Find out about all our Acorn Adventures and other events on our facebook events list!
Visit historic – and fun – Lebanon. Make your first stop the Lebanon Historical Museum, like we did during our Patriotic Acorn Adventure there in July, 2017! Take a look at what happened at our Acorn Adventure and all the photos on our facebook page!
Letterboxing is easy, fun, and a great way to spend time with your family & friends. The kids learn creativity, reading & following directions, and satisfaction in figuring out the clues! Take a look at our facebook album to see the fun we had at the Girl Scouts of Connecticut’s Camp Laurel in Lebanon.
Family fishing happens in The Last Green Valley! Every May our Acorn Adventure takes us to the CT State Trout Hatchery. We tour the building, then head over to the children’s fishing pond. Take a look at the other photos on our facebook album, and join us for Acorn Adventures each month.
SALAMANDERS! We love exploring and discovering with our Acorn Adventures, and the Salamander Searches are popular. A warm, sunny spring day welcomed us to the Salamander Search at Lake Siog, Holland. Stumps were rolled over, leaves were scattered and we found salamanders – and lots of skunk cabbage to sniff, too. This location is perfect for families, little legs, strollers, and even young bike riders or fishermen. What is better on a spring day in our National Heritage Corridor?! Hear the Acorns cheering for salamanders on our instagram page, and take a look at a few more photos on our Facebook page. Then bring your family & friends to the next Acorn Adventure!
A little snow didn’t stop us from trekking on a cloudy day looking for skunk cabbage, ferns and signs of spring on the Air Line Trail is Chaplin. As we walked, we passed a section of woods being harvested by our partners, Hull Forest Products, and we saw the Joshua’s Trust’s Two Sisters Tract Sanctuary signs, as this preserve borders the Air Line Trail. Check out our Acorns on Instagram singing how they love The Last Green Valley, and our Ranger photographer Brian Zoldak’s great pictures he gets of us having fun (like Blakey smelling the skunk cabbage before we left the parking lot!)
Our topic for our January 2017 Acorn Adventure was an Eagle Search & Lake Visit at Roseland Park. Can you say SUCCESS? We drove up and saw an eagle sitting at the northwest end of the lake! We hiked, 2 different trails in the park, saw a beaver (he slapped his tail at us), and enjoyed s’mores & hot chocolate afterwards. See all the photos in TLGV member, Brian Zoldak’s facebook album! We urge you to visit Roseland Park with your friends and family, because places like this make up The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor!
UConn’s Horsebarn Hill & UConn’s Dairy Bar were the setting for our December 2016 Acorn Adventure. The hill is fun to climb, and when you get to the top, the views are gorgeous everywhere you look! See all the photos in our facebook album! Then visit this spot in person!
Acorns LOVED the very family-friendly trails at the Tufts Branch Wildlife Sanctuary, a Dudley Conservation Land Trust preserve in Dudley, MA. FOUND: Red, blue & yellow trails, woods, a salamander under an old log, a big meadow to enjoy our snacks and to enjoy great views! It was a perfect day & a great place to visit often! See our photos from our November visit. You can bet it will look a lot different here in the spring and summer!
Acorns hiked the trail on the Rapoport/Spalding Preserve, Woodstock. All sorts of interesting things exist on this Wyndham Land Trust preserve, like mushrooms galore and lots of salamanders! See our photo album on facebook.
Acorns roamed the rails, trails, & rivers in Willimantic! Have you been to the CT Eastern Railroad Museum? You can go! Take a preview of the fun in our photo album for a glimpse of what you can see, do, explore!
Scavenger Hunt on the Killingly River Trail? YES! TLGV Acorns joined up with the Killingly Library, read “Treasure Hunt,” then enjoyed a scavenger hunt ourselves! Check out all of the photos here!
Acorns entered the woods and learned about reading maps, trail markers and hiking safety with Miss Jessi of the Holland Public Library. Quinebaug Woods in Holland was our destination, and it was wonderful! See our photo album here.
Acorns Celebrated Independence in Lebanon just after the 4th of July 2016, with a revolutionary & historic green tour! You can view all of the photos, here, but we urge you to visit this location with your family & friends. Be sure to visit the Lebanon Historical Society Museum when you go!
McKinstry Brook Trail – we hiked the North section on our Acorn Adventure in Southbridge in June 2016. Since we were exploring and looking for things on our scavenger hunt list, we didn’t stop to take tons of pictures, but you can sure see what a great wooded trail this is, and the brook is a bubbling delight, too. Check out all the photos we took here!
