It had been too long since I last paddled this stretch of the Farmington River. Perhaps 30 years ago, maybe 40 years ago, maybe 45 years ago.

Topsmead State Forest in Litchfield has forest aplenty, for sure, but this is not your typical Connecticut state forest.

I’d seen references to Lake of Isles in North Stonington, CT, over the years, including one in “A Fisheries Guide to Lakes and Ponds of Connecticut,” published in 2002 by what is now the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Hiked yesterday in Jonathan Dickinson State Park in Hobe Sound, FL, with Jay Knobel, a great old friend who I met in college decades ago.

Just getting around to a post on the annual National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count in the Hartford area, held this past December 16.

If you have never visited Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming – and I strongly suggest you do – you might not know that the park is far more than a bunch of big, saw-toothed mountains, one after the other on a north-south axis.

An advocate of free-flowing rivers, count me among those who think we have far too many dams choking our rivers, even our brooks, thousands of them just in Connecticut.

Paddled the 361-acre upper basin of the Moodus Reservoir in East Haddam this morning. It was one of the few bodies of water of any substantial size in Connecticut that I had not previously explored. Needed to see this lake.

Explored the Pequabuck River by kayak yesterday, something I’ve wanted to do for years. A tributary of the Farmington River, it enters the Farmington just north of Meadow Road in the town of Farmington, having drained 58 square miles in Bristol, Burlington, Farmington, Harwinton, Plainville and Plymouth.