Posted By auntie on May 14, 2013

1.8 miles   2.0 mph

i took this trail with a friend in order to scout out any possible wildflowers in advance of my garden club hike this saturday. lots of jack-in-the-pulpit, wild gensing, and violets, plus a few i had to come home to identify. nice walk.

canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense)

lots and lots of these in spots, and they should be in full flower by saturday.

starflower (Trientalis borealis)

and the same for these. there were a lot of unopened buds. interesting fact about these (from the connecticut botanical society)—they have the unusual feature of being based on sevens: seven leaves, seven petals, and seven sepals.

this hike is in the hikefinder.

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Posted By auntie on May 6, 2013

2.29 miles  2.3 mph

yes, back to black farm again. i love this property so much… i was able to introduce another good friend to it, and it’s so nice to see it again through new eyes. this is a great time of year to be there, too. the weather is perfect and no bugs.

black farm wildlife

saw this guy (gal?) just hanging out in canonchet brook. we also heard bullfrogs on plain pond, and had several dog encounters, one with an enthusiastic and very wet german shepherd adolescent. fun hike.

you can find black farm in the hikefinder.

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Posted By auntie on May 4, 2013

12.8 miles   2.7 mph

whew. did this 13-mile walk (sans shirley) with the north south trail people through foster and glocester, ri. large amount (maybe 3 miles) of road-walking, and another large amount on old woods roads that had seen extensive motorized vehicle traffic, maybe another 3 miles. and you can just imagine how bad that was—loose rocks, sand, gigantic puddles, bunny humps—punishing walking! which, come to think of it, actually left 7 miles of pleasant hiking. so not a completely bad day!

unfortunately i had to miss legs 3 and 4 of this trek, and will have to miss the final leg in two weeks as well. but i’ve walked a good portion of the last leg between the walkabout trail and the douglas state forest hikes i’ve done, so i don’t feel as though i’m missing too much. and leg 4 of the trek was 100% road-walking, so i don’t feel too awful bad about missing that one, either. but there’s always next year…

love shack

so that’s where that is… always wondered. also, i wonder if the b-52′s know.

wild wood anenome

the spring ephemerals are starting to come in now. there were wild wood anenome, violets, cinquefoil, and wild ginseng, that i could identify.

mowry meadow brook

you can see the beaver dam across the middle of this shot. apparently, there used to be a meadow here!

hikes with DANGEROUS bathrooms

and in my continuing series “hikes with bathrooms,” i guess i have to add a new category: “hikes with DANGEROUS bathrooms.”

i have added this hike to the hikefinder.

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Posted By auntie on May 1, 2013

4.63 miles   2.3 mph

another usual suspects hike through this wonderful property; probably the last till this fall, since the scouts will be back soon. shirley felt enormously heavy to me today, and i could barely make the 4 1/2 miles. i suspect i need to up my protein intake, and my game. the good news is we finally got to see hidden lake. totally worth the trip.

hidden lake

the hidden lake trail (see the always-excellent david brierley trail maps) circumnavigates this small woodland pond, and is it ever beautiful. it made us all wish it were summer time and we could go for a swim.

usual suspect in chief leads the way

this was the coolest log bridge on the hidden lake trail. truly a beautiful trail.

this approximate hike is not in the hikefinder, as the boy scouts would rather not get too much traffic on their property. but look for “the story of the yawgoog trails” website for details on the trails through here.

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Posted By auntie on April 28, 2013

4 miles   2.5 mph

today was the backpacking “gear shakedown” hike run by the amc. my legs were shot from yesterday’s adventure, so this was much more painful than anticipated. not to mention that shirley was probably more than a few pounds heavier than i was used to due to the addition of a (borrowed) sleeping bag and pad. thank goodness i don’t have my tent yet! and forget about taking pictures…

upton state forest

i had a kind of epiphany about what i’ve been doing today. i love hiking. i got into backpacking because i love hiking but i’ve made a startling discovery: backpacking is different than hiking. it’s much more physically demanding, and more expensive, and more complicated. it requires a much larger knowledge base. and strong legs.

this isn’t to say that i’ve given up my long-distance hiking dreams. but it’s kind of a reality check. this is hard stuff, and i’m going to have to really work to get in shape for the kind of hiking i really want to do. ultimately, i think all the work will be worth it. i’ll let you know.

i’ve added this hike to the hikefinder.

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Posted By auntie on April 27, 2013

6.5 miles   2.3 mph

as i did the first half of the tippecansett trail last month, i originally wanted to do the 2nd half today, but couldn’t get a car spot, so i kind of quickly created a loop to include a good portion of the unfinished part of the tippecansett. it turned out to be a bit longer than i anticipated, though, and since i took a fully-loaded shirley with me, it kind of kicked my butt. good route, though.

this loop starts off at the roscoe m. dexter fishing area and the beginning of the white-blazed deep pond trail, but instead of taking a left (heading southeast) towards deep pond, this time i took a right a bit further down the trail and headed west towards the southern end of beach pond.

unfortunately, i didn’t take my camera with me, so i just got a couple of low quality shots with the iPod. but hey, what’s a blog post without photos? so here they are. apologies in advance.

tippecansett-pachaug crossover junction

this is where the red/blue-blazed tippecansett/pachaug crossover trail joins the yellow-blazed tippecansett. this part of arcadia/pachaug is very busy with lots of different trails converging and diverging. there are white blazes and white dots and yellow blazes and light-blue blazes and dark-blue blazes… hard to follow without a map. and i hate to say it, but even the almost-always reliable great swamp press maps let me down a bit through here. there were several blazed trails that didn’t show up on the great swamp press maps, including a dark-blue-blazed trail that i think was a crossover, and a white dot trail that i have no idea where it goes… obviously more exploration is called for.

cellarhole

this was a kind of mysterious little structure inside a cellarhole on kinney hill road. at this point i had left the tippecansett, and was following the blue-blazed dye hill trail, which runs along kinney hill road for a decent stretch. then it plunges back into arcadia to cross the brushy brook, which is more brushy bouldery wetland. after that i was back on familiar ground, because i’ve hiked this stretch before.

i have added this loop to the hikefinder, and made a map.

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