This Week In Hubbard Park: In Search Of...

Mirror Lake, as seen from Castle Craig on an early, hazy Sunday morning.

Visit #1094, Sunday 20 August 17, 7:35-10:25AM, 5.1 miles.
Temps in the 70's, sunny with mild humidity.

Unless you are keen of eye and like me, keeping close watch on Hubbard Park, you would never notice the rock 50 yards into the woods yet visible from the road to Castle Craig, which was tagged with graffiti. Since I spied this rock over a year ago, it had been on my To Do list as needing remediation. But first I had to get there.

I hiked from the playscape up to the south end of Merimere Reservoir, then up to the Halfway House.

There, I had totally forgotten about my request to the Meriden Parks Department, asking them to trim back the brush around the Halfway House. Well, I discovered they did a fabulous job tidying the place up. As part of my request, I promised if they did me the favor that I would trim the small trees growing up around the perimeter wall. I will fulfill my obligations next week.

Last week:

Today:

I was so happy it put a bounce in my step as I made my way up to Castle Craig. At Castle Craig, I cleaned up the parking lot and surrounding area and left a bag of trash for the parks department to collect later.

In the process I noticed the spotlight cans had been tagged with graffiti but they weren't on my agenda for this week and would have to wait.

I left Castle Craig and walked the few hundred yards on the road until I could see the rock through the trees. By my records, this rock was tagged roughly in October of 2015, because that's when I found and covered similarly colored graffiti closer to the road.

Note the red and blue colors, which were in common with the graffiti mentioned above.

I doubt you'll spot MY paint job from the road.

Checked off my To Do list, I could return to normal duties. But as I was painting the rock I spied some other trash which needed investigation and pickup.

What is it? It's a Tupperware container which someone meticulously modified with screens not only on the top, but on the sides as well. Due to the size of the box they clearly weren't meant to hold a cat or dog but probably a snake, hamster, gerbil, etc. . I bagged it up and walked back to Castle Craig to leave it with the first bag.

It was at this point I was still in the painting mood and had a change of plans. I decided now was a good time to paint over the graffiti on the spotlights.

In retrospect, the first can looked so good I should have just painted over the complete cans, but I had consumed enough time. Maybe that will be a future project.

I packed up the paint and returned to the road where I found the first of several Finds of the Week.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the remnants of a black wig, scattered for 10 yards or so along the road.

Back on the trail, I picked up my second Find of the Week.

Please tell me; how do you forget your underwear?

Enroute to the walkbridge over I-691, I found a large branch had fallen across the trail. Too heavy to move, I'll lump in removing it with the tree trimming around the Halfway House next week.