Sneaky

 

Want to hike in Hubbard Park but there's no parking due to the Daffodil Festival? I see two options:

1. Take the available shuttle buses, go for a hike, enjoy some festival food, then shuttle bus your now, fatter self back to your car.

2. Park elsewhere such as north of Hubbard Park, in Berlin, and walk in.

On Saturday morning, I chose the latter.

With the festival on, even the normal early bird walkers were missing in Hubbard Park, so the road around Merimere Reservoir was all to myself. I walked the length of the reservoir, then turned onto the trails at the south end.

I had received a report of someone cutting away some trees blocking a trail illegally made by ATVers many years ago. I had deliberately not maintained this short trail hoping it would grow back in. In those years several trees had fallen across it, beginning the natural restoration. This weekend I would try to restart the process. Hopefully the illegal trail builders will give up.

It's the best I could do with what I had on-hand. This work consumed too much of my time so I couldn't do a proper job. I'll keep an eye on it and may return to improve on my work.

Further up the Green Trail I came upon my Find of the Week.

A two quart, stainless steel mixing bowl, with no campsite to be found. Huh?

At the Halfway House, I found this t-shirt commemorating a running event. I will say that while working on the trees above, I saw a group of young runners with their leader go by. They didn't see me. I wondered whether the t-shirt was left by one in the group and they intended to return for it. We'll never know. I'll wash the shirt and bring it to Goodwill, where the runner may find it if they're lucky...

Hiking up toward Castle Craig, I found a traffic cone far below, surely tossed by someone studying the effects of gravity on traffic cones.

I doubt this belongs to a cross country runner, nor that Goodwill could resell it, so I carried it up to Castle Craig for the parks department to hopefully recover before Isaac Newton gets his hands on it again.

My reward for climbing up was the early morning view as I hiked the Blue Trail toward the north end of Merimere Reservoir.

I managed to sneak back out of Hubbard Park before the Daffodil Festival had even opened for the day.