Stubtown-Blue Pond Loop
Posted By auntie on July 8, 2018
6.27 miles; Hopkinton, RI
This was a brutal loop hike that included Long/Ell Ponds. That trail is seriously relentless with its UPS and its DOWNS and its rocks and boulders. After all that I just couldn’t finish on the Narragansett Trail, so we decided to visit Blue Pond instead.
Canonchet Brook Preserve Trailhead on Stubtown Road
I’ve hiked all the portions of this route more than once, but I’ve never hiked down Stubtown Road out to North Road before, and I’ve been very curious about it for a long time. Today I got to scratch that itch!
Round House!
This end of the road where the Nature Conservancy property ends has lots of old cellarholes… Stub Town? Maybe? I guess if I were curious enough I could do some research at the Hopkinton Historical Society. But the first actual house you come to is, amazingly, a round house. I would LOVE to see the inside! There’s a skylight there right on top in the middle.
Green Tunnel
Alas the rest of Stubtown Road out to North Road has, you know, just a few more regular houses on it. No octagons, no geodesic domes. Just houses. A short stroll north on North Road then took us to the trailhead for the Audubon Society’s Long Pond Woods and the Nature Conservancy’s Ell Pond Preserve, where, at this time of year, you enter a cool green tunnel. And then scramble over boulders. And climb rocks. Etcetera.
Overlook
It seems whenever I hike this route there is always someone with us who has never been to the Long Pond overlook. Sigh. More scrambling and rock climbing. Don’t get me wrong, the view is incredible and the climb is worth it, especially if you’ve never seen it before. But I’ve, ya know, seen it before. A lot.
Spectacular Rhodies
We were lucky to be hiking this loop right now, because the native Great or Rosebay Laurels, Rhododendron maximum, are in bloom. This trail, from the overlook towards Canonchet Road, is dominated by these plants, making it look like a primeval jungle. We saw tons of blooms on North Road and expected to see even more on the trail, but it’s so overgrown that not a lot of sun gets down to the rhodies, so the blooms were slightly disappointing. However, I’ve always wanted to see this trail when they were blooming, and now I have.
Rhexia virginica, Virginia Meadow-beauty
During our excursion to Blue Lake, we crossed a field where the lake once had an inlet, and outside of the cranberry bogs I hiked across during the Bay Circuit Trail, I’ve never seen so many cranberry plants in one place. I absolutely must remember to revisit this spot come Thanksgiving time. Imagine serving foraged cranberry sauce with your turkey!
Find out more about the Canonchet Brook Preserve on the TNC website, here. Find out more about Long Pond Woods from the Audubon Society website, here, and TNC’s Ell Pond Preserve, here. And get a State of RI Blue Pond area map here (pdf file). As always, click the image above for details about this hike and to download the gps track.
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