Posted By auntie on December 2, 2014

5 miles; charlestown, ri

in trying to decide where i wanted to hike today, i vaguely recalled an old “usual suspects” hike through burlingame that started at the kettle pond visitor’s center in ninigret. i looked it up, and saw that it was 4 miles and took around 2 hours. and since it wasn’t entirely on blazed trails, i downloaded the track from my old garmin gps and uploaded it to the iphone to be sure i knew where i was going. seems one of my gps-like devices is really off, because the iphone said it was a 5-mile hike, not a 4-mile hike. not that that was a bad thing, it was just that i timed it a little close to an appointment i had later in the day. whoops. made the appointment only 2 minutes behind schedule, but i had to really move through this hike to do it. i would like to revisit it again so i can take my time next time.

memorial garden

this hike starts from the parking lot of the kettle pond visitor’s center on the ninigret national wildlife refuge. the trail i followed, the watchaug pond trail, crosses into audubon’s kimball wildlife sanctuary, and detours slightly to visit a lovely walled memorial garden with a lawn and a big holly tree.

holly

the tree was looking especially festive today. from the kimball sanctuary, the trail picks up the yellow-blazed vin gormley trail and cuts across the burlingame campground. not far after it leaves the paved roads of the campground and re-enters the woods, my track took a hard left south onto the blue-blazed north-south trail.

boardwalks on the north-south trail

there must be a quarter-mile of boardwalks through here. it just seems to go on and on.

territorial poop

you really have to watch where you walk on these boardwalks, because there is apparently some kind of massive territorial dispute going on among the local raccoons, and there are defiant little piles of droppings everywhere. i’m pretty sure they’re raccoon droppings because a lot of them seemed to contain seeds and other plant material—not that i inspected too closely—and raccoons are omnivores.

old gravel pit

south of the campground on the north-south trail, the hike passes an old gravel pit. it’s really kind of beautiful, in a way.

at the almost precise 3-mile mark (based on the now-slightly-suspect iphone gps… actual coordinates 41,36367, -71.70229), the track parts ways with the north-south trail. i followed this unblazed track for most of 2 more miles. i think it’s a mountain bike trail… it was narrow and deeply eroded in spots, but it didn’t look as though it carried any motorized traffic. along through here you pass the detritus of what i am told is an old ccc camp—various unrecognizable bits of metal, pipes, vents, etc. eventually you come to a “T” intersection with the campground in front of you. if you look to your right at this point, you’ll see a sign for the visitor’s center. you just follow those signs back to the parking area.

i have revised this entry in the hikefinder. and for those of you who are more technologically-oriented, here is a link to the actual track i followed.

Categories: Rhode Island, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 5–7 miles, Charlestown RI, RI