Posted By auntie on January 13, 2014

3.55 miles; niantic, ct

i have a confession to make, and i know it’s going to come to you as a surprise, so i want you all to brace yourselves. i am a computer nerd. there, i said it. i can now envision all three of you, my regular readers, sitting there in a state of shocked disbelief, but i assure you it’s true. i spend hours in front of my computer browsing the web for, oh, just anything and everything. recipes, political news, patriots and red sox info… and hikes. i collect bookmarks of hiking trails the way other people collect bookmarks of recipes (although, to be fair, i also collect bookmarks of recipes—hard to say which folder is more full). i find all kinds of interesting places to hike from reading blogs and newspaper articles and facebook posts.

anyway, i was poking around in the “hikes” bookmark folder the other day and i realized i had saved a lot of places that i had forgotten about, so i decided to, are you ready for it? make a list. i came up with over 20 trails that i simply must see at some point this year. they are all over southern new england, but mostly in connecticut.

this is a long way of introducing today’s hike, in east lyme, ct, the oswegatchie hills preserve. this one is on my list thanks to another hiking blogger, anubisbard. here is the link to his post about the oswegatchie hills.

trail kiosk

there are several trailheads for this hike. i chose the one that starts at a ball field in east lyme; veteran’s field. nice trail kiosk. the trail closure notice is about a detour that is in place for the hunting season, from october 15 to january 31.

excellent and artistic signage

i love the hand-painted signs. the trails are well blazed with plastic diamond markers. there was a side trail i really wanted to go down that ended in an overlook on the niantic river, but it was nearly a half-mile one way, and i wasn’t sure my ankle was up to the extra almost-mile. between that and the detour, i think i really need to revisit this place down the road.

granite trail

these trails meandered up and down the hills of oswegatchie hills, and it was a good workout for the ankle. speaking of which, a very large portion of this trail runs atop a granite outcropping. and as another blogger who also broke an ankle hiking on slippery rocks pointed out, well, i’ll just quote from her post:

“While laying out a trail, bare rock, like the one in the photo above, is very enticing for the route — it’s already cleared! — but it’s treacherous to walk down in wet weather.”

amen to that. i chose to find detours around a lot of these rocks, but there were places, like here, where it was just unavoidable. fortunately it wasn’t a misty or icy day and the rocks weren’t slippery, just unnerving. but i will not be back in winter weather, i can assure you.

signs and portents

there was an interesting bit of trail art on one of the large slabs of granite. not sure it signified anything, but it was kind of cool looking.

i have added this trail to my hikefinder. also, i have added both the excellent bloggers mentioned above to my blogroll on the right.

Categories: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 2–5 miles, CT, Niantic CT