AMC Paddle - Mystic River

It's been a long time since I was able to join in  a group paddling adventure.  As it happens, I did this same route 4 years ago.  That experience was enjoyable, so I figured, let's do it again. 

Our put-in is just north of the I-95 overpass.
The river is fairly wide at this point. 

Heading north, the river narrows quickly then passes some old factory buildings.
A little further on, it narrows to about 6'.  With all the recent rains, the current is pretty strong.

Here is an osprey nest atop these power poles.  One of the leaders mentioned that she has seen eagles in the area as well and apparently it is not uncommon for them to take over used nests of other birds.

Next we head south under the bridges of I-95.

We make a stop at the Mystic Seaport Museum to see all the tourists.  
My kayak looks pretty small next to the Charles W. Morgan.

Our turnaround point is the Mason Island Yacht club (where they let us land and also use the restrooms).  No super-yachts here, just locals and kids learning to sail.  We did we some big yachts back in the marina, but I missed getting photos.

When we came under this bridge earlier it was pretty easy.  But now we're half way between and high and low tide, so there's a lot of water moving.  My fellow paddlers are having a bit more challenging time getting back through with all that water rushing back out to sea.

Lastly, I wanted to include this video clip of the Mystic River road bridge going into the "up" position.  In the summertime it happen at 45 minutes past the hour, so if you can't fit through at the other times you just have to wait.

Stats for today's paddle:

Distance 10.7 miles;  average speed 2.12 mph;  total time: 5:02.

Quick Trip up The Mountain

Earlier today, I had a casting call as an extra in the local filming of The Liberator.  After walking back
and forth all morning for a "street scene", they fed us lunch and let most of us go early.  With all that afternoon time available and no adventures as of yet on this Independence Day weekend, I figured why not take a quick hike up our local mountain, Mount Wachusett.

Once again, I call my 9-year old grandson so see if he would like to tag along, too.  He's up for it, so I'll have some company for this hike.

We start at my favorite trailhead:  the less-traveled West Side Trail (on the west side of the mountain).  It is a familiar climb, but always enjoyable.  Well, perhaps it's only a little less traveled today;  it's 1:55pm and there no parking spots left. No worries, I can park on the road.

After ascending some steep spots, the trail flattens out as we near the summit chair lift at the top of the ski trails.  We ascend a few more meters and we're at the summit.  It's a pretty hazy day so we can't see the city of Boston.  We settle in on the fire tower platform and have ourselves a little snack.  

For a little variety, we decide to try the Harrington Trail on the way down.  If you check out the elevation profile below, you can see we have to tackle some of the steepness almost as soon as we left the summit.

Out hike to day was 3.08 miles and took 2:18.  Out total altitude gain was 818'.  Not too shabby.

Orienteering in Townsend

One of my top 5 favorite outdoor things to do is Orienteering.  For those of you unfamiliar with this sport, I like to explain it as playing "Where's Waldo" in the woods.  Using only a map and compass, the objective is to find controls (flags) hidden in the woods , doing it in the shortest amount of time.  Since the pandemic began, the New England Orienteering Club has be running events as BYOM (bring your own map).  This is a cool format where you use a QR Code reader on your phone to "punch" the time when you actually find each control.  

I actually teach orienteering skills and while I cannot share the map with you here, you can find examples and more thorough explanation on NEOC's website.

Today I decided to also track my steps to find each of the 9 controls the orange course set up in Townsend State Forest.  That map is shown above.

The course was listed as 2.6km, but in actuality I wound up hiking 3.99 miles, almost double the point-to-point-to-point distance.  But the real story was the water and the bushwhacking.  It rained last night and it's spring, so there was water everywhere.  The "vernal pools" that are often dry by July were overflowing.  Moreover, the most direct route from control to control pretty much took me through mature heavy duty rhododendron bushes. 

I need to keep moving east, but as you can see, there's a stream in the way.  Without trekking poles, it takes extra good balance to step from rock to rock without getting my feet wet.

This is one of the few trails on this property.  As you can see there are water hazards everywhere.

Some of the controls were hard to get to like this one tethered to a tree hanging over the water.

This control wasn't easy to find either.  Attached to a tree which had fallen down.

I finished the course successfully, meaning I found all the controls in order..  The last time I checked, I was still in second place on this course, but you can see the results yourself.  Click on my name and you can even see my split times.  Enjoy!

Johnny Appleseed State Park

As you know, Leominster is the birthplace of John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed.  Since we live here on Johnny Appleseed Lane, of course we know much of the local "JA" lore.  However, until today we have never visited Johnny Appleseed State Park.  

By some accounts, the park is listed as "permanently closed".  But I was able to find the trail map shown at right.  On the map you can see Johnny Appleseed Lane and I've mark our house with a big red dot.  The Nashua River runs within most of the park's boundaries and the Fall Brook joins the Nashua here as well. 

One of the parking areas is now within the borders of the Leominster Babe Ruth baseball fields, adjacent to the old Italian American Center.  My, how things have changed here in 33+ years we've lived here.  Anyway, this is where we will start our hike today.

Along this section of the Nashua are the remains of the old Leominster dam.  When the boys were younger, they would ride their mountain bikes down along the river and actually found this dam.  Moreover, I once padded down the river and actually went right through some of the dam's remains.

The dam is actually one of the first things we see after starting our walk.  Now decorated with unsanctioned artwork, one must be super careful here as there are no railings and it's a long way down to the river.

Looking downstream, there are logs laying across the river creating additional paddling obstructions.

I walked upriver a little to get another view of the dam.  You can see how high it is above the water.

As the park doesn't seem to be an official "park" any more, the trail markings are kind of poor.  We wander arounds the trails that we can find.  There seemed to be more trails across the Fall Brook,  but were unable to find a way to get to them.

