Woody Hill is Great!

I had a great time checking out a bit of Woody Hill in Rhode Island today - there are some great trails here - I only scratched the surface.

It was cold and windy in the morning and I made the mistake (in retrospect) of wearing long jeans AND my road biking softshell jacket - by 11 AM I was broiling!

Here are the trails I took: XC up > Driving Miss Hazy > Hansel & Gretel > West Main Street > Lake Spur > Leaning Chimney > XC Down

Driving Miss Hazy

Hansel & Gretel

West Main Street

Lake Spur

I love seeing old ruins in the woods

What - no water in the lake and I needed a swim!

Leaning Chimney

There were some tough spots on this trail

Great (but exhausting) ride - I gotta come back and ride some more!

After 8 Years - Big River Revisited

It was 8 years ago that I rode this park - my.. my... time has flown! I had fond memories of this place -  lots of trails, abandoned structures and damsmhere and there and no serious climbs!

Its an enormous park (over 8,600 acres!) and I was psyched and thought I would enter in a new way - starting from the western lot and hitting the easy greens until I got down to the Tarbox Pond area.Well everywhere it was overgrown and buggy - as a matter fact long stretches of the trail were just flowing rivulets and huge puddles.

To make matters worse, I unexpectedly hit a rock and got scraped.

Overgrown and the wet branches slapped you in the face!

But there were spots of amazing beauty as well!

After bushwhacking thru a swampy trail not on TrailForks...

 ...I rode back to the access road and tried riding Logs. It looks nice here but further on, it was one continuous puddle.

Bummer!!!

 

Double Header Plus!

I did a double header today (well almost a triple header if you count my hike at Smith School).

Smith School Trails

In the morning I hiked Parcel 3 at the Smith School Trails and widened a couple of tight turns with the rake and GPSd the Maze area, The GPS--as expected--didn't turn out so great.  Due to the tightness of the loops, there were quite a few crossover errors. I fudged it the best I could for the graphic map.

R3 - start of the mini-Sidewinder

Dividend Pond

I drove over to Dividend Pond for a quickie which of course included both the mini Sidewinder ravines as well as the Pit Viper and Back to the Future trails.

River Highlands 

Next,  over at River Highlands for a change I rode Upper PowerGlide in the opposite direction and ventured the amazing rim trails along the ravines. They were freakin' awesome!

Across the Putnam Bridge

Today I rode across the newly opened Putnam Bridge trail on my road bike around 5:30 PM. It was a simple and short ride but nice to get out on my road bike for a change...

Leaving Glastonbury

On the Wethersfield side

Heading Back
Passing Keeney's Cove

A little shaky because I just rested the camera on the handlebars - oh well!

Finally : Decent Weather to bike!

 I've been very busy lately and it seemed every time I had a bit of free time it was raining or cloudy, cold and damp. Well finally last week I had some time to ride at both Dividend Pond and a bit of River Highlands.

Dividend Pond

At  Dividend Pond, I had to check out the new trail and of course ride the two mini Sidewinders and the great Pit Viper Trail!

River Highlands

At River Highlands, I only had time for a quickie but there are some really fun trails there!

Watrous Park

On Tuesday, the weather so great so I popped over to Watrous Park to check it out. I was only there once a couple of years ago before they built the Children of the Corn trail. It was great. There are lots of log rides all over the park -- I tried a few but this old man needs to go back and try a few more - I 'm fairly timid in my old age!

 Greg Yard Work

Finally I went over to my son's house and helped with his fix-me-upper yard work. He had hurt his knee pretty bad climbing so I dug up and moved a lot of dirt across the front yard to shore up his driveway.

EoK Snow Hike

I was finally feeling better after my spell with COVID so I went on an afternoon hike East of Keeney.

I went in at Heritage Drive and hiked the entire parcel south of Howe. Lots of folks have been using the trails as well as a dirt biker.

Snowshoeing after the big storm

It is so nice to have a forest and cool trails on my property - especially after a huge snowstorm where I can snowshoe!

From my front yard, looking westward on Hopewell....