Posted By auntie on June 28, 2014

long time no blog. life keeps getting in the way, and i haven’t been hiking in what feels like months. i started a part time job and i have one big party to host on the fourth, and then it’s back to the woods for sure.

and one of the first places (besides tomorrow’s ken weber, weekend walks in rhode island, hike #24, sprague farm) i’m going to go is here:

new trail head sign

this just appeared this week. i know, because i was just up on route 3 last tuesday, and you guys know me and trail head signs. besides, it’s not exactly subtle. it’s huge. my initial guess was that it must connect to the nature conservancy property, the canonchet brook preserve, which is some distance north of here. after much poking around on the intertubes, i found this (click to slightly embiggen) on the hopkinton historical society website:

canonchet trail map

from what i can find online, it does connect with the existing trails in the canonchet brook preserve. the two “lawton foster” roads (north and south) don’t quite connect in the middle except for an old, eroded dirt track, and there is a trailhead for the nature conservancy property off of that dirt track part. if you carefully scrutinize the attached pdf map, you can just barely see on the left-hand side a black dotted line that is the existing trail onto the nature conservancy land. how, exactly, the yellow/white/red trails connect to this is unclear on the map, but the web page i found claims they do. maybe down that same dirt track between the 2 lawton foster roads? stay tuned.

this is a newly-cut trail, done by volunteers on trail days weekend earlier this month. i can’t wait to check it out. again, according to the website, the property has several mysterious cairns, possibly of native american origin, AND an old mill site.

Categories: Misc Stuff, Rhode Island, Walks and Hikes
Tags: Hopkinton RI, RI