Hikers don’t lose sleep wondering if they can handle Sleeping Giant. There are harder and easier trails winding through its woods, but the whole mountain seems eminently manageable. Kids dig it. So do dogs (on leashes).

You might think of climbing Sleeping Giant as a weekend leisure activity, and indeed there are swarms of folks marching gleefully up the hilly ramps on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But on an average weekday you’ll find a similar outdoorsy mix of families, dogwalkers, strolling philosophers, outdoor iconoclasts, snow-deprived cross-country skiiers and just plain hikers. The park is an easy respite for, say, Quinnipiac University workers on their lunch breaks, which lends a new meaning to the phrase “higher learning.” It’s a delightful invitation for drivers to pull off the highway and take a break.

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The main path, or “Tower Path,” up Sleeping Giant is wide, flat, clear, so smooth in places that it seems virtually combed and brushed. Most of this path is not fundamentally different from a city sidewalk. It’s a strong, firm vantage point from which to look at trees (both upright and fallen), rises, depressions, natural streams, rocks, an abundance of plants and—peeking through the treetops, enlarging its scope as you ascend gradually higher—clear blue skies.

At Sleeping Giant, there’s an easy identifiable target you can walk towards: the “castle,” a stone observation tower on what is considered to be the reclining giant’s “left hip”—which, at 739 feet, is the highest point of the Giant. The tower was constructed as a Works Progress Administration project during the 1930s. It’s a thrill, after a brisk and only mildly taxing hike, to ascend the multi-storied tower and stare out through the cobweb-shaped iron railings on its windows at the Quinnipiac River Valley.

Like most hiking trails, the Tower Path offers isolation and time for reflection in a setting unsullied by modern urban obstacles. But the path is also imbued with a special sense of community, with occasional benches and monuments placed to honor those who made this wilderness traversable for others. There’s a plaque in honor of Edgar Laing Heermance (1876-1953), responsible for the “blue blazed hiking trails.” And how about this dramatically phrased sign?:

Down the precipice opposite this spot, fell on June 18, 1875, the twelve year old lad who fifty-five years later led the Sleeping Giant Park Association in its victorious campaign to silence the quarry and to give this head, free and clear, to the public as an essential part of our monumental state park. Attempting the descent with Arnold Dana were his companions George Woolsey and George and William Fisher.

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Sleeping Giant is walked and enjoyed by countless feet every week. There are also those who tread more knowingly and volunteer to contribute to the park’s upkeep. At 1:30 p.m. this Sunday, May 19, the third of eight scheduled “work parties” is being thrown by the Sleeping Giant Park Association (SGPA) Environmental Stewardship Committee. The purpose of the work parties is to identify and “suppress” invasive plant species in the park. This involves a bit of training, surveys and work gloves. It’s knowledge you can bring home to your own yard and garden, so you can avoid making invasive species spread more widely by not planting or encouraging them.

Sleeping Giant is a state park, but the SGPA provides additional support, including the buying up of land to add to it. According to the group’s literature, they’ve been acquiring extra land for the park, which currently runs to 1500 acres, since 1924. The SGPA also leads hikes, organizes special projects, publishes a newsletter, and prints and maintains brochures and other information available in a kiosk at the base of the mountain, along with running an online “trading post” offering books, T-shirts, patches and other items promoting the Giant.

Many of the association’s books and pamphlets further the indomitable legends which have swirled around this mystical piece of land which continues to command the attention of untold skygazers and motorists daily. The most enduring one describes Hobomock, a massive spiritual figure who began as a bringer of harmony and peace to all peoples but turned into a vengeful and obstreperous type who diverted rivers on a whim. The wayward spirit was subdued by a nicer spirit, Keitan, using a sleeping potion slipped into Hobomock’s oyster dinner. The Giant (who in another legend is credited with slaying a destructive and humongous beaver, so that the animal was essentially fossilized into becoming the shape of the Sugarloaf mountain range in Massachusetts) remains in a somnolent state, despite all those hikers tickling his tummy on a regular basis.

