Nipmuck Woods

Nipping up to Stafford to Tuck in the Woods
Northern Connecticut Land Trust’s Nipmuck Woods, Stafford
November 2024

Here’s a good example of the challenge of what I do with CTMQ. Although, in fairness, I do this to myself.

I “completed” Stafford in 2017. It felt good. Granted, Stafford isn’t exactly a bustling town and my ‘completion” didn’t make any waves. And, as happens often, shortly after I published my celebratory page, this 79-acre parcel in town was purchased from the Stafford Fish & Game Club. We were told that trails would be cleared and blazed.

And so they were, opened in 2021.

And several years later, I returned to the northern reaches of the state and hiked the trails. The interesting thing about the trails here is that they connect to the vast array of Nipmuck State Forest trails and woods roads and also over to the Northern Connecticut Land Trust’s Bobwhite Farm, which is just a holding where the trails are not open to the public. (Note to self: the Trust has just acquired another property just north of Nipmuck Woods called Roaring Brook Woodlands which will also contain trails. So Stafford, I’m not done with you yet.)

There are essentially two loop trails here. The Nipmuck Adventure Path is an easy, short loop with some poetic signage along the way to a huge split boulder. It’s blazed white and if you want to read the storyboards in order, go clockwise.

I didn’t know that bit of advice, and wound up walking the longer red-blazed Woodland Trail counterclockwise.

It’s a nice trail. It’s a trail you’d expect to find in Stafford, Connecticut. The trees, the laurel, the little rises and falls of the land. I rather enjoyed my walk around the loop and appreciated the clear blazing when the trail makes 90-degree plus turns.

On may way back towards Route 190 and my car, I set out southeast on a green-blazed state forest connector trail. It’s great that this trail was added in 2023 that allows people to walk down the hill to Fenton Road (which I don’t advise driving on without a 4WD, high clearance vehicle) and onward into the state forest.

State forest hiking in Connecticut is often confined to woods roads rather than established and blazed trails, and this section of the Nipmuck in Stafford and Tolland is more or less the same. Although, the roads here are named as trails for some reason, but as I was walking around during hunting season, I didn’t want to go too deeply into the state forest during this trip.

After reaching Fenton Road, I turned around and climbed back up the hill to rejoin the red-blazed trail and then onward to the white-blazed “Adventure” loop.

The glacial erratic here is really cool! It’s huge and I imagine kids have a great time exploring its nooks and crannies. Again, if you start off clockwise from the parking area, you’ll hit this feature in just a few minutes. The signs along the way are cute, but they never last forever, so your mileage may vary.

This is a nice, relatively quick loop hike up here in Stafford. The hiker’s lot is huge, and I’m sure they’ll put the sign back up at some point as well.

Northern Connecticut Land Trust
CTMQ Hikes the NCLT Trails
CTMQ’s Nipmuck Woods Intro Page