Vin Gormley Trail
Posted By auntie on November 26, 2012
7.88 miles ★★★★½
the first time i walked this, i didn’t get very far. i got kind of lost and turned around after less than 2 miles. [i also obviously hadn’t gotten the hang of this whole blogging thing, either!] the second time i walked this we were much more ambitious, but i had a guide and company, and we did it as a car shuttle to avoid the worst of the road-walking, which involves several long stretches totaling about 2 miles. today i just wanted to be alone and go for a looong walk, so i headed out solo. glad i did. it was a wonderful walk, and gave me some much-needed meditation time. the road-walking parts still suck, tho.
bridge on the trail
this trail is very well marked and maintained—in fact, there had already been someone there cleaning up the sandy damage. it’s also famous for its boardwalks and especially its covered bridge, but i found this little bridge charming, too.
november color
the november woods are almost uniformly gray and brown, so when there is an actual spot of color, it jumps out at you. these look like blueberry seedlings. i couldn’t tell if they were sprouting from that stump or not, but i guess anything’s possible.
wind damage
there were tons of blow-downs all through here, and as i said, someone had been through to clear the worst of them from the trail (thank you unknown trail persons!). there were lots of trees which were completely uprooted, but this one was amazing, because it’s not just one tree, it’s practically a grove. massive root mass, too. impressive. and surprising that so many of these trees are so shallowly-rooted.
rose hip
did i mention that it was hard to miss the occasional spot of color? these rose hips were brilliant.
this hike included a long stretch of the north-south trail, and i think was longest hike i’ve done so far. somewhere around the 5 1/2 mile mark, i was actually thinking that i’d like it if it never ended… but like most everything in life, it eventually did.
you can get information and maps of this hike in both walks in the watershed by hickox and heyder (#15, burlingame state park), and weekend walks in rhode island by ken weber (#4, vin gormley trail). the best map to be found for this hike is of course the great swamp press map of burlingame and carolina.
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