Metacomet trail - Part 10

This hike occurred on November 3, 2013

Trail Heads:
330 Long Bottom Rd., Southington, CT - We parked on Long Bottom Road at Roger's Orchard farm store. There is no roadside parking available at the trail head on Shuttle Meadow Road. 

440 New Britain Ave., Plainville, CT - We parked in a doctors' offices parking lot across the street from where the Metacomet enters the woods again after a road walk. The parking lot is very large and is not used by patients on evenings and weekends. 

Length/Distance: According the Connecticut Walk book, the route between the trail heads on Long Bottom Rd & New Britain Ave was 5.1 miles, although the route may have been redone since the book was last updated. According to my GPS tracking program, our route was 5.36 miles.

Summary: We started our hike from Roger's Orchard. We walked to the Shuttle Meadow Road trail head and began our hike. The woods in this area had quite a lot of ripe rose hips (edible - first picture) and Common Bittersweet (poisonous - second picture).

The trail climbed along some cliffs. 

We saw an old fireplace near the trail. 

There was some very nice views of Crescent Lake. The fall colors were amazing.  

Near the lake's overlook, there was evidence of an old structure, long since forgotten. 

As the trail neared Rt-72, there was clearings full of rose hips. 

The trail ended out onto Black Rock Ave and we followed the blue blazes over Rt-72, and over to Main St/Rt-372. In the course of this day's hike, we started hiked in Southington, went through New Britain, and ended in Plainville.