Hacklebarney State Park
It's been more than five years since we hiked this unique state park, unique in that it is peppered all over with picnic tables, benches and defunct water fountains in the most inaccessible places. It's also unique in that there are some very rugged stretches along three beautiful waterways: the Black River, Trout Brook, and Rhinehart Brook. You're not far from water anywhere in this park, and you can see it (especially in the winter) at least half of the time.

We parked in the huge lot. When we drove in the lot was completely empty. We thought we had the entire park to ourselves. As our luck would have it, the moment we got out of the car another car drove in and parked about 20 feet from us! No other cars arrived in the next 10 minutes while we got ready and used the restrooms. We headed on the main trail and then took the steps down to Red, staying on Red until it's very end on the western edge of the park. The trail along the raging Black River here is spectacular. When red ended we took Yellow, climbing the hill with Rhinehart Brook far beneath us on our left. At the end of Yellow we made a sharp right on White (the main park trail, which is paved) and took that to the Blue trail. We stayed on the Blue trail, crossing over Trout Brook and took Blue all the way to its end at the eastern edge of the park, where it ends at Red. We were here near the beginning of the hike. We then backgracked on Blue to Trout Brook and hopped rocks keeping the brook to our left until we reached the waterfall. We crossed over Trout Brook on the wooden bridge and continued following Blue to the main trail which we took back to the car.

Total distance today was 4.2 miles in just over 2.5 hours.

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