June 19 - 26, 2025: Mashamoquet Brook State Park in Connecticut

Last September (2024) was the last time we camped somewhere so it has been awhile. We've spent a good bit of time in NH working on our son and daughter-in-law's Christmas tree farm as well as time in Georgia, Florida and Virginia with other families. We welcomed another grandchild in the spring while in NH and got to help out but it was eventually time to move on. We had a couple on weddings we wanted to attend in NY and NJ so along the way we stopped for a week at Mashamoquet Brook State Park in Connecticut. Here are pictures of our camper at our site.

The park has two campgrounds and we stayed at the Wolf Den one. It has about 35 sites that encircle Wolf Den Field (you can see the field in the background of the first picture above). We reserved the only site that has water and electricity. A fellow camper who has camped at the park for years said the site used to be for the host. The campground has flush toilets and a shower as well as a slop sink (the bathhouse can also be seen to the left of the camper in the first picture above). Other than our site, there are no water spigots throughout the campground. I assume campers fill up from the slop sink to supply themselves with water. The campground was not heavily used during our stay. There were sites even open on the weekend and at one point during the week there were only three other campers besides us. What the park keeps available is well maintained but there are signs the park is shrinking in terms of its offerings. The dump station and swimming area have been closed for years. All the pit toilets are boarded closed and next to them are porta-potties. The "museum," a grist mill, was also closed when I went by it. The park is in northeastern CT and I wonder if the casinos in eastern CT have siphoned off tourists.

On one of my bike rides I took the opportunity to explore the park offerings. This included a hiking spin-off to Wolf Den, Indian Chair and Table Rock. I lathered up with bug repellent before heading out as the pests were abundant. I stopped at Indian Chair first. It is a rock formation in the form of a one side armed love seat style chair. Pictures follow, one of which includes my back pack for size and shape reference.

I next stopped at Wolf Den. There is a plaque outside the den giving some history and apparent reason for its notoriety. A wolf that used the den was ravaging livestock in the area and eventually the den was discovered leading to the wolf's death, purportedly the last wolf alive in CT.

The last stop was Table Rock. I think such a rock description is common. I have been to "Table Rock" formations in at least two other states with one of them being the park's namesake. The table rock at this park was the least impressive of the ones I've seen. Here are a couple of pictures for you to judge for yourself.

After ending the hiking portion of my exploration, I headed towards the day use portion which advertised a swimming area. Some of the trails allow mountain biking so I rode part of the way and walked others due to rocks and such. I came upon a dam in the brook (see below). Further upstream out of view, children enjoyed playing in the brook.

My primary goal at this point was to check out the swimming area since we were in the middle of a heat wave. I found the area that appeared to be the swimming area but there was nothing more than a puddle of water at one end and two drains, one at each end. I later found an article from 2023 that said the swimming area was closed due to insufficient water supply from the nearby brook. Here is a picture of the swimming area. The building in the background is the same as the one in the article with this link (https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/swimming-hole-mashamoquet-brook-state-park-closed-18169144.php).

On two of the days, my wife and I rode our bikes to the nearby (~1.5 miles) rail trail called Air Line Trail State Park. We entered the trail at the old Pomfret train station. One day we rode west on the trail for about 7 miles. This part of the trail was in good condition. The other day we rode east. We rode about 4 miles on the trail where it seemed to end in Putnam, CT. The part of the trail as we neared Putnam was mostly underwater. We got off and walked on the way there but found the ground was still fairly firm and not very muddy since the railroad bed was still holding up. Because of that, we decided to ride through on our way back. We rode around Putnam a little bit on a river trail but eventually ran into a closed section for mowing so at that point we decided to head back. After researching later, I found there is a break in the trail but it picks back up after riding the streets of Putnam according to this map (https://ctparks.com/media/470/download?inline). The rail trail sections on both sides of Putnam are shown on the lower left and upper right corners of the map. Here is a picture of the Pomfret station where we entered the trail and the park sign on the adjacent overpass.

After leaving the campground we headed to the NJ-NY area for the weddings, and after those events are scheduled to conclude, we have reservations for a couple of weeks to camp at the Loleta Recreation Area inside the Allegheny National Forest of northwestern PA.