Before the sun starts setting any sooner than it is, I wanted to get an after-work hike in at Little River State Park so that’s what I chose to do for my OWA September outing.  It had been threatening rain and/or raining all afternoon so I wasn’t surprised when only one other person showed up, despite the sun now shining.  We waited a bit just to be sure and then set out on the trail.

We parked at the Nature Trail lot and walked up the road a bit to the Hedgehog Hill Trail.  It was a nice, gradual ascent through the woods for about a mile before we started seeing some historical artifacts.  Lots of farms were in the area in the mid-1800s and their remains are still around today: stone walls, tools, farming implements, fireplaces, cellar holes, etc. I love seeing that kind of thing in the woods!

We hiked up the Ricker Farm Trail with lots of stopping to see more old stuff.  There are a lot of new mountain bike trails running through the park that are not on the park map so it was a little confusing and we wandered a bit off of where we thought we were.  Eventually, we headed down the Dailey Loop Trail back to where we’d parked just before dusk.

As I was leaving the park, I drove by the Waterbury Dam and had to stop and back up, the clouds were so beautiful.  I stayed just a bit to watch the sun coming down.