Connecticut Travel

Valentine’s Day is around the corner. It is never too early to start looking for the perfect gift. If your special someone is a traveler, we have some very interesting gift ideas that we would like to share with you. Our gift suggestions are affordable and fun!

BraeVal – Named after the Scottish word for the Upland River Valleys that exist between the mountains and the rugged braes of the Scottish Highlands where streams and rivers tumble to loch and sea, these tartan shirts are perfect for travel. They are made from a technically advanced proprietary all-natural Tiera fabric with tartan patterns found nowhere else and details like red buffalo plaid around the neck and cuffs. These custom shirts for men and women with zippered security pockets, accessory loops on the pockets, and a vented bi-swing back travel well in the field or for a night out on the town. To check out the online store click here.

Norwalk Seaport Association Gift Card – If your special someone likes an on-the-water excursion or better yet, an authentic New England Clambake on a private island in Long Island Sound that includes a cruise, then pick up a Seaport Association Gift Card. The best part of this Gift Card is that your special someone can choose the excursion they like, and, better yet, the card never expires! The gift card can be used on a number of excursions from a romantic summer sunset cruise to an authentic New England Clambake on Sheffield Island. To order your gift card online click here.

Wigwam Escape – If your special someone loves puzzles, enjoys immersive experiences that challenge, and is a history buff then get a gift certificate to the award-winning Wigwam Escape Room at the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, Connecticut. In Wigwam Escape 1518, players learn how pre-contact Native Americans survived in Connecticut by solving a series of puzzles that connects players to the ways Native people lived and the skills that they relied on 500 years ago in their daily lives. To book the room, click here. All bookings are private and you will not share your time slot with other groups.

Milk House Chocolates -For traditionalists, Milk House Chocolates, in Goshen, voted the best in Connecticut is a must if you decided to give chocolates for Valentine’s Day. Each chocolate is connected to a very specific cow, with each cow’s milk making an unbelievable and delicious difference in the flavor of the chocolates. Milk House Chocolates brings you artisanal chocolates made in small batches with farm-fresh milk, butter, and creme, making them an excellent choice for the chocolate lover in your life. Shop online here.

Tours of Distinction – A Connecticut Tour Company in business since 1971 offers small group day trips, multi-day trips, international journeys, and small riverboat cruises throughout New England, the US, and Canada and all over the world. They are offering a series of special travel deals as well as a gift card, that will allow you to gift a travel experience whether it is to get away for a day or a week to that someone special. Travel is something precious. Its memories live with us forever. Gift cards are available in any denomination. For gift cards click here.

For art lovers, this is the chance to meet the visitors of John Taylor’s studio at the new exhibit opening on January 23 at the Fairfield Museum and History Center. Taylor was a prolific printmaker engraving copper plates with a simple sewing needle, John Taylor Arms was highly respected by his friends and fellow artists for his technical expertise as much as his amiable personality. Arms himself has been featured in a number of exhibitions that celebrate his precise engravings of European architecture, but this exhibition is the first to highlight Arms’ connection to other prominent figures in Connecticut. Helen Keller, Francis Luis Mora, Clare Leighton, and Thomas W. Nason all made their homes across the state, but made their mark right here in Fairfield by signing—and sometimes sketching—in John Taylor Arms’ studio guestbook. Learn more about the individuals and their relationship to Arms through artwork, photographs, archives, and objects.

“Visiting John Taylor Arms: A Master Printmaker and His Circle” runs from January 23 – April 24, 2022. The Fairfield Museum looks forward to sharing this story. The Fairfield Museum is located at 370 Beach Road, Fairfield, CT, and is open every day from 10am to 4pm. Admission for Museum Members is free, non-member adults are $5, students and seniors $3, and kids under 5 are free. Become a Fairfield Museum member for only $30 and enjoy free admission plus many other benefits.

Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo announced today an opportunity for the public to choose a name for the female baby Giant anteater born on June 15, 2021. In December, the Zoo received verification from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ (AZA) Anteater Advisory Group that the Giant anteater pup is a girl. Voters can go to the Zoo’s website at http://www.beardsleyzoo.org and choose from three names selected by the anteaters’ animal care staff. Voting begins on Thursday, January 13, and ends at noon on Friday, January 21.

The proposed names are:
Andarilho: Portuguese for “wanderer”
Corajosa: Portuguese for brave, bold, valiant
Chili: A small hot-tasting pod of a variety of capsicum, used in sauces and relishes.

Giant anteaters, unlike most mammalian species, are not easy to sex from their body size, color, and external genitalia. That the baby’s gender is female is welcome news for the species, as the population in Giant anteaters is skewed more heavily toward males than females.

“We couldn’t be happier that our Giant anteater baby is a girl, important for the continuation of this vulnerable species,” explained Zoo Director Gregg Dancho. “Now we’re asking the public to help choose her name. Voting is free on our website at beardsleyzoo.org.”

