Kimball Rally
Kimball Trail, Ellington
April 2019 & September 2026
In 2025, a spur trail was appended on to the Kimball Loop. While I was “cleaning up” a few things in Ellington to be able to call the town “complete,” I figured pop over and walk this short little addition. As you’ll see, I’m quite glad I did.
2019
The Kimball Trail in the Kimball Forest is on the south side of Hopkins Road in Ellington. Those of you who are familiar with hiking in this area probably know Hopkins Road already. The Shenipsit Trail uses it for a bit at its eastern end.
Hopkins Road is indeed a dirt road for its eastern half, but remember that we’re in Ellington. Dirt roads are prevalent here. In fact, I think I wrote a decade ago that I’d never seen so many nice, large houses on dirt roads as I saw hiking the Shenipsit in Ellington. It’s probably still true.
There is a very nice (and new, in late 2018) giant kiosk and wooden signs out here in the hinterlands. Someone – I see here it was the Zurawek Family – put a lot of effort into this thing. I looked at the lovely map on the board and set off into the rapidly greening spring woods.
The Kimball Trail is a single loop, squeezed between Hopkins Road and the much busier Crystal Lake Road (route 140). It goes down a hill, across Kimball Brook via the so-called Key Bridge, along the stream, across it again via the Treasure Bridge, along it some more, then winds it way back to where you parked your car.
It’s… a little bit absurd. But it’s absurdity is why it’s somewhat interesting. The town had some woodsy property and some well-meaning someone decided to make a trail in it. This well-meaning someone is very keen on creating so many wholly unnecessary twists and turns over the course of the trail and it boggles the mind.
But I get it; you have a small parcel and want to put a trail in it, so you maximize the “mileage” to the best of your ability. Plus, it is kind of fun I suppose.
It is also over-blazed to the point of ridiculousness. This entire trail is supposedly two-thirds of a mile (probably less) that could have been maybe a third of a mile if it was just a quick loop. It’s like when you were younger and you had to write an essay and you used a large font with big margins to make it look like you did more than you did because no way do teachers notice that.
My point is that the trail designer here “padded” the mileage with all sorts of added turns and curls. But that wasn’t the real issue to me.
There is a lot of poorly constructed side-hilling as well as random tromps through seasonal swamps for no real reason. The two bridges are quite nice though. If this trail was even moderately trafficked, it would probably degrade to a mess quite quickly.
Alas, it is likely only rarely walked. Sometimes I like silly trails. I’m not sure driving out to a dirt road in Ellington is worth the silliness, but maybe it is for you. I hope so.
2026
Geeze, 2019 me why did you have to be so critical? Taking the joy out of a fun little loopy loop trail? A loopy loop trail that now has a loopy spur off of it?
Hopkins Road is still unpaved on its eastern half, but it’s perfectly fine to drive on.
A commenter let me know a couple years ago that a trail had been cleared and blazed that extended the Kimball Trail northeast to act as a sort of connector to the Shenipsit Trail. And I guess it does serve that function, but I just don’t see too many Kimball hikers continuing on the Shenipsit.
(The commenter, for what it’s worth, said he left the Shenipsit to do the Kimball loop, so that happened at least once.)
There’s a kiosk at this trailhead as well and off I set, down the hill towards the original trail. Ever wondered what a peach-blazed trail looks like? Here you are:
I’m not so sure that’ll be easy to see at dawn or dusk. Which is mildly problematic because this trail isn’t super cleared. Oh, they’ve tried, but with the abundance of rocks and ferns and stuff, it’s tough.
I’m guessing the same folks are behind this spur trail as the original, as it wends a bit more than is necessary to reach its goal. There’s a nice bridge and it again travels close to Route 140, but hey, it’s nice enough.
I reached the original loop and poked around a bit, and I can report it remains unchanged from 2019. I turned tail and headed back up the hill to my car. There’s an entirely unnecessary loop that parallels Hopkins Road. You can see the road and if you used the car pull-out for this spur trail, you can hit it with a rock if you want.
And, in fact, the eastern turn of the loop is past your car. In other words, why in the world would you do this unless you were trying to get a few extra steps in?
I don’t know what compelled me to walk every inch of this trail – a trail that I really had no reason to hike in the first place. But I did. And along that stretch of extra 20-feet of walking, I found this:
Cool. I walked around the bushes to my car and thought to myself, “that bill looked like it was wadded with other bills. Let’s look on this side of those bushes.” And voila, more money.
It pays to hike every trail.
Ellington Town Trails maps
CTMQ hikes Ellington’s Town Trails
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