over and sleep for another hour before getting up to pack things for the road.

The three of us headed out by 10 am and made a quick stop for gas, hiking boots for our mom, and some quick cash.  There was very little traffic and we arrived at Lover’s Leap State Park in an hour and fifteen.  The parking lot when we arrived was not filled and had maybe 4 other vehicles.  We changed into hiking boots, checked the map, and headed off across the old iron bridge to the Lover’s Leap Trail right across the bridge and went straight up a path to the first overlook.  We took some photos and then headed down the red blazes that ran alongside the ridge.  The path descended down to the waterfront.  As this was an out and back trail we had to make our way back up the hill.

We proceeded traveling down all the rest of the trails on this side of the map. First we tackled the Hurd Trail marked by white blazes and then the Falls Mountain Trail marked in blue blazes.  The Falls Mountain trail was a steeper incline and gave our mother a little work out, and some sore muscles.  The small amount of difficulty was getting down, as the path was covered in dry leaves, which made it slippery, and none of us felt the will to go tumbling down.

We passed by the “castle” and “tea-house” remnants and well, it left much to be desired. We trekked past and headed back down to the iron bridge.  At this point Anna and I decided to complete the trails along this side and our mother wanted to head back to the car for lunch and some rest.  We traveled down what felt like a maze of white/ orange blazes.  We just stuck to the side that was closest to the river.  Well our mother missed out, because this side had some splendid vistas of the frozen river and the surroundings.

All in all it was moderately trafficked trail with very little difficulty. We probably will return in the future as we’re curious to see what it looks like in the spring/summer with all the leaves on the trees.

Trail Facts:

Lover’s Leap State Park

178 Shortwoods Road, New Milford, CT 06776

Difficulty: 1/10

Distance: Roughly 2 ½ miles total with all loops combined.

Travel Time from NYC: 1hr 15min

 http://www.ct.gov/deep/cwp/view.asp?a=2716&q=433316&deepNav_GID=1650