The baby, born after a 75-day gestation period, is increasingly independent. She occasionally rides on her mother’s back, but she spends more time on her own as she grows. In addition to nursing, she now is fed a mixture of grain and water in a smoothie, the same formulation given to her parents. At nine days old, the baby weighed 4.3 pounds. On December 21, she weighed 45 pounds.

This is the third Giant anteater baby born at the Zoo to third-time dad, E.O., and fourth-time mom, Pana. The pair was brought to Connecticut’s only Zoo with the hopes of successful breeding, which occurred for the first time in 2016.
Mochilla, the pair’s first offspring, is now in residence at Alexandria Zoo in Louisiana. The second-born, Tupi, is now at the Nashville Zoo in Tennessee.

The Giant anteater’s parents came to the Zoo from Palm Beach Zoo in Palm Beach, Florida. Both Pana and EO are twelve years old. They arrived in late May 2015 and are a highlight of the Pampas Plains habitat, which opened in August 2015.

About Giant Anteaters

Giant anteaters can live up to 26 years in human care and are usually solitary animals. They weigh up to 100 pounds and are five to seven feet long. Their home range is from southern Belize to northern Argentina, and they live in grasslands, humid forests, and woodland areas. Anteaters have one of the lowest body temperatures in the animal kingdom at 91 to 97 degrees Fahrenheit and can eat up to 30,000 ants per meal in the wild. The Latin name for anteater is Vermillingua, meaning “worm tongue,” which can be as long as two feet.

About Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo

Let your curiosity run wild! Connecticut’s only zoo, celebrating its 100thth year, features 350 animals representing primarily North and South American and Northern Asian species. Guests won’t want to miss our Amur tigers and leopards, maned wolves, Mexican gray wolves, and red wolves. Other highlights include our Spider Monkey Habitat, the prairie dog exhibit, and the Pampas Plain with Giant anteaters and Chacoan peccaries. Guests can grab a bite from the Peacock Café and eat in the Picnic Grove. Connecticut’s Beardsley Zoo is a non-profit organization celebrating its Centennial year when the mission of helping fragile wildlife populations and ecosystems is more important than ever.

Tickets must be purchased on the Zoo’s website at beardsleyzoo.org: we recommend that guests continue to wear masks while visiting the Zoo, but when guests are outside and are able to maintain social distance, masks may be removed. In any indoor area, or when social distancing cannot be maintained, masks are required. Everyone over the age of two, except for those with medical conditions that preclude wearing them, should have a mask available.

After the holidays, when the decorations are all put away, the cookies have been eaten, and the new toys have lost their novelty, moms and dads start looking for fun things to do with their kids. Here are our top five suggestions on what to do with kids that are fun and free in the Litchfield Hills.

Once a month for one week, White Memorial Foundation, the state’s largest nature sanctuary in Litchfield right off of Rte. 202 offers a museum-free week for kids. The January, Children’s Museum free week begins January 12 and runs through January 18th. This natural history museum is open Tuesday – Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This engaging facility features hand-painted and photographic murals, dioramas, a Children’s Corner, live animals, a working honeybee hive, a digital microscope, unique exhibits such as “The Art of Taxidermy,” and a fluorescent rock cave. For a challenge, try the museum scavenger hunt!

If you have a budding artist in the family head to the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield. The third Saturdays at The Aldrich are totally free for everyone and include family workshops from 10am to 3pm. Children 13 and under are free any day, with an admission-paying adult.

To explore the great outdoors, Flanders Nature Center on 5 Chruch Hill Road in Woodbury has a number of trails to explore for free. Walking the trails, kids will get a bonus because Flanders has planted several letterboxes on the family-friendly trails at their preserves and sanctuaries. Combining art and nature in a fun interactive way, letterboxing is a popular treasure hunting activity done worldwide. At Flanders, the letterboxing clues include educational comments about the natural world. Anyone who hikes at least twelve of the letterboxing trails at Flanders Nature Center and Land Trust, stamps the letters from those trails in their passport and presents their passport at the Flanders office will be given the opportunity to sign their Trail Name on our Letterboxer “Hall of Fame” board and will receive a small prize.

Explore the trails at the Sharon Audubon Center on Rte. 41 in Sharon to experience diverse wildlife habitats, which are home to a wide variety of plants, birds, and animals such as Bobcat, Beaver, River Otter, and Whitetail Deer. The Chestnut-sided Warbler, Ovenbird, and Wood Thrush, among other neotropical migratory birds, breed in our woods in the summer while many other migratory birds use the property as a layover point during their long migrations. Visitors are welcome to explore and enjoy our center’s trails and gardens and view the aviaries, daily from sunrise to sunset.

Participate in the Backyard Bird County sponsored by the Connecticut Audubon Society. Participating is easy, fun to do alone, or with others, and can be done anywhere you find birds. If you are new to bird watching download the Merlin Bird ID app to participate. For more information click here.
Step 1 – Decide where you will watch birds.
Step 2 – Watch birds for 15 minutes or more, at least once over the four days, February 18-21, 2022.
Step 3 – Count all the birds you see or hear within your planned time/location and use the best tool for sharing your bird sightings: