Merged Priorities

Autumn's arrived and the leaves are beginning to fall.


Visit #901, Sunday 28 September 14, 4:30-7:05PM, 6.2 miles.
Temps in the 80's, sunny.

I received a call earlier this week from a local hiker telling me both parking lots, at Castle Craig and at West Peak, were looking pretty bad as far as trash goes. A day later I toured both locations on my mountain bike to size up the problem, and rode a trail back down to Merimere Reservoir, where I discovered a hemlock had fallen.

I had a choice of 2 agendas this weekend; either clean up the both parking lots, or tackle the fallen tree. My upcoming schedule would mean leaving one task or the other for some other time. I managed to mostly merge the two and came away satisfied with my productivity.

Time was tight and sunlight short when I started, so I hiked a route directly up to West Peak and cleaned up the area and the surrounding parking lot. I left a bag of trash there and will contact the Meriden Parks Department to pick it up.

I then turned toward the trail with the fallen tree.

But this wasn't the tree and this wasn't "fallen". This was Len's work. I still can't seem to stop him completely.

Shortly beyond this, I found a couple abandoned bags of mulch in a most unusual spot, weighted down by debris.

I tore open the bags, dumped the mulch, and took the bags.

My find of the week:

Proof that underwear DOES grow on trees.

Here's one of the few abandoned cars in Hubbard Park. This is a Ford Pinto wagon. This seems like a new addition to the park because there's no vegetation growing around it as if it were there since the Ford Pinto era. Then again, with today's value of scrap metal, I can't imagine anyone dumping a car in the woods as it would be akin to throwing money away, so maybe this IS an long abandoned car.

Further down the trail I reached my tree objective.

I sliced out the middle with my chainsaw and opened up the trail.

I removed about a dozen more, smaller trees as I hiked down toward Merimere Reservoir. Here are just a couple:

Back on the road I had little time and daylight to spare so I hustled back to the park and deposited my second bag of trash.

My only failure is I wasn't able to clean the parking lot at Castle Craig. I hope to put that on next week's list.