Hike 5 - Section #5

Memorial Day, 2012.  You would think I would have had time to hike some other day this weekend, but it's one of those crazy weekends again:  Confirmation and Pentecost on Saturday, a graduation party for Nathaniel on Sunday, and a parade this morning.  Whew!

Some stretches of today's hike are very familiar, as they are close to home and I have done them many times.  Being a holiday, most everyone else is busy, so I start hiking solo.  Going past Crow Hills Pond in Leominster State Forest, I can hear people playing at the beach below and I actually pass some other people hiking in the park.  Then James calls and is interested in joining me for a while. Yay!  The walk starts out buggy - lots or gnats and few mosquitoes.  It's the hottest hiking day yet and somewhat humid, too.  We also have to deal with ticks.  The last 200 yards of the hike goes through a tall grass field infested with them.  Between James and me, we brush 9 ticks off ourselves just in that short distance.

Starting point on Narrows Road .

Up, up, up.  Part way up the  "Stone Staircase" built by the CCC back in the 30's.

From the top, you get a great view of the Fitchburg landfill.  Really, it's beautiful.

I'm not sure what these are, but they were trail-side in both white and pink.

The rock climbing area at Crow Hills. You can see someone belaying at the bottom.

James joins me at Redemption Rock.  Learn all about the rock and Mary Rowlandson here.

We had to ask the geese and goslings to move into the pond in front of the Mt Wachusett ski lodge.

Thanks to Alex for picking us up at the far end of the ski area parking lot.

Today's hike was 4.77 miles in 2:20. 

Hike 4 - Section #4

Alex thought that this would be a rather uneventful section of the trail - at least according to the MidState Trail Guide, in which several sections were shown to be on roadways.  As it turns out, however, the trail has been re-routed in several places, reducing the "road" experience significantly.  We started to suspect this by noticing that some of the trail sections and landmarks did  not match up to what we were reading in the guide (4th edition, 2002).  We also noticed that these sections seemed to be less worn and that the marker paint and signage (those ever-present yellow triangles) appeared much newer.  After I'm finished with my "thru" hike this season, I think it will be time for me to buy an updated trail guide (see www.midstatetrail.org).

Alex & I are about to start our hike at the Graffiti bridge where we lift off last week.

Lots of beautiful stone walls winding through the forest.

We found some wide open spaces we weren't expecting.

Look!  Cows!

The trail actually goes over this stone wall.

These are more cows.  What you can't see is that they're actually stampeding towards us.  No kidding!  They were heading for the cows seen in a previous photo, who also started running toward them.  The trail we were hiking was in between these two groups of stampeding cows (yikes!), but thankfully guarded by wire fencing and a stone wall.

This is an old gravel pit that we saw on the map, now grassland.

This is one of those brand new trail markers I mentioned at the beginning.  Even the nails are brand new.

The trail crosses Rt 2 here.  Alex is ahead of me as usual.

Did I mention I love photos of babbling brooks?  This water was really moving.

Ending the day at the babbling brook is even better (see car through the trees).

Today's tally (trail re-routings notwithstanding) was 4.91 miles in 1:42.  I am up to milepost 18.41.  Only 74 miles to go!