Happy New Year! I hope all of your holiday celebrations were festive and safe. Kevin and I may be back in Colorado after our extended northeast adventure, but I’m still making my way through the photos I took while on hiatus. While most of our vacation days were filled with family obligations and last-minute lunches with friends, Kevin and I did manage to have a few moments to ourselves. In honor of my first photo of the week installment of 2017, I’m sharing a photo I snapped on New Year’s Day. Since my family always has low-key New Year’s, Kevin and I took advantage of the calm and spent a few quiet hours in the late afternoon hiking at Bluff Point State Park in Groton, Connecticut. And what a lovely impulse decision that was, as you can tell by this week’s featured photograph!
We spent about two hours walking around the park; we didn’t expect to still be hiking at sunset, but alas, some of the best travel moments are those that can’t be planned. In an otherwise rainy, grey, and generally blah week in Connecticut, our visit to Bluff Point just happened to coincide with one spectacular sunset. What a way to kick off 2017, am I right?
I’ve visited Bluff Point many times before; I grew up only thirty minutes from the park, and spent my first two years of my undergraduate career at UConn’s Groton campus. I have fond memories of strolling through the park with friends, an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen in hand. Earlier in 2016, I visited the park with the sole purpose of photographing it for this blog – you can find the resulting article here and the photo gallery here – but our New Year’s Day hike was simply about spending a few hours in nature. I love how accessible Bluff Point is, making it the perfect outdoorsy escape for anyone in southeastern Connecticut!
For the first time in two years, Kevin and I start 2017 with absolutely no plans to travel abroad. My passport is collecting is a serious layer of dust, so I do hope this changes sooner rather than later. I keep pushing Latin America, but we’ll see. Castles were travel fixation last January (cured by a lovely few days spent meandering around Scotland) while pyramids and other Native American archaeological sites have captured my interest this year.
