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What's within a tank of gas?
Day AdventuresGroton & Mystic, CT
Day Adventure: Groton & Mystic
A real nuclear submarine (free), lunch by a drawbridge that performs on the hour, the best ice cream timing trick in Connecticut, and a bookstore with goats on the way home. The eastern cluster, assembled.
Day AdventuresBranford, CT
Day Adventure: Branford
A boat tour through an archipelago of tiny pink-granite islands with pirate-treasure legends, a village that time forgot, seafood-shack lunch, and ice cream on the green. Episode three goes to the shoreline.
Family AdventuresMontville (Oakdale), CT
The Dinosaur Place
Over forty life-size dinosaurs on wooded trails, a splash pad, and a maze. For the dinosaur-phase years, this is the promised land, and it's an hour from home.
MuseumsGroton, CT
Submarine Force Museum & USS Nautilus
You walk through an actual nuclear submarine. The first one ever built, the one that went under the North Pole. It's free. I don't know what else you need to hear.
BeachesEast Lyme, CT
Rocky Neck State Park
A half-mile crescent of calm, shallow water, a 1930s stone pavilion that looks like a castle, and trains rumbling over the marsh. The little-kid beach, perfected.
Family AdventuresNorton Park, Plainville, CT
Plainville Hot Air Balloon Festival
Hot air balloons at dawn, a balloon glow at dusk, fireworks over a small-town park, and a giant slide in between. One weekend a year, and it's free to walk in.
MuseumsOrange, CT
PEZ Visitor Center
The PEZ factory is in Orange, Connecticut, fifteen minutes from home, and you can watch the candy get made under the world's largest collection of dispensers. This is not a drill.
Family AdventuresMystic, CT
Mystic Aquarium
Beluga whales you watch nose-to-glass, penguins with personal drama, and the whole of Mystic waiting outside the gates. The big-ticket day, done right.
BeachesMadison, CT
Hammonasset Beach State Park
Two miles of beach, a boardwalk that goes forever, a free nature center with touch tanks, and a campground big enough to make a whole weekend of it.
State ParksEast Haddam, CT
Gillette Castle State Park
A stone castle built by the actor who played Sherlock Holmes, with 47 weird doors, a lost railroad, a 75-foot train tunnel, and a river ferry to get there. Connecticut's best make-believe is real.
Weekend Road TripsEssex, CT
Essex Steam Train & Riverboat
A real steam locomotive up the Connecticut River valley, then a riverboat past Gillette Castle. For a train-phase kid this is not a day trip, it's a pilgrimage.
State ParksRocky Hill, CT
Dinosaur State Park
Two hundred million year old dinosaur tracks, in the rock, under a dome, and you can cast your own to take home if you bring the supplies. The real half of Connecticut's dinosaur pair.
WaterfallsEast Haddam, CT
Devil's Hopyard State Park
A 60-foot waterfall, perfectly round potholes in the rock that colonial farmers blamed on the devil, and a name kids will not stop saying. Pairs with Gillette Castle for the full East Haddam day.
Day AdventuresShelton, CT
Day Adventure: Shelton
A waterfall on the Housatonic, a proper deli sandwich, farm ice cream, and a pick-your-own farm that changes with the seasons. One town, one tank of gas barely touched.
Day AdventuresDerby & Ansonia, CT
Day Adventure: Derby & Ansonia
Valley episode two: a free nature center with animal ambassadors, a riverwalk along two rivers, apizza that outranks its zip code, and a state park most of the state forgot. Ten minutes from Shelton, all of it.
State ParksKillingworth, CT
Chatfield Hollow State Park
A covered bridge, a swimming pond, and a hillside of rock caves kids can actually scramble into. The park nobody outside Killingworth talks about, which is exactly the point.
Hidden GemsNiantic (East Lyme), CT
The Book Barn & the Niantic Boardwalk
An outdoor used bookstore with resident cats and goats, a mile of boardwalk over the beach, and ice cream in between. The most un-Google-able great Saturday in Connecticut.
Family AdventuresBridgeport, CT
Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo
The state's only zoo, twenty minutes from home: tigers, a rainforest building, a working antique carousel, and the exact right size for little legs.
MuseumsCheshire, CT
Barker Character, Comic & Cartoon Museum
A museum in Cheshire stuffed floor to ceiling with cartoon history: PEZ dispensers, lunchboxes, California Raisins, and every character your kids' grandparents grew up on. The ultimate rainy-day wildcard.
WaterfallsSouthbury, CT
Southford Falls State Park
Twenty minutes from home, a covered bridge, a waterfall, and a pond full of turtles. The lowest-effort win in the rotation.
Easy HikesHamden, CT
Sleeping Giant State Park
A mountain shaped like a sleeping giant, a gravel road a four-year-old can climb, and a stone castle at the top. This one sells itself.
BeachesMilford, CT
Silver Sands State Park
A boardwalk over the marsh, a beach that doesn't require a highway drive, and a sandbar that appears out of the ocean twice a day like a magic trick.
WaterfallsKent, CT
Kent Falls State Park
A 250-foot waterfall you can walk almost the whole way up, and the kids won't stop talking about it for a week.