Staycation Secrets: New Book Reveals Fun Places To Go Throughout State

“I should have done all these things with my kids. Now I’ll do them with the grandkids.”

The ​“things” to which Ann Kuhlman, recently retired from 25 years in international education at Yale, was referring to included the national historic site at 18^th century Old New-Gate Prison in East Granby, with its deep copper mine where prisoners as young as 14 were shackled 72 feet below the ground.

“Things” also referred to watching millions of swallows pirouette to sleep at sunset on the Connecticut River near Old Lyme. And visiting the ​“Museums on the Green,” an historic school house, barbershop, residence, and tobacco barn all gathered for easy viewing cheek by jowl on the East Windsor Green.

They were some of Connecticut’s scenic and lesser-known destinations featured in a charming book talk Sunday by Sarah Cody, until recently WTNH’s travel and tourism correspondent. 

The event drew 25 sun-hat-wearing listeners to the grassy front yard of the New Haven Museum’s Pardee-Morris House in the East Shore.

Written with heart and a focus on accessibility for people with disabilities, Cody’s book, Around Every Corner of Connecticut: 100 Towns to Explore Every Season, is just that, 69 towns short of being what would be a comprehensive guide to all the cities and burgs in the Nutmeg State. (Hartford is there but not Hebron, Collinsville but not Colchester.)

Organizing her material around the four seasons, Cody does hits every corner of the state with animated portraits, and interviews with officials.

There’s also entertaining side gab of how her two travel-companion sons like to touch every single furry animal at Bushy Hill Nature Center in Deep River.

New Haven’s art and natural history treasure houses at Yale — especially the recently renovated Yale Peabody Museum — made the cut of 100. So did Hamden with its panoramic Tower Trail to the top of Mount Carmel in Sleeping Giant State Park.

I was particularly moved by Cody’s descriptions of the Pandemonium Rainforest Project, also in Deep River, which was once the center of the ivory trade in America. There founder Allison Sloane has, with compassionate irony, converted a 12,000 square-foot-old tusk factory, a symbol of cruelty to elephants and despoliation of the environment, into a complex that, among other goals, is an animal sanctuary.

Also intriguing is the American Mural Project (AMP) in Winsted. There, in yet another old factory building (we have to love this state resource!), Ellen Griesedieck has choreographed what Cody’s guide says is the largest indoor collaborative piece of artwork in the world.

School kids, local farmers, and groups of all kinds make their contributions of visual vignettes. Cody has integrated them with materials that range from marble to kelp into a single five-story-high mural that is all about the American Dream. Both the mural and the dream remain works in continuing aspirational progress.

Cody recently began a new career as director of public relations for Middlesex Health. If life and her adventures permit, she has a second book already percolating in her. That, of course would be the 69-town sequel.

Click here for listings of future events at the Pardee-Morris House.