Posted By auntie on July 8, 2019

2.4 miles; Thompson, CT

This hike was featured in a recent Peter Marteka Nature column, and since it was near a friend’s house in Thompson, I decided visited both. It’s a short hike but a gorgeous view.

Excellent Signage

I forgot the map when I headed out this morning, so took a wrong turn (on purpose, or so I thought) to get a little more mileage. Turned out to dead end on private property, so I had to backtrack. Actually, this whole hike is an out-and-back anyway, as you can see from the gps track.

Three Trees Overlook

As Mr. Marteka’s column said, the overlook is unofficially known as the Three Trees Overlook. Guess it’s obvious why.

Bench

I took a moment to take in the view from the bench. Lovely!

Lambchop Approved

Lambchop approved of the view as well. As an aside, did you know Lambchop was a girl? I had been under the lifelong misapprehension that she was a he until someone questioned it, so I looked it up. Imagine my surprise!

Panorama (click to enlargify)

This was a gorgeous expansive view. Might be worth coming back in the fall, too. I met a couple coming up when I was leaving. I told them it was worth the trip, and the guy asked if they were almost there. I said, “Yes. Although ALL hikers lie about that, so you can’t really trust me!”

Track (click for details)

You can find out more about Bull Hill Preserve from this Windham Land Trust site. As always, click the image above for details about this hike and to download the gps track.

Category: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes | No Comments »
Tags: 2–5 miles, CT, Thompson CT

Posted By auntie on July 7, 2019

4.2 miles; North Stonington, CT

I was curious to see the results of the “rabbitat” clearing that Avalonia had done on this nearby preserve, so I made a quick visit. They stayed pretty far away from the pond and the cemetery, so it’s not as shocking as I had frankly expected.

St. John’s Wort

This was along my driveway. St. John’s Wort is known to be a natural anti-depressant. I can’t say for sure one way or another, pharmacologically-speaking, but it is a very cheerful yellow flower to encounter on a summer morning. Made me happy.

Aggressive Groundhog

Walking down Boombridge Road to the preserve, I encountered this rather angry woodchuck. He didn’t back down, and with rabies always lurking in the back of my mind, I crossed the road rather than mess with him.

Road Lilies

The clear cutting certainly increased the sunlight on the property, and a big happy patch of road lilies benefited mightily from that.

Sparse

It sure does look bleak, though.

Cemetery

There is a very large cemetery on this preserve bordered by hemlocks and white pines. It’s a very sad place, too, because so very many of the graves are of children and infants.

Two-Year-Old’s Grave

This little girl was only 2 years old. The tiger lilies at her grave kind of made me happy, though.

Rudbeckia, or Black-Eyed Susans

It really was a pretty good wildflower day overall.

Spreading Dogbane, Apocynum androsaemifolium

This spreading dogbane was sweetly-scented as well as charming.

Map

Not posting the actual GPS track for this hike, since it starts in my driveway, but as you can see, there’s a short loop trail that takes in the cemetery. It’s not marked and actually kind of hard to follow, especially since the rabbitat work. And though it shows access to the preserve from Stillman Road, there really isn’t any access there or any trailhead—it’s mostly swamp on that end. At this point I usually tell you where you can find out more about this preserve, but there’s really nothing out there. It’s not listed on Avalonia’s website, for example, and a Google search only results in articles about the property’s acquisition and about EEE-infected mosquitoes (that was from October 2018). But you can find a trailhead for it at 62 Boombridge Road. There’s a gate you have to squeeze around, and then you come to a sign which still says it’s owned by the Nature Conservancy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Category: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes | 2 Comments »
Tags: 2–5 miles, CT, North Stonington CT

Posted By auntie on July 1, 2019

8.1 miles; Glastonbury, Manchester, and Vernon, CT

Wow, it’s been a year and a half since I last hiked the Shenipsit. It would be a vast understatement to say that last year was just not a great year for me. But I finally got back to trying to complete this blue-blazed hiking trail, and I’m glad I did. This section had almost no roadwalking, which was great. And I had no time constraints, so I really enjoyed this hike.

Blue & White Connector Trail

I started from Birch Mountain Road in Glastonbury, and found my way to the blue-and-white blazed connector trail where I left off last time. This took me back to the Shenipsit.

Water Crossings

We’ve had a lot of rain in this part of the world recently, and there were probably a half-dozen or so water crossings. They’re not big on bridges around here. This is a photo of one of the rare ones I was able to use. Most of the time I was clambering over stepping stones, hoping to not hit a patch of slippery moss or a loose stone.

Chicken of the Woods

Fungus shot! I was surprised to find such a mature specimen of chicken this early, but I guess I shouldn’t have been. They grow pretty much all spring, summer, and fall.

