Daffodil Festival, Food Truck Edition

Hubbard Park, as seen from Castle Craig, during the Food Truck event on the first weekend of the Daffodil Festival. It was barely 11AM and the park was already packed with salivating mouths. I swear I could hear the multitude of growling stomachs from Castle Craig-or it was my own stomach?

This is the first year the Daffodil Festival has sponsored a Food Truck event and from the number of cars I glimpsed from Castle Craig as well as newspaper reports, it was an appetital success.

Visit #949, Saturday 18 April 15, 9AM-12:30PM, mileage unknown.
Temps in the low 70's, sunny.

My mileage for this week went undocumented because my pedometer took a ride in the washing machine. After Saturday's activities, I stopped at Dick's Sporting Goods and picked up Pedometer 3.0. Yes, that's version 3.0 as 1.0 also took a spin in the Maytag.

Care to guess which one died?

A double thanks this week. First, thanks to the Meriden Parks Department for picking up the mirror I found during last week's jaunt.

Second, thanks to Paul Bernier, who joined me in this week's work. As always, I welcome his company and his efforts to help keep Hubbard Park clean.

In last week's report I rode my  mountain bike to Hubbard Park on Sunday to inspect some lesser used trails. At that time I discovered a hemlock had fallen across one particular trail.

With the Daffodil Festival going on, parking would be near impossible, so Paul and I parked north of Hubbard Park in Berlin, and walked in.

We walked the road from the north end of Merimere Reservoir then diverted onto the trail to the fallen tree.

With Paul's help and my chainsaw, the trail was restored in short order.

Paul and I then turned around and returned to the road, walking up to Castle Craig and collecting trash from both sides as we went. We cleaned up the parking lot and surrounding area and deposited our trash bags to be picked up later by a park's crew.

By the time we reached the fork to East Peak/West Peak, we managed to collect two more bags of trash so we left them on the concrete blocks at the intersection.

Next, we headed over to West Peak, cleaning up both sides of the road, the parking lot, and the trails to West Peak itself.

In the process we found something unusual: two bags of trash which I HAD COLLECTED LAST FALL, were stashed in the woods about 100 feet from the road. I can only assume someone intended to return and take the returnable cans and bottles from both bags but their plans were curtailed by this winter's snow. How else can you explain it?

Surprisingly, the bags were still reasonably intact. Paul and I added them to the 2 more bags we collected and left them in the parking lot. Hopefully a parks crew can pick them up on Monday.

Until next week, maintain.