Posted By auntie on November 4, 2014

7.4 miles; hopkinton, ri

my new-found completist fetish keeps getting me into trouble. i had originally planned to hike the entire tippecansett trail today, from stepstone falls to the state line marker at camp yawgoog, but this is a car spot hike, and my partner in crime had to bow out. so i decided to make up a loop hike which would allow me to hike the last section of the tippecansett i had so far missed. which, naturally, turned out to be longer and harder than i anticipated… and to make matters even worse, when i created the map for this hike, i discovered, to my horror, that there was STILL a section of the tippecansett i haven’t hiked yet. D’OH!

beginning of the end, or so i thought

i’ve hiked this part of the narragansett trail more times than i can count, but i’ve never followed the yellow blazes from here, so this was the beginning of the last section.

laurel jungle

this first section, from the intersection with the narragansett trail to the dirt road off route 138, is very similar to the narragansett trail. it goes through cool jungles of very mature mountain laurel, and over rocks, and through mixed oak and beech woods.

yeah, it’s a couch

as you leave the boy scouts’ property, you turn onto a dirt road. i guess it’s also a dumping ground, because i first came upon some old couch cushions, and then the couch.

the tippecansett heads off

not far from the couch, you come out on route 138, a very busy road, where the tippecansett crosses and heads back into the woods. and it’s not much further before you pass the gate that is the trailhead for the dye hill trail, and then come to an intersection with another dirt track where the tippecansett trail heads off to the right and to beach pond. “at last,” i thought to myself, “i’ve completed the whole tippecansett trail!” wrong. see map on the hikefinder page.

boundary marker

and not far from that point is this cool old state boundary marker. long stretches of this hike straddle the border between ri and ct.

blocked

not far past the boundary marker the dirt track is supposed to intersect back with 138, but the home owner at the end of it has it blocked off. can’t say i blame them, but it made for kind of a mad scramble to get out to 138 through the woods. this would have been very difficult to do in the other direction. glad i went this way.

this is the worst part of the hike… route 138 for a bit over a half mile. cars really, really move through here. then you take a left onto green falls road, and the second worst part. this is just a long, boring dirt road. can you tell i hated walking it? i did. it’s more than a mile before you get to an unmarked left, which takes you to the narragansett trail, and then back to the car.

i have added this hike to the hikefinder, and created a map which includes my two previous hikes (color!) and the entire route of the tippecansett trail. i have also linked to this map on the other two hikes.

Categories: Rhode Island, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 7–10 miles, Hopkinton RI, RI