Busy Signpost Tree

The Shenipsit goes through the Case Mountain Reserve in Manchester. This 640-acre property has some nice old carriage roads and a lot of mountain biking trails. There are trails up the three “mountains,” Birch Mountain, Case Mountain, and Lookout Mountain. I was slightly apprehensive about doing a lot of slogging up mountains, or “mountains,” in this case, but I needn’t have worried. The going was pretty easy.

Seldom-used Bridge

Once I left the Case Mountain Recreation Area, the going got quite a bit dicier. This bridge didn’t look as though it had been used in months, and the trail was overgrown with all kinds of vegetation. Then I remembered the last time I hiked a trail this overgrown, and got kind of nervous… especially considering my snake encounter of about a week before! But this time, no deadly creatures, just a lot of slogging through ferns and other assorted underbrush. Again, this particular stretch of the Shenipsit is not heavily used.

Gas Pipeline

It even follows a pipeline cut for a stretch.

RIP Mike

On the far side of a big boulder by the trail I came across this sad little memorial to, I’m assuming, or hoping, what was someone’s beloved canine companion, Mike. Either that, or somebody buried a 12-year-old kid named Mike in the woods… The dates on the little inscription were 2002–2014. There were little paw prints on it, too, so yeah, I’ma go with dog.

Out of the Woods

Broke out of the woods, finally, to cross a lovely field.

Trail Lost

After the field, the Shenipsit, according to the map, followed along Routes 44 and 6, both very scary busy high speed roads. I opted instead to get on the Charter Oak Greenway, a nice paved bike path that brought me back to the Park & Ride Lot where I had parked my car. The Shenipsit continues north right from that parking lot, so I’m going to count this as “following the trail.”

Track (click for details)

You can read more about the vast (825 miles at last count) network of blue-blazed trails throughout Connecticut at the website of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association. Be sure to check out the interactive map. As always, click on the image, above, for details about this hike and to download the GPS track.

Category: CFPA Trails, Connecticut, Walks and Hikes | No Comments »
Tags: 7–10 miles, CT, Glastonbury CT, Manchester CT, Vernon CT

Posted By auntie on June 20, 2019

1.7 miles; Bethany and New Haven, CT

My old hiking pal Stacy made a visit up from Florida, and we attempted to hike the length of the Regicides Trail, but only got as far as, uh, the junction with the Quinnipiac, the Regicides, and the Sanford Feeder Trail. It was raining, and the going was steep and rocky and very slippery, so we decided to bail and go get some New Haven pizza. But before we did, we also visited the Judges’ Cave, and we almost stepped on a copperhead, so it wasn’t completely uneventful!

Junction Signage

We started from the trailhead of the Sanford Feeder Trail in Bethany and climbed our way up the ridge. At the top we had to decide which way to turn to start heading towards the park overlook in New Haven, and because it was us, we picked the wrong direction. This is what always happens when I hike with Stacy, I don’t know why. I guess we just get to talking and not paying attention? Anyway, part of my goal for this hike was to go to the junction of the Regicides Trail with the Quinnipiac Trail. The Quinnipiac is the oldest of the blue-blazed Connecticut Forest and Park Association trails, and goes through Sleeping Giant SP. So we did that, and then decided it was too wet and slippery to continue.

Judges’ Cave

We drove back to the West Rock Ridge overlook, which gave us a commanding view of… fog, and then decided to drive to the Judges’ Cave. I’ma outsource the description of this landmark to Atlas Obscura:

Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell were three of the 59 British judges who sentenced King Charles I to death in 1649, dissolving the monarchy and placing Oliver Cromwell into power instead. When Charles II, the son of the executed king, was restored to the throne in 1660, he exacted his revenge on the men who had his father beheaded. He issued an order that each regicide should be hanged, drawn, and quartered. In order to avoid this grisly fate, Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell fled to North America.

Where they hid in this “cave.” I put the quotes around “cave” because it’s really just a jumble of big boulders which provide maybe? some shelter from the elements. Anyway, you can do a deep dive into Judges’ Cave from the Atlas Obscura page. [See what I did there? Dive? Into the cave? I crack me up sometimes…]

Sleepy Copperhead

Okay, and what is it with me and snakes? This is a Northern Copperhead, a venomous pit viper type snake, and my extensive research [Ed. Note: 2 minutes on Wikipedia] tells me that its bite is “rarely fatal.” Cool. We almost stepped on it. It was unmoving and at first I thought it was just a big stick or piece of bark.

After that, we needed our pizza and cocktails!

Track (click for details)

You can find out more about the Regicides Trail from the CFPA website on it. As always, click the image above for details about this hike and to download the gps track.

