Carbuncle Pond
Posted By auntie on September 10, 2012
3.94 miles ★★★
i’ve been wanting to get up here for some time, and another commitment in the area made today the right day. it was a little disappointing because a) it wasn’t a loop, so i had to do some backtracking, and b) heavy use by dirtbikes and atvs has made the trails kind of hard to walk on. but nice overall. oh, and somewhere along here i hit 400 MILES!
main parking lot and fishing pier
this great blue heron was the first thing i saw as i walked away from my car. this is a prime fishing spot, and this pier is both a fishing pier and a boat pier. it’s very nice.
from the moosup river trestle bridge
after some scrambling and wandering (no trails on this property are marked or blazed, making hiking a bit of a challenge), i found my way to the abandoned railroad bed that runs from the middle of connecticut through rhode island. in western rhode island it’s called the greenway, and this section, as i said, is kind of chewed up from motorized vehicle use. it’s not unwalkable, however, and there is a very pretty bridge crossing the moosup river. the rhode island north-south trail runs along here in part, too. i was on the plainfield, ct, section of this trail earlier this year, which was in much worse shape.
blue curls
this wildflower is called “blue curls,” trichostema dichotomum. it must have a long bloom time, as i saw it in bloom last month in arcadia. it’s really quite jaunty.
spotted knapweed, centaurea micranthos
thought this was a very pretty wildflower, as well. it’s a kind of thistle.
poised for flight
and amazingly, the great blue heron was still on the dock when i got back. it was pretty comfortable with people, but i guess i just got a bit too close, because it took flight not long after this picture.
and no fungus shots today. i really saw very little in the way of mushrooms the whole time.
carbuncle pond can be found off route 14 in coventry, ri, a bit under a mile from the connecticut border. the entrance is an unmarked dirt road, so a little hard to spot. it is part of the nicholas farm wildlife management area. you can find some less than useful trailmaps here. carbuncle pond is also one of the walks in the ken weber book more walks and rambles in rhode island, although the book was published in 1992, and many of his references are unreliable. i used a combination of the ken weber book and the dem maps, and managed to make a hike of it.
[…] hiked this with a friend as an exploratory hike. i’ve been on this management area before, but not this part of it. pretty interesting, if fairly beat up by motorized vehicles. it […]