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.

Town Hall Trail - East Hartford

I hike a bit more of the Hockanum Linear Trail today in East Hartford. Like the last hike I did just east of here its lots of long continuous boardwalks. I hiked to the spot where I ended on my previous hike coming from the east...

You start out behind the town hall and skirt along a flood containment dike a bit before descending to the lake level. The weather was decent: sunshine and a bit warmer than it's been :-)

The Dike

Hockanum River Linear Park (East Hartford)

It was a very cold and windy day but being at least sunny, I decided to hike more of the Hockanum River trails - this time in East Hartford. I started from the south end of Martin Park.

Damages

There were a few spots where the boardwalk was damaged (but passable).

Reaching the Lake

Strange this lake has no name (I checked quite a few online map resources and never found a name!).

The sun was directly blasting its light at the camera :-(

Heading Back

It was starting to get dark so once I saw the lake, I turned around and headed back.

There were a few benches along the way

I saw three deer but they started to run when I snapped this photo :-(

Ride to Hell and Back!

WTF? A green trail on Trailforks should be easy, right? Well it was relatively flat but ridiculously overgrown with numerous deadfalls so the ride turned out to be a nightmare!

Getting stabbed by pricklers,  slogging over numerous tree blockages and trying to discern which way to go on a myriad of different pseudo hard-to-even-see trails made riding the green level trail one of the worst rides of my life!

After riding thru 4ft prickers with shorts on I thought once I got here things would improve - NOPE!

Where's the trail?

One of many blowdowns I had to scoot over

Never thought I'd be so happy to ride on pavement!

The paved trail along the river was super easy riding but a welcome relief

I turned around here, where the pavement ended

A the north end of the paved trail - very pretty!