Welcome to the March 31st edition of our Hiking Adventures in Pictures

Welcome Hiking Fans!

It was such a relief to continue our adventures this past week on a trail that we have not yet conquered before. Thanks for picking a great trail, Rob.



We all met in Norwich at 9am on Saturday morning and shortly headed north together up RT2 toward Glasonbury in Rob's Volvo. After referring to the Connecticut Walk Book for directions a few times on how to get to the trailhead, we stopped not far off the bottom of exit 11 on Toll Gate Road and began to get ready for our hike. We were rushed into our gear and out into the woods because of the blistering wind that kept bitting onto us. None of us thought it was going to be that cold and windy, but once we were on our way, the trees and hills blocked the bitting wind and allowed us to warm up a bit.



We started our hike on what is called the Connector Trail, which follows RT2 east until it catches up with the Shenipsit trail about 0.9 miles away. The constant roaring of the traffic on the highway reminded us that we were not far away from civilization.



The Shenipsit trail traverses in a north-eastern direction through Meshomasic State Forest, and most it was wide enough to be labeled a Sofee trail. Also, there were two fairly steep hills along our way, one in the beginning and one at the end. Our goal this week was to do our loop-d-loop at a waterfall at about our 4 mile mark. The area where the waterfall is located is very beautifully, and we took advantage of it by snapping most of our pictures there.



We later had attempted to have lunch at Macaroni Grill in Manchester, but found that it had closed down. That was a shock to all of us, so we headed over to Ted's Montana Grill, not far away. We did our latte ritual, and then ventured home.

Thanks to Rob for doing the driving this week.
See everyone next!
Joe

Welcome to the March 24th edition of our Hiking Adventures in Pictures

Welcome Hikers!

During the last few weeks we were forced to cut short our hikes because of the rain and snow, but this week, we conquered a proud 8 miles with a more robust pace then usual. It will be with a breadth of fresh air and the smell of spring that will dampen our memory of the winter weather and allow us to stretch out our legs in defiance of the slippery ice and snow.



Hence forth... spring and summer will awaken our spirits and help us to run the blood through our veins in celebration!

We welcome the first day of Spring.



This week, Deb and Sof had a hand in picking the wider trails of the Pachaug, and with that, we began our day in earnest. We all met at about 9am at the Porter Pond camping area and we headed west on Cedar Swamp Rd, a Sofee trail if there ever was one. Then we were onward towards Dawley Pond and over the double log walking bridge which crosses the dam at Great Meadow Pond. We stopped there and snapped some pictures and continued on. Eventually we did our loop-d-loop at the intersection of Shetucket Turnpick and Pachaug Trail, took a short water break, and headed back.



We ate lunch at MVP's (with Sof in rare form, which we all so much enjoyed) and afterwards we had our festive Starbucks latte's in Montville. Dinner that evening was also in celebration with Sof and Rob's wedding anniversary in mind with Bob and Jody capping off our evening. A long and glorious day!

See everyone next week.
Joe

Welcome to the March 17th edition of our Hiking Adventures in Pictures

Welcome Hikers!

This week we knew that it was gonna be wet and rainy out there, so we decided to do Bluff Point again. It seems like every time the weather is in the extreme, Bluff Point is there to protect us. With Sofee trails in abundance, Bluff Point was the obvious choice while hiking in the rain.



The hike started off with a light rain, and we all knew we were gonna be wet by the time we were finished. About 15 to 20 minutes into it however, the rain had stopped, leaving a significant amount of over flowing puddles in our path. Most of the puddles were quit large and breasted the entire width of the trail. We were brushing away the branches as we tried to maneuver around pools of water, trying not to get our feet wet.



We hiked the entire 3 mile loop around Bluff Point, then decided to lengthen our adventure by going around again, but turning around at the beach. We probably put in about 4 1/2 - 5 miles in all before we were through.

Rob, coming off his eye surgery, didn't join in on our hike, but he was Sof's chauffeur for the day. We all enjoyed lunch at Go Fish in Mystic in anticipation of our ritual after-the-hike latte's.

OK, see everyone next week.
Joe

Welcome to the March 10th edition of our Hiking Adventures in Pictures

Welcome Hikers!

This week we decided to hike a trail we haven't been on in awhile. The Wolf Den Trail in Pomfret, Connecticut. Why was this trail named the Wolf Den you may ask? Here I quote from a plaque at the scene which tells this story.

'Putnum and The Wolf'

Following her tracks through one day and night in the early snow of December 1742 to the Connecticut River and back, the early settlers of this region here discovered the den of the she wolf that had for years devastated their flocks and had so far eluded all attempts at capture after all other methods had failed, when both servant and dog held back, Israel Putnam 70 of whose sheep had been slaughtered, at 10 o'clock at night, with a rope tied to his feet, first with a torch, again with a musket, entered this cave, and by the light of her angry eyes, shot and killed the marauder, and entering - a - third time, dragged forth the body of the last wolf in Connecticut.

Israel Putnam later went on to fight as an American army Major General at the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775, where he not only helped plan the battle, but he supposedly ordered his troops to, "Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes." The order was significant because his troops were low on ammunition, and he needed each lead ball of ammunition to count. The phrase is now known as one of the most remembered of it's time. Major General Putnam later progressed to overall command of the Continental Army until George Washington was given that job by the newly formed Continental Congress.

Our group shot this week was taken at the very spot where Israel Putnam killed the last wolf in Connecticut.



See everyone next week,
Joe

Welcome to the March 3rd edition of our Hiking Adventures in Pictures

Welcome Hikers,

This week's hike was cold and windy. The temperature outside wasn't below zero or anything like that, but we just didn't expect to be thrown around by the wind as much as we were. It was probably a good 15 or 20 degrees outside, and about 10 or so degrees warmer by the time we got back to our cars.

I called Rob Sunday morning when we both agreed that hiking around beach pond would be our next adventure. We arrived at the Beach Pond parking lot at about 8:30. Sof & Rob arrive shortly afterwards.



We jumped out of our cars and into the wind. The gusts coming at us from off of the surface of the pond was bitter cold. Shocking in fact. We hurried to get our gear in place and almost ran up into the woods to get out of the gale. Once we were able to get a few trees and hills behind us, we warmed up a bit, but the cold stayed in our bones for quite some time. The trail was a little slippery and we walked on ice and snow most of the time, but it wasn't really that bad. Most of the snow was packed down pretty hard although we didn't see any tracks from other hikers until we did our loop-d-loop.

Considering the weather that we had to deal with, we all were surprised to see as many hikers out on the trail as we did this week. We saw more hikers this week than we have seen in about 2 months of hiking. Our first pair of hikers we saw were two woman with their dog, and they followed right behind us up until we did our loop-d-loop half-way into our hike. We actually were able to all take a group shot at one point. They had mentioned to us that they have been hiking all winter, and we compared notes while telling our story as well. Here is our group shot.



The next hiker we saw was, in Deb's words, "Very good looking." He was alone, listening to his iPod, while we said our greetings. Our last encounter was with a fairly large group of people who looked like they kept fairly active. They must have been a group of 7 or 8 or so, accompanied by their dog. Rob mentioned that one of the woman had a German accent.



We walked out of the woods, into the wind, and jumped into our cars where we drove to Ruby Tuesday's to have lunch. We actually skipped our lattes this week, and had hot chocolate back at home base instead.



Talk to everyone next week,
Joe