Metacomet trail - Part 7

This hike occurred on August 6 & 11, 2013

Trail Heads:

620 Edgewood Rd, Berlin, CT - Parking: On the side of Edgewood Road, there is parking for around half a dozen cars to park off-road. 

650 Southington Rd, Berlin, CT - Parking: On the side of Southington Rd, there's space to park maybe 1-2 cars. There are no signs prohibiting it but it isn't an optimal spot. 

Length/Distance: For the first hike, according the Connecticut Walk book, the route between the trail heads on Edgewood Rd & Southington Rd was 1.4 miles. According to my GPS tracking program, our route on August 6 was 2.35 miles which was a there-and-back road walk. For the second hike, we followed the blue trail from the Edgewood trail head back towards Hubbard Park to find where we lost the trail last week. According to my GPS tracking program, our route on August 11 was 3.9 miles which was a there-and-back hike. 

Summary: The road walk on August 6 was uneventful. We began our backtrack hike on August 11 from Edgewood Rd.

 We went past the gate and up the wide trail. 

There were many bees feasting on wildflowers like purple and white Chicory (Cichorium intybus) and Larger Bur-marigold (Bidens laevis). 

We also saw some Cicada (Cicadidae cicada) holes.

 Across the trail, there was a gigantic spider, carrying a snack sack along with it. Unfortunately, the camera couldn't focus on it properly. 

Initially, we missed this turn off of the trail. The main path continued on and the tree was a bit off the path. 

This portion of trail was entirely uphill. There were sections of loose rock to scrabble over.  

The trail went over the pipeline area and it was quite overgrown. The trail looked like a tick convention (path is dead center of the picture). 

Looking back, it might be difficult to find the trail. You can see the trail marker on the tree in the shadows. 

There was a tiny little stream along the way.

After a bit of climbing, we found the spot where the trail split. The trail was marked but indicated the turn much too early. A tree on the left indicated a turn to the right as the path curved around. I recall thinking whoever marked the trail was a bit overzealous as it was obvious the main path turned. But it so happens that the trail goes straight ahead from the turn marker, while the main path turns to the left.  

And in all fairness, it wasn't much of a path. It was much more "blue trail" though.  

During the August 11 hike, we did see two different Eastern Ratsnakes along the trail sunning themselves; they moved out of our way as we hiked through. Overall, both hikes occurred on beautiful days. It was a relief to finish the August 11 hike so we can begin to hike forward without having to deal with Hubbard park's time table. 

Metacomet trail - Part 4

This hike occurred on July 27, 2013

Trail Heads:

400 Park Dr., Berlin, CT - Parking: Given our past experience with the auto road, we initially assumed we would not be able to access the peak inside Hubbard park by car so we parked on Park Dr back beyond the "no parking beyond this sign." We walked to the gate and were very aggravated to see cars and motorcycles riding up the auto road. So we turned around, got in our car, and drove 10 minutes around the park to enter via the auto road. We had a friend pick us up from this location at the end of our hike and bring us back to our car. On this road, we saw some awesome Castle Crashers art. 

Peak Dr., Meriden, CT - Parking: Using the Hubbard Park auto road, we parked at the top of the Hanging Hills' East Peak, near Castle Craig.  

Length/Distance: According the Connecticut Walk book, the route was 1.1 miles. According to my GPS tracking program, our route was 1.8 miles. After much deliberation, we've come to the determination that we think the Connecticut Forest & Park Association measures trail distance according to 2D maps, not the actual 3D mileage.  

Summary: We began our hike from Peak Drive and the turret. 

There were some beautiful views from the top of Castle Craig. 

You could see a clear view of Sleeping Giant State Park in the distance (giant's head to the right with the feet to the left). 

There was a good view of Mirror Lake. 

After taking pictures, we headed out on the blue trail. If you head out from the turret, the trail is on your right a few hundred yards away. The blue trail crosses over the white trail and then has more amazing views. As we were looking at the view, we realized that an inventive Eastern Ratsnake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) was sunning itself in an evergreen bush around shoulder height and we had disturbed it (its head is dead center of the photo). 

There was also an interesting chasm between two cliffs. 

Along this trail, there were amazing views of the Merimere Reservoir.   

There was also a proliferation of ripe American Red Raspberry (Rubus idaeus) along the trail.

The trail passed over an old stream bed that had run over rock.

The trail emerged onto the auto road to pass by the base of the Merimere Reservoir. 

There was also some beautiful Queen Anne's Lace (Daucus carota) [which I've somehow forgotten is another name for wild carrots and the taproot is edible, though the leaves are toxic and can irritate skin]. 

We then left Hubbard Park via Park Drive and walked along the road to meet our friend who was picking us up. Along the way, we saw some beautiful Perennial Phlox (Phlox paniculata).

There was a female Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio glaucus) drinking nectar from these flowers. 

Overall, the hike was fairly short and mostly downhill. The parking/road situation around Hubbard Park is very frustrating, given the inconstant accessibility. Since the next section of trail climbs one of the highest peaks on the Metacomet trail (West Peak - 1,024 ft elevation), we'll be splitting it into two hikes. 

Ragged Mountain Preserve

Ragged Mountain

We began this section on April 21, 2012 and finished May 11, 2012
We hiked all of the Red Dot, White Dot, Green Dot, Blue-Red, Blue-Yellow, and Blue trails

Trail Head: The trail head for this section is located at West Lane & Wigwam Rd, Kensington, CT. There is a lot of roadside parking located near the trail head. Even on busy days, there has always been parking available. 

Length/Distance: It varies depending on which trails you decide to take. An excellent resource for maps is located on the Berlin Land Trust's website. One hike that we did was Blue-Red to Blue to Blue-Red. That looped hike was approximately 7-8 miles and took us about 3 hours. Here is my route for a shorter hike we did.  

Summary: This area is quite beautiful. There are many different cliffs with gorgeous views of lakes and other mountains. You can see the Hart Lakes, Wassel Reservoir, Meriden and Talcott Mountains, and the UConn Health Center from different lookout points on the Blue trail. However, I would caution anyone hiking there to be wary of poison ivy. I have only just recovered from a bout of poison ivy that I got from hiking at Ragged Mountain after losing the trail (Tecnu and Calagel are great stuff). If you go straight at the trail head to wrap around the right side of the mountain on the Blue-Red, make sure to follow only clearly marked trails. There were a number of trails that seemed to go in the proper direction but were not clearly marked as being any color trail that dead-ended in the middle of a swamp. The maps of the area are helpful but don't appear to have been updated. The color markers have changed on some of the trails and there are many more cleared trails than are shown on the map. Also keep in mind that many streams intersect with the trails and overflow, causing very muddy conditions. Expect to wear boots if it's rained in the past week.   

On the trail, we did see a 5-foot-long Eastern Ratsnake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) sunning itself on a rock. This variety of snake is quite harmless. A listing of CT snakes with helpful pictures is available here. We also encountered many ticks; this area seems to have a LOT of them, both Dog and Deer ticks.