South Carolina and Florida, January 2017

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Like I said, my goal here is to update the blog regularly with travel or other “new” experiences, regardless of whether I’m hiking or what.  So I’ll start with a short writeup of our trip to the Southeast earlier this month.

My nephew, who just turned 18 on Christmas, was graduating from the USMC Training Depot on Parris Island, in South Carolina. Last time we were in SC, my brother-in-law was the one graduating. It was nice to get a chance to see his youngest son follow in his footsteps.

We flew into Charleston which I hear is a very nice city (we didn’t have a chance to see), and drove about on hour to Beaufort. The drive itself was mostly nice — all the shallow flats made me wish for my fishing kayak, that’s for sure. Beaufort, like any city, has its ups and downs. We stayed in a “down” spot, unfortunately.  I’ve been told if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything — so I’ll say nothing more about that!

My brother-in-law also traveled down there, and took a different housing approach. They crammed a huge van full of people into a house on a dirt road on Saint Helena Island, immediately adjacent to Fort Fremont, a military installation built in 1899.  We spent most of our time (when we weren’t at Parris Island) there, sitting around their campfire, having dinner with family at the huge table, or going for walks over to Fort Fremont and exploring the ruined old site on the water.

After two days there, we took our rental car on a long drive south, through Georgia and ending up in Ocala, Florida.  There, we visited my grandfather, who turned 90 last year.  We were supposed to be taking him out for lunch but he insisted on cooking us a steak dinner.  I’m sure he spent his food budget for the week on us, but he’s been making us steak since I was a little kid and some habits die hard.  We took him to Bob Evans the next day.

In the evenings we slept in a home in Leesburg, about an hour south of Ocala.  The home is owned by extended family and we enjoyed the chance to relax in a home instead of a hotel.  Of course, relaxation is relative — tornado warnings and severe hail had us hiding in a closet while we were supposed to be watching the AFC championship game!

It was a busy trip, with a lot of driving. As a whole, it wasn’t a “vacation” or “relaxing,” but there were some great moments spent with family.  Smoking a cigar (the second I’ve smoked in my 43 years) and sipping a beer around a campfire with family and friends, all celebrating my nephew’s achievements — that was a great time.  Listening to my grandfather strum his guitar, sharing stories about his youth in Canada?  Priceless. There’s a reason you don’t just stay at home all the time — sometimes the good stuff happens elsewhere!

 

An idle year?

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I was working on some content for my professional blog and realized I hadn’t posted on this blog in almost a year.

Our “Saturdate” hikes were certainly less interesting in 2016.  We often found ourselves with other obligations, and spent some of our free time getting errands done and sharing a fine lunch at Sturbridge Seafood instead of exploring new hiking trails. Our hikes, when we went, revisited familiar trails and didn’t yield the kind of experiences I felt deserved blog posts.

And, once you get out of the habit of updating something like this, it’s tough to get going again. So while summer 2016 brought a new kayak for me, I didn’t write up any of my experiences on it — exploring nearby rivers and ponds, catching fish (or complaining about not catching any).  I also didn’t write about the awesome hike we took in Vermont with some friends, down to a small swimming hole by a waterfall, one of the toughest hikes I’ve done, scrambling over steep wet rocks with our kids and trying to wrap up the trip before it got dark.

So while I’m not one for New Years Resolutions, it’s time to remember that I enjoy taking (and posting) pictures and publishing my thoughts here.  Maybe I’ll broaden the focus here — new experiences of all kinds, not just cool hikes.

Either way, my goal (see, not a resolution) is to post here monthly.  We’ll see.

Midstate Trail – Spencer (Solo)

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On the first Sunday of the New Year, Evie and Jess made a last-minute decision to cheer on a friend at a gymnastics event in Western MA, and I made a last-minute decision to revisit the Sibley Farm / Burncoat Pond property with the intent of walking a portion of the Midstate Trail.  I’d hiked here with Jess twice before (1, 2) and both times we had mostly ignored the Midstate Trail.  Looking at the map, I realized I probably had enough time to hike the trail from the parking area up to Route 9 and back.

First off, let me again say how much I love this property.  Miles of trails on different terrain, fairly close to home and major roads, yet quiet once you’re out there, with wildlife and ponds to admire.  Take a look at the awesome map they have at the trailhead.

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My route this day would follow the bottom trail until it reached the White Oak Trail, which I would take up to the Midstate, which I would follow up to Route 9.  On my trip back, I would stay on the Midstate back to the parking area.

Our first real snow of the season was still fresh on the ground, and was coated in a bit of ice.  I was glad for my walking stick (and in fact wished I had two at times), and I often had to tread carefully to avoid falling.

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At first, the trails showed recent activity; boot treads and dog footprints mostly.  But the woods were quiet; I only met a couple other people despite a parking lot full of cars (again, the benefit of a large property with many trails).  In the pictures below you can see the “tags” they use for trail markers on this property, which nicely stand out in ways painted blazes sometimes don’t.

