1: Moss Glen Falls

We woke up super early to pack up our entire camp and drove 2.5 hours from Jamaica State Park to Moss Glen Falls. The sign that welcomes you in the parking lot says it’s the C.C. Putnam State Forest – Burt Hollow Block – Moss Glen Falls Natural Area.

The parking situation is a cul-de-sac trailhead lot within a neighborhood. You can also parallel park along the road right before getting to the lot.

There are two ways to view these falls: from the top and from the bottom.

To see the top, you take a relatively short walk on a steep-ish incline up an eroded hill. There’s a chain roping the area off and preventing you from falling downhill towards the falls. This is the place where everyone takes their photos so you’ll have to navigate around them and be patient in order to get yours. I personally butt-slid the way down because I have terrible downhill balance, but you do what you gotta do.

To see the bottom, you gotta do something a bit sketchier. The walk there starts out pretty fine, then it gets harder when you reach the large stream that the falls create. There is no clear path across the water and it’s a free-for-all to find your way across unstable rocks in the water, over a few boulders, and then to a slippery, moss-covered wall. Everyone was struggling (solidarity!), and honestly it might have been better to go shoeless in the water itself. I was alternating between horizontal butt-sliding and crawling sideways.

But that’s all easily forgotten when you get up close and personal with the falls which is right around the corner. It’s so gorgeous and the water collects in perfectly clear pools which are the beginning of the stream.

I could mull through the smooth river rocks for daaaaays. The rock below is probably my favorite rock of all time and I’m sad I couldn’t bring it home. How cool are those rings?! It’s a screenshot from a video so excuse the poor quality, I just really wanted to immortalize it here haha.

Anywaaay, then we drove 15 minutes or so to…

2: Warren Falls

Okay, so after returning home and looking at pics on Google, I realized we didn’t see the “actual” falls… oops… but we did visit a really relaxing cascade in this area. You can also go off of the boardwalk trail to explore on some boulders within the river, it’s amazing to see how the water has carved tea cups into them over time.

The “actual” falls is a really popular swimming spot for the locals here. And head’s up, the parking lot for this place was small and super crowded. There’s a porta-potty or two, FYI.

Then we checked in at our new home for the night at…

3: Little River State Park

I mentioned in my previous post that if Jamaica State Park was a small town, Little River State Park is more like a city with neighborhoods.

The campsites of people here were so well done with the cutest little personal touches and decorations. It seems like people stay here for a while, not just a day or two. The campground is based around the Waterbury Reservoir and it’s a really pretty place. We stayed at Site T58 on Loop A.

This was a regular ol’ tent site and it worked out great. The site has a picnic table and a fire ring with a grill top. They say there are bears in the area so we stored all of our trash and food inside of the car at night, but it didn’t seem like our neighbors cared much about it and we didn’t see any.

We backed up to a hill that lead to a private path down to the water, we could see the water through the trees from our tent and it created the best ambient noise as we slept.

Before heading out, we stopped to check out the Waterbury Reservoir up close and personal. The rocky shore here is deceptively steep.