Check out the photos of our trails walk & fishing fun at the Quinebaug Valley Trout Hatchery visit! Did you know they have a kids only fishing pond there? They sure do! Click here to see the whole album!
Have you ever found a squirmy salamander? We found 15 of them on our Acorn Adventure at Lake Siog Pass and a nice vernal pool we found on our Salamander Story Walk with Miss Jessi from the Holland Library. Here are a couple of pictures, but see the entire album on our facebook page -> click here!
So many Acorns attended the Acorn Adventure at Morning Beckons Farm that Ranger Marcy had to rely of photos from the families! Thankfully lots of pictures were posted in the facebook event! Here are a few but be sure to see the rest. We got to enjoy the hard work of this farm and enjoyed some trails in The Last Green Valley 35 town National Heritage Corridor!
Enjoy the album from our February 2016 Acorn Adventure on the Air Line Trail and at Goodwin Forest in Hampton, CT! We looked for skunk cabbage, and found it along with another interesting thing, as the photo album will show you. You can bring a stroller, ride a bike, walk, jog, look for birds and a whole lot more here. Another great place in The Last Green Valley 35 town National Heritage Corridor!
Check out the album from our January 2016 Acorn Adventure at Roseland Park in Woodstock! If you have never been, the photo album will also give you a look at Roseland Lake. Fishing is good year-round, and that is why the eagles like to visit Roseland, too! A great place in The Last Green Valley 35 town National Heritage Corridor!
As an Acorn Club member, there is a lot of fun and adventure to have and lots of silly pictures to take. Check out our newest fun on the Flat Acorn page!
December 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at the West Thompson Lake/Dam recreation area, and it is a well-used place for explorers! Great for hiking, bike riding, paddling, fishing, walking your kids and/or your dog, flying a kite… plus they offer camping during the season, and much more. The focus of our Acorn Adventure was evergreens (learn about some evergreens here), a woods hike, and making pine cone bird feeders! What fun! Take a look at the photo album! You can see how to make pine cone bird feeders and also how to grow your own evergreen tree from the “seeds” hidden inside of pine cones! We can’t wait to see you at one of our upcoming Acorn Adventures! There’s 1 every month and we visit a different town each month in The Last Green Valley National Heritage Corridor. With 35 towns in our region, you will want to come back for every new Acorn Adventure!
November 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at the Pomfret Recreation Park in Pomfret. It is a wonderful place for a family to visit, with open fields for running & kite flying, as well as some hills for rolling down! We went to learn about turkeys, since November is a great month to gobble up turkey facts & look for turkey tracks. With a nice recently cut corn field on site, we knew some turkeys might visit there. Since Pomfret also has some nice trails through the woods, we shuffled through the leaves and strolled down the blue trail and to the Air Line Trail! Along the blue trail, we discovered the disc golf course, too! Visit the SEASONS page to get the turkey fact sheet, including how to make turkey cookies with your family! Here is our photo album from this Acorn Adventure in Pomfret, just one of our 35 towns in The Last Green Valley! Thanks to all the families that attended! YOU are invited to the next Acorn Adventure in December! FREE fun for the whole family!
September 2015’s Acorn Adventure was on the Quinebaug River Trail in Killingly. The topic was leaf identification and leaf art! The oak trees tried to confuse us right off the bat! There are many types of oak, some quite similar. Can you tell the difference between a black oak and a pin oak? The sassafras leaves were fun to find, since many of them look like mittens! A few different maples were found, but sadly we spotted a lot of poison ivy and bittersweet, too. The water in the River was very low since it has been so dry this summer. We explored and found tons more things along the way and gathered interesting looking ferns, leaves and wildflowers for our leaf art. Find some leaf art ideas on the GAMES page to make with your family! Here is our photo album from this Acorn Adventure in Killingly, just one of our 35 towns in The Last Green Valley! Visit this location often, as it is a wonderful place walk, ride a bicycle, walk your dog, or push the baby in a stroller! Thanks to all the families that attended! We can’t wait to see you at the next Acorn Adventure!