Category: CFPA Trails, Connecticut, Walks and Hikes | 1 Comment »
Tags: 2 miles or less, Bethany CT, CT, New Haven CT

Posted By auntie on June 19, 2019

3.37 miles; Providence, RI

Today I revisited the Lovecraft walk I did a few years ago with my friend Jenn. It was a great day and we saw lots of interesting stuff. I’ve been a Lovecraft fan since the days when I lived on Providence’s East Side. I used to pass the Providence Atheneaum often. And the “Shuttered Room” house, and the place where Poe used to visit his paramour. You can’t help but be steeped in that stuff when you live up there.

Fleur De Lys Studio

This is on Thomas Street, and is now part of the Providence Art Club. Lovecraft hated the thing so much he used it as a setting for one of his horror stories, “The Call of Cthulhu.”

Public Spring at the Athenaeum

This place is said to be haunted by Poe’s ghost. I think there’re a few locations in Baltimore that might dispute that, but who knows?

Lovecraft Plaque

This plaque is at 22 Prospect St. It reads:

Howard Phillips Lovecraft
(1890 – 1937)
U.S. Author

I never can be tied to raw new things,
For I first saw the light in an old town,
Where from my window huddled roofs sloped down
To a quaint harbour rich with visionings.

Streets with carved doorways where the sunset beams
Flooded old fanlights and small window-panes,
And Georgian steeples topped with gilded vanes –
These are the sights that shaped my childhood dreams.

Dedicated on the Centennial of his birth
August 20, 1990
by
The City of Providence
Brown University
and
Friends of H.P. Lovecraft

It’s a really evocative description of Providence.

Wildlife!

Bunny huddled on the gravel there. This is hardly a walk I where expected to see actual wildlife.

First Church of Christ, Scientist

This site, one of the highest points in Providence, was used for a warning beacon against Indians in 1667 and against the British in 1775. It was claimed that the beacon could be seen as far away as Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Another Providence Vista

Yet another view of the city, this time from one of my favorite places on the East Side, Prospect Terrace. Poor old Roger Williams was buried here for a while. Apparently, he got moved around a lot after he died.

WPA Plaque

I didn’t realize until this visit that Prospect Terrace was yet another Works Progress Administration project.

Barnes Street House

Lovecraft lived here from April 1926 to May 1933. It seems somehow appropriate.

Track (click for details)

You can find this walk at The Lovecraft College Hill Walking Tour website. There’s also a link to a pdf file you can download. As always, click the image above for details about this hike and to download the gps track.

Category: Rhode Island, Walks and Hikes | No Comments »
Tags: 2–5 miles, Providence RI, RI

Posted By auntie on June 15, 2019

1 mile; Stonington, CT

I didn’t bother to gps track this, so I just guessed 1 mile, but even that might be generous. It was a Bruce Fellman walk, and just a gorgeous preserve, but one that is, unfortunately, closed to the public. The only way to see this is on a sponsored guided walk like today’s.

Distant Elms

This property, now owned by the Stonington Land Trust, was once owned by Monsanto, and one of the things they tried here was a breeding program intended to bring back the American Elm, once a ubiquitous street tree, which was ravaged by a fungal disease called Dutch Elm disease. There are still some lovely old elms ringing the preserve, but it’s now mostly given over to grassland.

Blue-Eyed Grass

This was one walk where I fervently wished I had an expensive camera with a zoom lens, because it is home to dozens of nesting pairs of bob-o-links, an increasingly-rare native bird that relies on grassland for its survival. You can find a lot of fields around here, but they all get hayed, making them unsuitable for nesting. But the Stonington Land Trust is preserving this land specifically as bob-o-link habitat, and they only hay very late in the season in order to maintain the fields as fields.

Bruce Cradles a Fallen Nestling

We were treated to all sorts of birds on this walk—including a nesting pair of kestrels, many red winged blackbirds, and this one unfortunate little baby yellow warbler that one of the children on the walk spotted in the grassy trail. Bruce tenderly set the poor little thing into a thicket of multiflora rose along the field edge, but he wasn’t sanguine about its chances, as it had a damaged eye, he thought probably from an encounter with a predator.

Multiflora rose

The edges of the field were covered with the invasive multiflora rose, but it wasn’t at all bad for us hikers and the scent of the blooms was intoxicating.

Fleabane

As I mentioned above, this property is not open to the general public, but if you keep an eye on the website of the Stonington Land Trust, they do occasionally hold guided walks here. And if you would like to see actual photos of bob-o-links, among many other things, shot by a professional with a fancy camera, please treat yourself by visiting my friend Bruce’s blog!

Category: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes | No Comments »
Tags: 2 miles or less, CT, Stonington CT