There are more modern legends as well: how in the late 1800s, in the wake of back-to-the-land treatises such as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, land-owners built cottages and carriage roads in parts of the park, and how local citizens rose up in fury when a local traprock company began blasting away cherished bits of the mountain in the early 20th century. That conservationist zeal led to the Sleeping Giant Park Association, to a continued and well-deserved dirt nap for Hobomock and to lovely walks through the gorgeous green parklands at Sleeping Giant State Park.

Sleeping Giant State Park
200 Mt. Carmel Avenue, Hamden (map)
Open daily from 8am to sunset.
State Park Website | Sleeping Giant Park Association Website

Written and photographed by Christopher Arnott.

The F6 bus route is a trip that traverses several cultures in a matter of miles: city culture, road culture and suburban shopping plaza culture.

’Twas not always thus. Derby had a strong identity as a factory town. Corsets and hoop skirts were manufactured there. Comic book superheroes—Blue Beetle, E-Man and others—flew out of the Charlton Publications printing and distribution empire from the mid-1940s into the late ’90s.

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New Haven had been a lot of different things, but in the first half of the 20th century the city asserted itself particularly as an ivy league university town.

What connects these disparate cities now? A road that bears both their names. And the lone bus that lopes along it like a stagecoach of yore.

For a buck-thirty, the F6 will bring you past a lot of shops and office buildings and fast food emporiums. You’ll also see one of the landmarks of city transit, the Yale Bowl. Any montage of photos of the golden age of trolley travel in the city has an obligatory shot of dozens of students hanging off the sides of a streetcar headed to the Bowl for a Bulldogs football game.

There’s virtually no foot traffic in the area these days, but looking out the bus windows you can see the world of pizza shops and package stores that grew up around the neighborhood. You can also glimpse the New Haven Open tennis tournament venue which was added to the sports mecca of the Yale Bowl and Walter Camp Field. Other outdoorsy delights you can glimpse from the comfy confines of the F6 are the environmentally focused Barnard School and the lush slopes of Evergreen Cemetery.

Ride farther and you’ll pass the cheery balloon-shaped sculptures outside the Nissan dealership in West Haven, and the Daiko Japanese restaurant.

As the route winds further down Derby Avenue, the landscape shifts to secluded residential areas. You’ll notice barns that were long ago converted to car garages. Reaching right back to the road’s rural roots, there are whole stretches of quiet, desolate woodland.

The scene on the bus is quite a bit livelier. A recent ride saw some animated conversations, some head-bobbing to iPods, even a discreet diaper change. Folks are helpful, polite, social.

Some are going to shop at Walmart Plaza, which also features a lot of shops much smaller  than Walmart; the plaza is still listed on the bus schedules under its old name, the Orange Derby Shopping Center. (Perhaps orange Derby hats are no longer in fashion, hence the change.) A few hundred yards further down New Haven Avenue there’s a large Lowe’s Home Improvement store (ever brought a bathroom sink home on a bus?). Some are switching transportation options at the Derby Railroad station, which is actually just mid-route in the long F6 ride, which leaves New Haven Green 16 times a day between 6 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Beyond Derby, the F6 brings you to parts of Shelton, Ansonia and Seymour. Twice a day, on the 6 a.m. and 3:13 p.m. runs, you can request that the driver take you out as far as Seymour’s Silvermine Industrial Park.

On a recent snowy mid-day Monday, the F6 (and its counterpart in the other direction, the trusty old F4) was the only bus of any kind seen tooling up the turnpike around those Walmart and Lowe’s plazas (an area which is also the home of Heav’nly Donuts, the Valley Diner restaurant, a classic IGA supermarket and dozens of small businesses and professional offices). To cross the road to get to the bus stop, a foot of icy snow had to be chipped away from where it covered the “Walk” button on the lightpost. This was over a week after the snow had fallen. Other stops on the route are clearly more regularly used, but there’s no mistaking that cars rule the road, which only makes those few buses and their mission more important.

Bus culture in New Haven is a glorious thing. It’s centered at the ornate metal shelters right in front of New Haven Green. It extends beyond our capacity to walk, to places where we might need to work, or shop, or visit an orthodontist. It brings New Haveners together, and takes them further. And it connects our close-knitted past of tight neighborhoods and city boundaries to those cities (including Derby, the state’s smallest municipality) that grew up around us.

