21 Reasons

Idyllic weather on Sunday morning in Hubbard Park.

Visit #1087, Sunday 9 July 17, 7:50-10:35AM, 5.3 miles.
Temps in the low 70's, sunny and dry.

I had to finish trimming the roadside to Castle Craig, so a walk on the road to the top would be the agenda for the day.

Connecticut lawmakers are considering changes to Connecticut's bottle law in an attempt to increase revenue and help close the severe budget gap/deficit. I'm all for increasing the bottle deposit from five cents to ten cents OR MORE. It's obvious to me from my work in Hubbard Park that five cents does not seem to encourage compliance, so if litterers are going to throw their money away, then it might as well go to good use. And if compliance increases, then the park will be cleaner and I won't be bending over so much.

To prove my point, I photographed every can and bottle I collected today.
You see them as I found them.

Anyway, I walked the road up toward Castle Craig and trimmed branches along the left side of the road, as I had trimmed the right side already a few weeks ago.

At the top, I hiked the Blue Trail down.

It doesn't look steep in the photo, but it is.

At the bottom I hiked to the Halfway House and removed some graffiti which only needed some brisk rubbing.

Back at the parking lot, I deposited my trash for the week.

Today I also noticed the parks department replaced the non-functioning water fountain at the playscape.

Here's a closeup of the old fountain. Notice that it had a handicapped accessible secondary fountain.

Here's the new fountain. You can see the ghost image of the old fountain on the concrete. I'll presume there's a decorative casing to enclose this, otherwise I don't anticipate it will last long. I wonder whether there will be a replacement handicapped accessible fountain to join this one.

I can tell you one thing; I tested it and it worked nicely.