Going with the flow is setting oneself up for misery when it comes to wandering Connecticut on holiday weekends or on one of our three spectacular weather days. Here are a few tips that might help you enjoy this time more.

(1) Go early or go late. This might mean rethinking your belief of what “early” is, but you will share the road with fewer people. A picnic does not have to happen at noon.

(2) The state parks that everyone has heard of are beautiful; they are not the only option. If you are new to the area or not sure how to learn about other options, try looking here or at CTMQ, The Size of Connecticut, and Marteka’s column, or here, here, and here.

(3) Get off the Interstate as soon as possible. If you want a sense of an area, you need to see it up close. Going to Mystic via I-95 is straightforward but mostly dull. Taking back roads to the same location means passing old farmhouses and finding ice cream shops along the way. It does not add much more time onto the trip unless you really meander.

(4) Reconsider the assumption that there “isn’t enough parking” if lots fill.

This is an opportunity to ask why we don’t have better public transit connections to most of our state parks.

Currently, to go from Hartford to Rocky Neck State Park using public transit, you would need to carve out four hours – 30 minutes of which would be spent on foot — and that’s just to get there! By car, it takes approximately one hour for that same trip.

Hartford to Hammonasset Beach in Madison? That’s a 3.5 hour bus ride in each direction. That’s approximately 55 minutes by car.

You’ll spend 1.5 hours on a bus, one way, from Hartford to Middletown’s Wadsworth Falls State Park. It’s approximately 25 minutes by car.

The parking lot ain’t the problem folks!

Our public transit is a problem, one that we have created. This means it is also one that we can fix, but it will not happen on its own. Try out the trip planner yourself to see how long it takes to reach the destination of your choice, and if the time is unreasonable, contact CT Transit directly and your state rep to ask for improved service to that location.

(5) Rely on informed sources, like the Connecticut Coastal Access Guide, rather than only Google Maps, when it comes to wayfinding. Don’t expect GPS to be accurate or reliable in all parts of the state. Don’t expect signs — not the ones announcing a place, nor the ones telling you which street you are on. Get an old-fashioned road map or print out maps from the Internet.

(6) These informed guides also tell what to expect for amenities — if a site has handicapped access or if food is available for purchase. Formal tourism sites are useful to a point, but their goal is to sell a place, so certain aspects of a venue or experience might get airbrushed out. I use tourism sites the way I use Wikipedia — they are fine for brainstorming, but then I need to go elsewhere to get more information.

(7) There are plenty of places to go camping that are not in formal campgrounds. You may even find some that you don’t need to book eleven months in advance.

(8) Bring your own water, and it can’t hurt to pack some tissues in your bag. Who knows when the last time was that the parking lot portajohn was cleaned.

(9) Keep in mind that, in-season, hunting is allowed in some areas. Hunting is not allowed on public land on Sundays in Connecticut. Take precautions.

(10) Regardless of where you go, be prepared to take your trash out with you.