August 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at Wyndham Land Trust’s Lyon Preserve in Pomfret. We gathered before dusk to enjoy the rise of the full moon. It was tremendous! We split into 2 teams for a scavenger hunt finding wild grapes, bittersweet twisted around a tree, deer prints by the pond, milkweed, flying bats and more! After searching the trails and the pond, we toasted marshmallows, made s’mores, then acted out super-fun nature charades with fun facts about each subject. We learned a lot! Find the charades on the GAMES page to act out with your family! Here is our photo album from that evening in Pomfret, just one of our 35 towns in The Last Green Valley! Thanks to our member/volunteer Rangers Kevin & John for helping out, and to all the families that attended! We can’t wait to see you at the next Acorn Adventure!
July 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at Roseland Park in Woodstock. The topic was dragonflies and water lilies and Roseland Park was the perfect spot! Our scavenger hunt included dragonflies, kayak, wild blueberries, mushrooms, turtles and more! We found everything on the hunt, plus extras. The info sheet handouts compared dragon & damselflies and showed us what goes on over and under the water lilies. Find the sheets on the SEASONS page! Here is our photo album from that day of fun in Woodstock, just one of our 35 towns in The Last Green Valley! Thanks to our member/volunteer Rangers Kevin & Barbara for helping out, and to our members Brian, Alex & Dan for taking great photos!
June 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at the Leadmine Mountain Conservation Area in Sturbridge. Tadpoles and their new legs are what we were looking for, and we found them right away. Big fat bullfrog tadpoles were just sprouting their legs! Wow! Frogs, a musk turtle, an abandoned beaver dam, insects and salamanders were discovered, and we caught some sunfish, too! See and use the identification sheet we used on the SEASONS page! Here is our VIDEO from that day of fun in just one of our 35 towns in The Last Green Valley!
May 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at the Quinebaug Valley State Trout Hatchery. We saw tons of fish and learned how they are hatched and raised here, then used to stock almost the whole State of CT! Wow! That is a lot of work. We then walked over to the Children’s only fishing pond where the kids did some great fishing and cheered for each other every time someone reeled one in. Safe to say we are hooked on fishing in The Last Green Valley! See some trout facts on the SEASONS page!
April 2015’s Acorn Adventure was at Mansfield Hollow State Park searching for salamanders! We learned where to look and found insects, worms, 3 small salamanders and ONE BIG SPOTTED SALAMANDER! What fun! Find salamander facts on the SEASONS page!
The entire month of April 2015 was for hopping into spring with The Last Green Valley‘s 1st Annual Springtime Hopscotch Challenge! The trick was to make a hopscotch grid about The Last Green Valley, using 35 squares, one for each of the towns that make up The Last Green Valley. Here are some cool entries! One is in the shape of The Last Green Valley and it shows all the town names, too! The other is 35 kayaks paddling down the rivers! Let’s do this every year in April!
March 2015’s Acorn Adventure was along the Quinebaug River Trail in Putnam, CT. There was a lot of snow still on the ground, and some fell from the sky, too, and then the sun came out to brighten things up! We had a fun walk and learned all about eagles! See the SEASONS page for some fun and important eagle facts. 
These are a few things we saw on our February 21, 2015 Acorn Adventure at Buffumville Lake in Charlton, MA (right on the Oxford, MA town line). We learned about Groundhogs (Woodchucks) and Beavers! See the SEASONS page for all of the fun facts about these animals. Find out about our upcoming Acorn Adventures on our facebook events listings!
Woodpecker Tree! What a snack!
The woodchucks/groundhogs ready to go!
This beaver came out to meet me!
Busy beavers have been busy!
Meet Rexy the Dinosaur. He is living at the Killingly Library right now, in February 2015, and he is wearing Green Lights to celebrate The Last Green Valley’s fun Green Light Celebration that is from February 15 – March 17 each year! Benny the Dog also likes to wear Green Lights! Do you have any Green Lights glowing at your house?
Ranger Marcy’s Acorn Adventure “Try the Tri-State Marker”, January 25, 2015:
Do you know what kind of bird this is? Hint: They are known to say “WHOOOOOOO” a lot!
Here is a bird that might come to your bird feeder. They are easy to spot in the winter, since there are no leaves on the trees. This bird is a “Tufted Titmouse”. Notice his head, which has a little tuft on it! You can make a nice bird feeder for him and his whole family. Check out the SEASONS page here, and scroll down to see how you can make a pine cone bird feeder.
The Last Green Valley visits Camp Nahaco with the Enviroscape, which is available to visit your school, too! Find out more about the Enviroscape here.
Paddling is one of the fun things to do in The Last Green Valley, especially in the SUMMER!
