Mashamoquet Brook State Park

Connecticut – Monday, Oct. 1

The first order of business today was to find a post office to mail off the military care package. I must say, technology’s handy to figure out where things are!

Once that was accomplished, I started heading for the northeast corner of the state to get myself in position for heading to Maine. I still had about 5 1/2 miles of walking to do – some left from last Monday, and a little still left from the rainy day. Most of the little towns I drove through weren’t really big enough for a long walk, and I didn’t see anything promising outside of them either. And then I came upon Mashamoquet Brook State Park, where all my walking needs could be taken care of! Tula and I ended up staying there almost 3 hours, and did all the walking we needed and then some. We walked in the mountains on the trails, and then followed a forest service road up past some youth campgrounds and up and up the side of a mountain. I liked the forest service road – it was like an extra wide path and no one drove by and I could let Tula off her leash. Then we turned around and came back down the way we had gone up. It was a cloudy day but a perfect temperature for a long walk. After a quick sandwich, I had to make a decision about my final Connecticut donation. I had 3 different donations in mind, and I liked them all, and I had no money left at the end of the week to make an extra donation (out of my starting budget for the week, I had $7.91 left, and put that in the gas tank!). In the end I decided to send in a donation to the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center in Old Saybrook where I had done a little walking on 2 different days (and I walked past it both days which is what made me look into it). It’s the only theatre in the world named for her, and it’s located in a building that was built in the early 1900s and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was renovated to house a 250 seat theatre and work on a small museum is still in progress. The center is known as “The Kate” and the funds were raised through town efforts (she was their most celebrated resident after all!)and donations. As the former owner of a dance studio, it’s nice to do a cultural donation now and then too!

With final walking and donation taken care of, I pointed the car north, said good-bye to Connecticut and drove through Massachusetts and a little corner of New Hampshire and crossed into Maine – State #5!