We're thinking "x marks the spot", but we're not exactly sure what the "X" is for.

Here's our actual track.  We covered 1.22 miles exploring in 49 minutes.

Because we're along the river, there was only a total of 103 ft of elevation gain.  

It should be noted it is April, which means the ticks are out.  It's great to get out even for an hour so enjoy the outside, but avoid tall grasses and check yourself when you're done.

Chapel Brook

It is the first full day of Spring.  A great day to get out for an early season hike.  We're still doing out best to avoid people, so we'll head back out west to the Pioneer Valley.

There are a couple of Trustees properties in these towns of Ashfield and Conway.  Today, we'll visit Chapel Brook.  Since it is spring, we are thinking that there won't be too much snow to contend with (like the last time I was in Ashfield), but you never know.

There are trails on both sides of the road. We decide that the one beside the brook ought to be pretty with any melting snow.

Well, the trail down to the brook is pretty much a sheet of ice. 
Let's move on to "Plan B".

It goes uphill but we can walk alongside the trail so we don't slip so much.

It's good to have the trekking poles for stability on the trail.
We pass this very impressive rock face...

... as the trail winds to the left around it and fallen trees up the hill.

At the top, there's a lookout over the valley.  We take a short break.

The view to the west is terrific.

You can see there's still a fair amount of snow in the woods. 
And it's also quite a drop just beyond the rock ledge in the foreground.

It turns out we can actually make a loop on the trail by descending a pretty steep set of stairs and rocks.  It came out just to the right of the "impressive rock face" we passed earlier.  We didn't even notice the up-trail when we were there, but it was probably easier to come down the way we did.

All told, it wasn't that long a hike.  While we only hiked 0.83 miles, we did climb 249 feet for those great views.

On the way back to the highway, we stopped at Pekarski's sausage store in South Deerfield and picked up some great kielbasa for the upcoming Easter holiday.  Highly recommended! 

Weir Hill

We have the whole day free today.  Betsy would like to do a little Carter's shopping and I would like to get out to take advantage of the sunshine, so we decide to do both.

Not too far from our shopping destination in North Andover is another Trustees property - Weir Hill (pronounced "wire").  I'm supposing that most of the snow has melted or evaporated in the Merrimack Valley, so that's where we're headed.  Hopefully, it won't be too busy on a Sunday morning.  

It's a cold day, but we'll be fine if we dress appropriately.  The high is projected to be in the mid-30's but the wind isn't too bad.

The parking lot is busier than I anticipated.  We bring along our trekking poles just in case.

OK, so there's a little more snow than anticipated.  Actually, this is just a sheet of ice, so we compensate by hugging the edge of the trail.  Yeah, we need those trekking poles.

We arrive at a terrific overlook.  From here, we are able to see Mount Wachusett, Mount Monadnock, and even can glimpse the top of Mount Washington since it is such a clear day.

Betsy gets a little better view standing atop some granite benches.
It's a "blue bird" day, as you can see.

From the map above you can see that this property sits between a pond and and larger lake
that supplies North Andover's with drinking water.  On the pond, there were some people ice fishing.
I loved the shadows cast on the ice from the trees.

There must be a lot of water here in the other seasons.
There were several of these long boardwalks along this trail.

Our walk today was 2.4 miles taking 1:36.  Our elevation gain was 405ft.  Not bad. 

When we finished, we stopped at a nearby farm stand for some treats.  And while Betsy shopped, Steve found a nice place in the sun to catch some rays.  One of the passers-by in the parking lot said that I must be a "professional waiter."  That works for me!

Recharge Day

To help employees deal with the stresses of long-term working from home, today was proclaimed a "Recharge Day" at work and everyone in the company was given the day off.  With that in mind, we had planned to head over to the mountain to go skiing, but usually a 1/2 day there is enough, considering how long the lines can be especially on a Friday.  So to make the day more like a "day off", Betsy suggested we go exploring after our ski day was done.

To start with, I ran into "Kevin" doing the daily trail report at Mt. Wachusett and chatted with him for a couple minutes, because it looked like he captured Betsy skiing down the hill.  He also asked me to "say a few words".  So just like that I'm a star on Wachusett TV.

You can view the whole video here. You can see:

• Steve talking at 0:47
• Betsy skiing at 1:27
• Steve skiing at 1:32
  

After a lunch stop at home, we're off again.  This time it's down to the seashore.  Betsy said that to make it seem like a real day off we should do something.  So, we're off to Plum Island.  A week ago we were in nearby Newburyport for dinner with good friends and headed out that way to explore a little, but ran out of time.  Today, we'll make up for it.

 

Plum Island is this very long spit of land off the extreme northeast coast of  Massachusetts.  It is actually in the town of Newbury and to get there we had to drive through part of Amesbury and Newburyport.  The southern 2/3 of the island are part of the Parker River Wildlife Refuge, a major stop along the east coast migration paths.  

At this time of year, it's pretty deserted.  In the photo above, you can see the extensive salt marshes extending back toward the mainland.

There are several 3-storey bird watching platforms scattered along the roadside.
From here, you can see how close the ocean is.

Here's the view from down below.

We finally make it all the way to the beach.  It's freezing, but cool, too. 
We do a short hike to where we can see our summer spot, Crane Beach, across Ipswich Bay
(see map above).

On the way back out, we decide to make one more beach stop.  Little did we realize what a long walk it would be across this "double dune".  There was even a wild cranberry bog to see along the way..

Looking south, the light of the setting sun just kisses the top of the dune.

On the way off the island, we stop at the Plum Island Grille.
Believe it or not, Betsy's dish on the left is gluten free.
We gave the chef 2 thumbs up for this efforts.

It was an hour drive home, but well worth it.  I'm I little tired, but definitely recharged.  I think.