Not bad for $1.30.

Written and photographed by Christopher Arnott.

Do you: (a) utter a few—ahem—colorful phrases; (b) fume over the infuriating nature of traffic; or (c) vow to never fly again because it’s just too stressful?

Maybe all of the above. On the other hand, if you were a regular at Tweed New Haven Airport—someone who flies in and out on a weekly basis, perhaps—you might simply call the gate when you’re running behind, hoping that the pilot will hold the plane.

It’s not that the airport encourages this behavior, exactly. But the fact that it happens at all goes to show that flying out of Tweed is not your run-of-the-mill travel experience. Long lines? Never. Open parking spots? Always. Wi-Fi? Sure.

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Of course, being on a first-name basis with the guy who issues your boarding pass has a lot to do with Tweed’s size and restricted flight schedule. The airport—located on the edge of New Haven’s Morris Cove neighborhood, with the New Haven/East Haven town line going right down the main runway—offers just four departing commercial flights and four accompanying arrivals: U.S. Airways to Philadelphia. Using Philly as a connecting hub, travelers can get virtually anyplace in the world.

It’s still a limited roster, admits Tweed’s Executive Director Tim Larson, though it could be getting bigger soon. “We’re in the process of evaluating our business,” he says in his office at the top of a retired airport tower. It’s an excellent spot for watching planes land, which he enjoys doing, complete with a pair of binoculars.

It’s also where Larson, who was Mayor of East Hartford for 8 years and is currently a state representative, spends time communicating with airline carriers about bringing new options to New Haven’s only airport. Even though flights can be pricey—earlier this month, a search for one-way flights from Tweed to Philly in late January included no choices less than $500 for a one-way ticket, although there are deals to be found booking farther in advance and looking at connecting to multiple destinations—planes are usually pretty full, which indicates that there’s room to grow.

Growth would actually be a return to Tweed’s roots. Originally called the New Haven Municipal Airport (then renamed after Jack Tweed, who served for 30 years as Tweed’s first manager, in 1961), the airport was once a much busier place. Commercial carriers including Air Canada, Delta and United ran direct flights to a number of destinations. But that business dried up in the early 2000s as the airline industry struggled, Larson says.

He’s hoping to bring some of it back to Tweed. First on the list is a direct flight to D.C., which he thinks would be particularly popular.

Even if that expansion happens, Larson assures me that the airport will retain its current feel. The miniature terminal has its one coffee stand (which seems to close when there aren’t many people around) and a decidedly stress-free vibe when compared with the big league airports, where navigating the packed departure curb is an exercise in anger management on its own. For comparison, the smiling, relaxed gentleman behind the counter at Tweed told me that my car would be just fine in the “drop-off” parking area for a little while.

Clearly, Tweed’s size allows for more personal attention and accommodation than we’re used to. The small administrative staff, which includes Manager Lori Hoffman-Soares and Assistant to the Manager Diane Jackson, reportedly goes far beyond its duties—shoveling snow on the runway, for instance, when needed. At the same time, Tweed’s security protocol is exactly the same as a major airport’s.

In addition to commercial flights, there’s a busy charter service out of the airport, lending runways to the Coast Guard, Yale’s air ambulance service and Angel Flight (an association of private pilots arranging free transportation for those needing medical treatment), and occasionally receiving planes carrying political or other important figures.

There has, expectedly, been some resistance from nearby residents in response to rumors of growth. Larson says their perspectives are being taken into account. It’s hoped that a recent noise study conducted at nearby homes will result in federal money to help insulate neighbors from a future escalation in airport-related noise. Larson is also looking for grant money to build a raised walking trail around Tweed, giving residents and visitors an attractive place to stroll or jog, with a close-up view of those airplanes.

Tweed New Haven Airport
155 Burr Street, New Haven (map)
(203) 466-8833
www.flytweed.com

Written and photographed by Cara McDonough.

Still, for me, the Study at Yale’s most compelling aspect is less about the facilities and more about the feeling.

