The Best Laid Plans

 

Visit #1280, Sunday 29 November 20, 7:45-10:10AM, 3.8 miles, 15.6lbs. of litter.

Temps in the 40's, rising to the 50's today, sunny.

Most of the time the agenda I set for myself in Hubbard Park is firm. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment in "checking off the box". But sometimes I get off-track and as long as I accomplish SOMETHING, I can still finish satisfied.

This week I abandoned my plans and just let myself be led by the litter and the clock.

I was collecting too much too soon and if things continued as they did in my first 15 minutes I would run out of room and time, so I left the first bag at the water treatment plant.

Hiking up to the Halfway House, I found some new graffiti. This crayon-like application must be the new go-to for taggers.

With my bag o' tricks and some elbow grease, I did a yoeman's job. I may plan to return next week to perfect the finish, unless my plans change...

Further up the trail, but still far from Castle Craig,  I came upon my Find of the Week.

What is it-it's the ball normally found at the top of a flagpole. In this case, it's almost surely from the flagpole at Castle Craig. It's a two-piece aluminum orb, or at least it was. I can't believe I passed by this spot numerous times, a few hundred yards below and away from the flagpole, yet never noticed it.

By the way, the ball on top the flagpole is called a "finial", and normally looks like this:

I carried it up to Castle Craig, while continuing the hunt for litter. Reaching the castle, I squeezed it past the iron gates, hoping the parks department will pick it up later. I placed it there so there would be less temptation for sticky fingers.

Here's the decapitated flagpole.

I left my second bag of litter at Castle Craig for the parks department to collect later. You can see the imprisoned finial in the background.

I was so far off schedule for my original plans at this point that I abandoned those plans and hiked the trails over I-691 and back to the park.

Along the way I found more cryptic graffiti but this appeared to be done with chalk.

I used a toothbrush on this. I need a bigger brush.

I returned to the park to drop off my litter, and my second Find of the Week.

That metal tube next to the trash bag is called an "offset block" and is used with cable guardrails. A cable guardrail runs along a section of trail and that piece was orphaned from the pole it was attached to.