Blue-Blazed Trails

The Connecticut Forest and Park Association has a series of Blue-Blazed Hiking Trails throughout Connecticut. They claim that there is over 800 miles of such trails, much of it is through public land, but sometimes private owners allow walking on the trails through their land. Their website is: http://www.ctwoodlands.org/. I have already walked some of their trails in Hampton and Chaplin so today I wanted to connect into Eastford. The trails are for the most part well marked with blue blazes (see picture). This particular walk is a very pleasant forested walk. You can park at a trail-head on route 44 in Eastford and travel as far south as you wish until you hit route 97. This part of the walk is about one and a half miles. I would rate the dificulty at a 5 for it's verticle climb (on the way back) of about 300 feet and the sometimes slightly rough walking. As is usual with such trails a double blaze (see below) means to beware of changes in the trail (a turn, a fork, etc.). This would be a great trail to take with friends, but not a picnic walk as there is no place to really set a picnic lunch. You can walk this trail at a fairly quick clip if you want.

Begginings

When I started walking I usually started at home. I was hard pressed to make it to the corner of this short lane. Now this is sometimes the beggining of my somewhat longer walk. On the right are my "Finnish Sticks of Torment". Here in Connecticut I seem to be the only one using exercise sticks while I walk. On the other hand, in New Mexico many of my fellow walkers use similar sticks.

This weekend, for our 28th Anniversary I got me a personal Blackberry for my wife (yeah, I wrote that correctly, she wanted me to have a cell phone and I resisted for as long as possible). My phone has a GPS program my wife found and I am now toying with it. This morning I walked down this lane and walked 10.6 km (6.5 miles or so at 3.6 mph)). What a difference a year makes.

Connections

Sometimes my walks are designed just to make connections. Tuesday part of my walk took me further along route 244 near the Vanilla Bean. The walk involves about 2 miles along this busy road and if I didn't "need' the connection I wouldn't have walked it. Now I just need to make one more connection here and I will have walked the length of route 244.

Today I accidentally made a second connection, well it wasn't planned anyway. I had basically given up on walking the airline, as parts of it in Hampton are a swamp. I was going to make different connection and I "stumbled" across the airline in Chaplin/Hampton line. Against my better judgement I turned onto the airline. The section is absolutely delightful and highly recommended as a nature walk (how come my "better judgement" usually stinks?). The path I took is a gentle 2% slope from Chaplin to Hampton. Part of the fun today was I meet by a gentleman around my age who ws walking his "rescue" Doberman, Sheena, one of the sweetest dogs you would ever want to meet. Sadly this means I need to make the connection, the Hampton swamp. After that I will walk the path toward the intersection with the now abandoned Providence-Hartford RR. I am looking foward to that walk.

Knowing where you are is for chumps

When I am out in the car I like to adventure. I know where I am going, I just like to find new ways to get there. Frequently I have no clue where I am, but it is the adventure that is important. I know where I am going and eventually I get there after seeing new stuff. Well with walking that takes a whole different perspective. I am always interested in seeing new stuff and I want to walk a loop. This usually works out and I get a walk of 5 to 7 miles. But sometimes I am really, really off. Ever since I have lived here I have had the orientation of the green at Thompson ALL wrong, so I took a longer walk than intended because I couldn't find the road I wanted to take back (it was only a 7 mile walk so it ended well). Once in Eastford and Woodstock I wanted to walk a loop I was familiar with, I just failed to remember how long it was. I was forced to go out 4.5 miles and then walk back not completing the loop. Finally there is this, my walk in Chaplin. Ok, I actually didn't set out to walk in Chaplin, I wanted to explore the northwest corner of Hampton. I should have turned around when I saw a sign welcoming me to a "Heart Healthy Community". No, the irony is not lost on me. Well the loop was MUCH bigger than I expected and I had no idea where I was, though I knew I would eventually get back to where I wanted to be. Life is really weird when you think of route 97 as being back to civilization. Imagine my relief when I saw an active road through the trees, finally route 97. But, it was a little TOO active. And it had three lanes......uh, route 97 NEVER has three lanes. I had found the much more active route 6, 4 and a half miles from my car. I had wanted to walk about 8 miles that morning. Well it was 8 miles to route 6. Whoops.

The Airline

On of the trails in Northeast Connecticut is called the Airline. It is the leftovers from an old Boston-New York railroad. The grade on the trail is never more than 3% so it is a rather level walk. Sadly much of this old railroad is all but a swamp. The old road bed near the Audubon Bird Scantuary in Pomfret is a very nice walk. There is a parking place near the intersection of routes 44 and 169. Currently a little info area is being constructed on the west side of the road. the path at this location is an easy and very pleasant walk, though you do have to negotiate the swampy parts. This trail can be as long or as short as you want as these walks are not a circuit but rather out and back. I have highlighted on the map that part of the Airline that starts in Putnam and continues to Hampton. Despite the2 swamp I would rate these sections of the airline as a 2, it is level. The marked path is 10.5 miles long.

Sharon's Bench

Occasionally on a walk I come across a small mystery. This walk is one of them. When I first did a walk like this when I climbed up the hill on Route 169 I found a rough stone bench with "Sharon's Bench" engraved on the front. It turns out that Sharon Sama was the wife of a staff member at Pomfret Prep School and she would wait for the bus carrying her young children at this spot. Sharon died of cancer in her mid-thirties in 2005. You can sit with Sharon after the hard climb up the hill on 169 and perhaps watch the school buses drive by on a sunny afternoon.

The walk starts near the intersection of 97 and 169/44 across the street from the Vanilla Bean Cafe. The route includes 169/44, Grosevenor Rd, Wright's Crossing, Day road, Needle's Eye Rd., and back to route 169/44. It is a 5 mile walk and includes a climb of about 230 ft. For that I would rate this as a 5, the climb is hard since it is only a short part of the walk. Of course a much shorter walk would just be down to the bench and back. The bench itself is made of an attractive local pink granite gneiss.

Ostby Memorial Forest

Frequently on these walks I run across interesting little side walks. Today is a case in point. I was walking Old Route 6 East in Hampton and Brooklyn and came across the Ostby Memorial Forest which is owned by the Eastern Connecticut Forest Landowners Assoc./Wolf Den Land Trust. At the road there is a little post box with a log and maps inside. The trail is about 1 mile loop which since it goes through some wetlands and rugged short hills I will rate it as a 3. The trail is clearly marked by orange spray paint blazes on the trees. Just a reminder about blazes, one mark means the trail more or less goes straight ahead, two marks means look for a change (corner or two paths with one being the recommended path, etc.). The Map indicates that there are old foundations, wells and an interesting stone bridge. All of these I found. The map also marks a potential sawmill site, but I am not sure of that (and neither was the map maker). The map has a nice story about the property's transfer to the trust in 1999. The path goes out to Sarah Pearl Road and you must be careful to look for the entrance back into the forest. Again this would be a very pleasant and short walk on a hot sunny summer day. If you take this walk or its companion walk near the Golden Lamb think about a small donation to the trust. Their address is on the map.

Old Route 6 can be found next to the Post Office in Hampton which is on Route 97.