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When I enter and approach the front desk, ready to introduce myself and inquire about writing this story, I’m stopped mid-sentence. “It’s Nora’s mom!” one of the women exclaims. Despite the constant turnover inherent to the hotel business, they remembered me from several months back, when I visited family staying there. My young daughter, screaming gleefully, had scampered from the lobby to the hostess stand at the restaurant about a million times while the friendly staff—to my relief—looked on with laughter.

“How are the kids?” asks Felicia Puccino, the Front Office Manager. “You have two now, right?” Right.

The hotel opened in 2008, making it downtown New Haven’s newest (joining The Omni, Courtyard by Marriott and New Haven Hotel). Despite its youth, or maybe because of it, the place is comfortable enough with its class to get a little clever. Bellmen, for example, wear collegiate attire: rugby shirts and baseball caps.

The uniforms still echo the, well, studious theme of the establishment, and they’re not alone. A sculpted pair of oversized eyeglasses adorns the front steps, and tall bookshelves in the sitting area house a collection of literature, non-fiction and large art books, including works penned and donated by hotel guests.

Those guests often enough vary between Connecticut natives looking for a “night away” to the occasional celebrity cast member in town for a stage production (keep your eyes peeled).

Yet the mainstays revolve around Yale, says Director of Operations Anthony Moir. This makes sense, as the Chapel Street hotel is within walking distance to campus, as well as dozens of restaurants and boutiques. Regulars include visiting professors, alumni and Yale parents; indeed, the staff can become quite friendly with families of Yale undergrads over their four-year college careers, bookended by freshman orientations and commencements.

As for the hotel’s 124 guest rooms, in addition to the basics, there are eight larger “studies” and one presidential suite, all including a leather reading chair and work area. Rates, of course, depend on date and room type, from around $150 to upwards of $350, with special promotions and packages available, including a “Yale Repertory Package,” which gets you into an opening night performance as well as the afterparty with cast and crew.

If you prefer to wait until after you’ve booked your rooms before deciding which of New Haven’s many diversions to pursue, staffers—who take walking tours to study the Yale campus and city as part of their training—are ready to offer suggestions or secure reservations or tickets. Especially to Yale athletic events: in addition to their relationship with the Rep, I’m told the Study’s got an inside track to Bulldogs tickets.

The Study’s engagement with the community extends beyond the front desk, though. It works with non-profit literacy group New Haven Reads, planning an annual breakfast with Santa for children enrolled in the program; the children, in turn, design the holiday cards that the hotel sends to clientele and sells in the lobby (with all of the proceeds benefitting NHR).

And be sure to check out their Aisling Gallery. Displayed works come courtesy of the Yale Art School, located directly across the street. Director of Operations Moir personally peruses the school’s halls on a regularly basis, choosing a different student to feature every six to eight weeks. Artists are given a reception for 50 people and a  valuable opportunity to sell their work.

“We don’t think of this as a hotel where you stay and then you leave,” says Moir of the overall philosophy. “We really wanted to be a cultural platform.”

Of course, if you want nothing more than impeccable lodgings, you’ve got it. The Study takes perfection to heart: they’ve got a full-time painter on staff to touch up scuffs on those white walls.

But, as carefully crafted and upscale as The Study is, it’s still comfortable. Hence all the hanging out in the lobby. Here, visitors feel both important and at ease.

And those are pretty good feelings.

The Study at Yale
1157 Chapel Street, New Haven (map)
(203) 503-3900
www.studyhotels.com

Written and photographed by Cara McDonough.

And on those days in particular—when residents boast that thanks to the breeze it’s ten degrees cooler there than everywhere else, true or not—it’s hard to believe that you’re technically in New Haven city limits.

“The Cove,” as it’s affectionately called, is definitively separated from downtown by the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge (informally, “the Q”), with most homes located only minutes from East Haven center. But, yes, technically the neighborhood, which runs along the water, nestled snugly between the Long Island Sound and the humming private and commuter planes at Tweed Airport, belongs to New Haven.

