A Day Late, A Day Early

The hillside on the western side of Merimere Reservoir is shrouded in an early morning fog.

Visit #1197, Sunday 16 June 19, 6:25-9:00AM, 5.2 miles, 15.6lbs. of litter.

Temps in the low 60's, cloudy with showers predicted.

The Record Journal reported this week of the problem of people failing to leave East/West Peak in a timely fashion. This is a long time problem, as I've seen myself, as evidenced from this 2010 photo.

I doubt more signs would be a solution, as it's obvious people aren't paying attention to the existing signage.

I didn't have such a problem on Friday; I rode my mountain bike past the closed gate to take care of some graffiti I spied last week.

When I arrived at the Halfway House, I was surprised to see the Meriden Parks Department gave the area a mid-season haircut. What a surprise! The area looks great.

Now, to work.

Taking care of this now would free me up to travel another route during the weekend and complete some other tasks.

I returned on Sunday in much gloomier weather, but I packed rain gear just in case.

I had planned to clean the road from the park, around Merimere Reservoir, in advance of a pancreatic cancer fund-raising walk, but my timing was off. The walk was Saturday. I figured that out when I started finding evidence the walkers were already here and gone.

 My penance was to walk the road anyway, and pick up litter.

I reached these porta-johns, which I just now conclude were placed there for the event, and found an empty large, cardboard box. Too big to fit into my trash bag, I left my first trash bag, with the box and hope they'll collect everything when they pick the porta-johns.

Reaching the north end of Merimere Reservoir, I spied this snapping turtle right under the guardrail, probably just returning from laying eggs. Momma didn't raise no dummy; I didn't dare try to get a closeup photo. I leave that stuff to daredevils.

Walking up the road, I came upon this sign tacked to a tree.

 This is not the first time I've found this tree used for "religious" purposes. Whoever is doing this has a peculiar fixation with this spot. Oddly enough, there was something written on the backside of the sign.

Well, I reached Castle Craig and hiked the trail down. I came upon more wildlife when I ran into this deer, a mere 20 feet away, which didn't seem to be bothered by me and just munched on some grass.

Descending to level ground, I picked up the Yellow Trail, where my next objective of the day waited.

These three trees were hanging low over the trail, so I removed them with a tree trimming saw.

About this time it started to rain lightly, but the tree canopy kept me dry. I reached Merimere Reservoir, noticing how calm it was, in contrast to Saturday's blustery wind.

I returned to the parking lot and dropped of my bag of litter for the week.