Posted By auntie on October 18, 2012

4.85 miles   ★★★★★

i had the most fun hike ever today! a friend who lives up on pendleton hill in north stonington invited me up to see their land, which abuts the pachaug state forest. it’s a gorgeous property, with some very cool features, including a giant oak tree (said to be the oldest and largest oak in southeastern connecticut), pretty old cellar holes, a waterfall, the remains of an old sawmill… and that’s before you even get to the state forest!

the great oak

this must have been an old pasture tree back when the land was still under cultivation. it somehow survived the ’38 hurricane, too. impressive.

giant rock face with friend, for scale

when we got to the end of her property, i checked my gps, and saw that we weren’t far, at that point, from legendwood road and the narragansett trail, so we decided to hike on. we had to bushwhack our way around this rock face first, though.

carved beech tree

this old beech tree has obviously been around for a while, too. there is quite clearly one date carved that goes back to 1979. we found it on the narragansett trail, which we came across while walking legendwood road and figured, “what the heck?” you can also clearly see the blue blaze on it.

fish-face tree

this seems to have been a day for trees. this beech tree grew mighty strangely. we figure another tree must have fallen on it, so it had to grow around the dead tree and then up, and the dead tree eventually decayed and fell away. i just thought it looked like a fish face.

old puffball

your fungus shot for the day. some sort of old scleroderma citrinum, i think.

obviously, because this hike started from private property, i can’t give you the entire route, but you can find trail maps that cover this area at david brierley’s excellent site, story of the yawgoog trails.

Categories: CFPA Trails, Connecticut, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 2–5 miles, CT, North Stonington CT