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Not that anyone’s actively fighting to change the situation; as the story goes, the area, along with other nearby regions, was sold by East Haven to New Haven back in the 1800s to solve a budget crisis. Ancient history.

But it can be a little confusing.

Telling a relative newcomer to New Haven that you live in the neighborhood often yields a, “Now, where is that?” In a city comprised of so many university students, visiting scholars and tourists—many without cars—the neighborhood has a somewhat undiscovered quality.

That has a lot to do with its geography. While there aren’t technically defined boundaries, the neighborhood begins along Townsend Avenue as you leave “The Annex,” and runs all the way out to Lighthouse Point Park, where a sandy beach beckons.

With no traffic, the Cove is only five minutes from downtown, yet it feels isolated. And that’s part of the attraction.

Although largely residential—with colonials and capes sitting close enough to one another that neighbors talking from one front porch to the next is no problem—there are certain landmarks that keep it lively, particularly in the summer, when weddings and other events are an almost constant feature at venues like Anthony’s Ocean View, Amarante’s Sea Cliff and the historic carousel at Lighthouse Point.

Visitors are plentiful when the sunset out beyond Pardee Seawall is particularly enticing. Wedding parties and groups of giddy prom-goers stand with their backs to the water while a photographer shouts, “SMILE!” and cars just passing through stop on side streets to snap a picture.

But the beachy enclave’s status as a party locale is paired perfectly with the understated peacefulness cherished by those who live there; on a Friday night, the sounds of a live band performing at Amarante’s float across the Sound to the seawall, where couples quietly walking their dogs and children riding bikes can just hear the muted melodies.

The Top 40 music blaring from car windows as people make their way down Townsend towards Lighthouse Point on weekend mornings herald crowded days at the beach, complete with daylong barbecues, the smell of sunscreen and screaming children with melted ice cream. But head out for a jog on that very same beach on a weekday morning and your only company is the seagulls and others out for exercise, enjoying the pristine expanse of empty sand.

The winter is cold and quiet in Morris Cove, the very antithesis of the lively summer, although the undeterred still make their way through the snow for frigid treks along the water. Without too much in the way of commercial businesses that cater to the lunch crowd, except for the beloved Krauser’s and Delmonaco’s deli, Cove dwellers aren’t necessarily walking to meet for a meal as people do in other New Haven neighborhoods.

Sometimes residents complain about that fact, suggesting that things would be so much better with a neighborhood coffee shop. But they’re also quick to list a host of reasons they think the Cove is the very best neighborhood New Haven has to offer.

There are the practical attributes, like affordable houses—many in the mid 200s—that, hopefully, even in this economy, will retain value due to their proximity to the water, and thanks to Nathan Hale, a highly rated neighborhood school.

There are also the details that complete the unique feel of the place, like the annual Halloween parade and the accompanying fact that no one ever buys enough candy to appease the massive crowds of costumed kids; the traditionally Italian American demographic; the families who have lived in the Cove for generations; the seawall packed with blankets and beach chairs when everyone gathers to watch the Fourth of July fireworks display; the children running up and down the streets from house to house in a frenzied pack, leaving the television behind.

Perhaps one day Morris Cove will read higher on New Haven’s radar. Perhaps someone will build that coffee shop. But for now, the salty air still seems a secret, shared happily among the people who call this neighborhood “home.”

Written by Cara McDonough.

But then it isn’t exactly bustling the way it is during the school year. So where has everyone gone? Many Yalies choose to take their studies and recreation elsewhere in the summertime. And some of these getaways are just a short drive to another part of Connecticut, which will make for delightful day trips even if your summer wardrobe isn’t blue-and-white striped.

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford is a stone’s skip down the waterfront from the New London hometown of the great playwright after whom the center is named. The O’Neill Center isn’t directly Yale-related, but it was founded by a Yalie, George C. White, and hit its stride in the 1980s when its then artistic director, Lloyd Richards, was also running the Yale School of Drama. White continues to lecture in Theater Management at Yale. Richards, who died in 2006, used the experiment-friendly environment of the O’Neill Center—the structure of which inspired the conference’s film counterpart, Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival—to nurture the career of future Pulitzer-