Valley Falls Park, CT

Another great day for a hike. It has been a while since I was able to get out and go for a hike. Only did a short hike of 4.3 miles in Valley Falls Park.

Map

As you can see I did one big loop following the out trails. It is a nice little park with a couple of different trails. Very peaceful throughout the park, most people stay by the beach area and go swimming or fishing. The Hop River Rail Trail runs right by the park. I was able to get out real early this morning (8am) the wasn't really anybody there. Good thing too because the local CERT was preforming a drill and it would have put a damper on my hike. Saw a really cool spider with in the first 10 minutes of the hike.

A little bit down the trail I noticed a fallen log with some fungus on it, I just caught it out of the corner of my eye.

When I came back down along the river bed it was very neat seeing where it had risen over the last few days with all the rain that we had gotten in area. This part of the trail was also very muddy due to the rain. Had to do some puddle jumping but it wasn't too bad. I was enjoying myself.

After crossing the rail trail and heading up a little bit I recommend going along the lookout trail, blazed white. The are a few nice rocky out cropping that allow one to over look the park. Unfortunately you can't really see the pond from here, but it is still a nice view.

Throughout most of the hike you can a lot of the Mountain Laurel that is now out. Very beautiful this time of year.

Mountain Laurel

After returning from the lookout trail I decide to go on the Orange Blazed Boulder trail. The only issue I have with this trail is that in the middle of the loop the trail becomes almost non-existent expect for a few blazes on some trees. You have to really look for them since the trail has pretty much disappeared. 

One other neat thing I saw while hiking today was a garter snake attacking a toad. The toad was able to fend off itself and hop away but it was still a neat little experience. I have two photos of during and after.

During the attack.

 You can see the snakes jaw open and trying to bit down on the toad.

After.

The snake is just sitting there watching and waiting, but the toad did hop away after a few minutes.