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I finally found my way onto the Midstate trail, and headed North.  It was only a bit more than a mile to the road but it was not easy going due to the snow and ice.  My legs were already feeling the pressure.

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The trail overlaps with the trails on this property at a few points, but still maintains its yellow triangle blazes.  Finding the trail was never difficult. Below you can see two yellow blazes and a blue one, for the same trail.  By this point, as you can see, the signs of human traffic had lessened significantly.

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Part of what I like so much about this property is Burncoat Pond, and the beaver ponds and marsh areas that surround it.  There are numerous viewing points out to the water.  It was nice to see the water starting to freeze as the property transitioned to winter.

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As the trail winds through the wetlands, there are a few areas where you have to travel on bridges to keep out of the muck (or the ice, in this case).  These were in excellent shape, having only recently been replaced (according to the fine folks on the Midstate Trail Facebook Group).

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Again, human traffic on the trail was significantly less in this area as compared to closer to the trailhead.

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However, animal footprints were becoming more common.  I saw several sets of deer and turkey tracks as well as the usual squirrel tracks. Below you can see some prints as well as what may be like prints from someone wearing crampons (or snowshoes?).

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For a while the trail here passes by some private property with many No Trespassing signs on it.  It includes a massive field with No Hunting signs posted periodically — I saw many deer trails headed into this field as well as the property owner’s tree stand in one corner.  I imagine this family has a full freezer every year.

I was quickly approaching Route 9, though.  The trail here overlaps with Polar Springs Rd, and there is some roadside parking for those who want to hit the trail starting here.  There was a bench here and an old mostly ruined structure.

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I walked out to Polar Springs Rd and out to Route 9, before turning around.

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The trip back was mostly the same as the trip out, though my legs were much more tired.  I hadn’t been on a serious hike in months and I was feeling it.

There were a couple different spots to see as I took a slightly different path back than I had out.

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At the end, I had done four miles in two hours, and my legs were complaining loudly.  But it was a great hike and covered a piece of trail I’ve always wanted to explore.

Some day I want to cover the entire Midstate Trail.  Perhaps some more point explorations of it are in order.

Grand Trunk Trail to East Brimfield Dam – Sturbridge

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It seems a recurring theme that we don’t have as much time to explore the trails on our Saturdays as we used to. Real life conspires to sap away even our protected time.  And so last weekend we again found ourselves looking for a close hike which wouldn’t take up too much of our time.

We ended up driving towards one trail and stopping at another; we saw a parking area on Holland Road in Sturbridge with a Friends of Sturbridge Trails sign on it, and decided to see what it was.  It turns out, it’s a somewhat new extension of the existing Grand Trunk Trail.  This section walks along the Quineboag River to the East Brimfield Dam, and will eventually connect into the Brimfield section of the trail.

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The trail is also labeled as the Trolley Line trail, or similar wordings.  There were two different rail lines through this section, the uncompleted “Grand Trunk” line and a functional trolley line.

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The trail goes along the river quite a bit and might provide a nice way down to do some fly fishing (in fact, we saw an angler with waders on close to the trailhead).

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We paused at a lookout and posed for a snapshot (as we often do).020

The trail continued along the river for a ways and eventually exited on the Army Corps of Engineers property for the East Brimfield Lake.  We’ve explored this dam area many times, including a couple fishing trips, so it wasn’t overall new to us.

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However, standing atop the dam, we saw a path down below which crossed the river and clearly explored a little bit of the property we hadn’t been to before.

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We walked down this way and were rewarded by the sight of a blue heron perched at the water’s edge looking for a meal.

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We walked a bit more along the water on this little path, and took in the fall landscape with the soothing sound of the water nearby.035

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It was a shorter walk than we had planned, because the map showed trail portions that weren’t yet complete.  Once the trail connects fully it’ll be a great showpiece for this section of the state.  For now, we can explore it bit by bit.

Rock House Reservation – West Brookfield

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I last wrote about Rock House in November of 2014.  On that day, we went for a long hike in the rain.  This time around, it was a shorter hike, but the weather was much more pleasant.

I started the day by pitching in at a town cleanup of a vacant lot, and spent several hours doing the kind of physical labor I went into engineering explicitly to avoid.  So while we still wanted to hike, I wanted something a little less taxing.  We picked Rock House because we know the trails well (map here), it was close, and we knew we could do a shorter loop and still get some fall scenery in.

We started by hiking up the hill on the red “inner loop” trail towards Carter Pond.

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There we paused and took pictures of the stunning foliage reflected in the still water.

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From there, we picked up the Outer Loop trail and took it around the property.  We’ve done these trails several times in the past so it was a relaxing hike, with frequent pauses to admire the foliage.  As is always the case on our Saturdate hikes, it gave us a chance to catch up on topics both serious and frivolous without the impatient ears of a seven-year-old.

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It was a short walk in the woods, but a much-needed escape from the hectic pace of life.