Posted By auntie on May 25, 2014

4.64 miles, gloucester, ri

sorry for the long blogging hiatus, peeps. things in new england get kind of crazy in the springtime once the weather breaks. there’s so much yard work to do! yes, i am [shudder] gardening again. the dh has taken a part time, on site contract, which means that some of the actual [shudder] gardening chores have fallen to me. it’s like that al pacino line in the godfather: “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in.”

apologies aside, this was a really fun hike for me, as i got to meet a fellow hiking blogger for the first time, and not only a fellow blogging hiker but also a fellow member of the fraternity of the broken ankle! although my friend did me one better by also doing massive damage to his other knee. we compared scar tissue and joint mobility. he won.

now to the hike. pulaski park is sort of part of the washington management area in chepachet rhode island, although it’s much more of a park than a management area, with restrooms and picnic areas and a beach on peck pond.

interstate bridge

the park is right up against the rhode island/connecticut border and there’s even a nifty interstate bridge.

mushrooms

the park management covers a lot of the paths with wood chips, which makes for a perfect growing medium for mushrooms. i have no idea what these mushrooms were… i think they were what mycologists call “lbms,” short for “little brown mushrooms.” whatever they were, the were EVERYWHERE.

fringed polygala or gaywings, (Polygala paucifolia)

there were lots of these, too. i had never seen them before, but they were quite abundant here. i liked the contrast between the flower color and the chartreuse of the leaf color.

i have added this hike to the hikefinder, although to be honest, we spent more time gabbing and less time paying attention to where we were going, so the hike route on my map is a little, er, meandering. the trails on this property are very clearly blazed, but the only trail map i could find online for it was a cross-country ski map, and honestly, the trails as laid out on the map seemed to have little or no relation to the actual blazed trails we encountered. we were ostensibly following the ken weber hike in weekend walks in rhode island, hike #27, but even that was somewhat problematic. guess what i’m saying here is, your mileage may vary considerably!

Categories: Rhode Island, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 2–5 miles, Gloucester RI, RI