2024 marks my eighth annual review for ExploreCT. What a year! Thank you all for taking the time to read and use the site. My hope is that ExploreCT continues to inspire you to get out exploring the state whether you’re hiking, biking, birding, or beyond!
My top recommended hikes of 2024:
- The Jericho Trail is such an underrated blue blaze trail
- The waterfall trail and bald eagle from the overlook at Peoples State Forest
- The route through the rocks at Broomstick Ledges
Stats
I’m at 29.5% of the state explored, that’s a five percent increase over last year. 581 of 1,972.
- 100% of Windham County
- 100% of Tolland County
- 40% of New London County
- 31% of Middlesex County
- 25% of Hartford County
- 11% of Litchfield County
- 9% of New Haven County
- 2% of Fairfield County
I explored 155 locations this year, 91 new to me and 64 I’d been before. Added 116 locations to the map. If I sustained this level for the next 11 years I’d “finish” the site. Anybody want to pay me to do it faster?
Blog Summary
- Completing Tolland County – Reflections on my second county completion
- Finishing the NET – The New England Trail deserves some time in the spotlight and recognition akin to the Appalachian Trail
- The Great Recession of 2024 – I broke the site to make it stronger and tested out a new look for the site
- Ode to Trail Designers – Wrote a poem on gratitude for those who care for the trails, the trials of maintenance, and beauty and benefit thanks to those who do
Looking Back at 2024
What Went Well
- I hit my goals. I did a couple sprints adding locations, I had my biggest exploration year yet. I finished Tolland County. I hiked the Connecticut section of the New England Trail. I only came up short on the movies. I’d committed to doing 12 and I made 5, but one of them was over an hour long soo half a point.
- The master list is really rounding out. Last year I pulled it together, this year I pulled in the easier to find data on about 1,000 of the explorable locations. The last half will be much harder, online resources don’t exist for many of these which means boots on the ground and digging through records. But the list now tracks over 5,000 miles of trails and about 244,000 acres of conserved land. This means the state has conservatively 7500 miles of hiking trails! For comparison, the border of Connecticut is roughly 322 miles. You could hike around the border of the state 23 times or from Hartford to New Haven 192 times
- I’m finally putting some real work into a 2.0 version of the site, something I talked about even back in my first annual review. The current one is chock full of good stuff sure, but it’s still a bit dated and lacking features that would really push this thing forward. So I’ve been messing with programming my own (picture below) or just modifying the current to refresh the look and functionality.
What Didn’t Go Well
- The great recession really slowed things down. It was a tough call to make. It kept the site slimmer in total size at the cost of lower quality images and ate at least a couple months of my attention that could have been invested in so many other things
- The Community space is pretty quiet in its first year. It’s rich in features and provides so much possible value (comment on trails, upload your own photos, organize group hikes) but I didn’t do anything to show that to others and just crossed my fingers for organic growth, build it and they will come so to speak.
- The first time the site didn’t grow viewers wise. The site had about 40,000 fewer visits this year compared to last year. This is not necessarily bad since I don’t care about eyeballs for ads, just significant after 7 years of strong upward growth. I think my largest value to you is the completeness of my map and the first-hand accounts so spend most of my energy there, but know there are other perspectives on growth.
Looking Forward to 2024
- I commit to hiking the CT section of the Appalachian Trail, release 6 Daypacks to exploreCT+ members, 3 town summary videos, double the points on the map to about 1200 (just as incomplete placeholders), and perhaps complete the 2.0 version of the site
- I attended the Sky’s the Limit Challenge First Day event and got a sneak preview of this year’s theme – ‘Cross Your Trees and Dot Your Skies’ where the hiking locations will create the outline of the DEEP shield on the map of CT!
Time for me to sign off and turn all this talk into action, let’s see where 2025 can take us, follow along, support the site, or join in the fun.
Happy New Year and happy exploring!