North South Trail - Hazard Road to Place Farm

Date Unknown, 2012

It's time I caught up with my hiking habit. This is pathetic.

Sometime in 2012, the troop hiked Hazard Road to Nicholas Road on the North South trail. I remember little of it. I remember one boy managed to kick himself near the beginning and complained loudly the whole way. I remember another boy decided he couldn't finish the hike and had to stop with an adult. A couple more thought that was a nice idea but I said NO!

One boy on the hike I was rather concerned about. He was grossly overweight and suffered from being tired much of the time. This I attributed to a terrible diet. He seemed quite a bit slimmer that day and didn't have too much trouble on the walk. I remember that his mom picked him up at Place Farm and that was the last time I saw him. I'd like to know that he turned his life around.

In a perfect world I would write my notes down the same weekend as the hike. Hasn't happened yet. This is the perfect example. When referencing my trail book I came to the conclusion I entirely forgot about a hike. As such, I don't have any clue when this particular one happened, but I thought it was late summer. Couldn't have been, but that's what I remember.

Let's see how the next year goes. If I still don't keep up, well, then the handwriting is on the wall. Unlike many hiking blogs I have followed over the years, I will say Goodbye when I conclude the experiment.

Promise.

North South Trail, Roaring Brook Pond to Hazard Road

This blog has been neglected. I've been doing my share of hiking, just not posting about it. I intend on remedying that.

Saturday, April 9, 2011

That's right. April 9. And again, because unrelated youths are involved, only one photo.

Nine scouts started at beautiful Roaring Brook Pond in the southern section of Arcadia. This time five brand new boy scouts were along for their first big hike. That is huge for me because they were graduates of my Webelos den. I knew the boys well and expected this eight miler to be a challenge they would rise to.

We didn't start off too well as we began at the smaller pond near Browning Mill and ended up hiking on the road for the first mile or so. My fault. From there we followed more roads in rural neighborhoods until we crossed Ten Rod Road (Route 165), touching woods only occasionally. We continued until our halfway point, Old Barber Farm. Here we finally entered the forest proper.

Soon we approached the highlight of the Ben Utter trail: Stepstone Falls. Here we passed more hikers, one a cub scout parent I knew. We took a break on the rocks and had a light snack, before continuing our journey. We had a little over a mile left to go.

The last mile is frequently the most dangerous. You are the most exhausted and one tends to become careless. On a wide forest road, one of my new recruits failed to see a basketball sized rock. He kicked it within sight of the car. We enlisted our older scouts to practice the buddy carry to bring him in. The end result was no serious damage to the foot, and we need more practice with the buddy carry.

Despite this, my former cubbies did me proud. They learned a lot (one carried way too much in his pack) and will be better prepared for the next one.

The single biggest issue of the hike was logistics. After dropping off several scouts at the beginning, I trusted Google Maps to navigate me to the end to drop off a car. The path we followed added almost an hour to both the start and the end of the day. After the hike I realized we could have simply followed Hazard Road south to Ten Rod Road and cut the delay in half. Google Maps doesn't usually fail me, but when it does, watch out. Next time, I'll do a little but more preparation.

Next time will be another eight miler between Hazard Road and Place Farm on Plainfield Pike. As this leg is almost all road, I suppose the rout to and fro should be rather obvious. Still, I will do more to be prepared.

North South Trail, Kenyon Hill to Roaring Brook Pond

Saturday, May 22nd

Maybe my interest in blogging is waning. All blogs have a life expectancy. Maybe I am seeing the end. My interest in hiking, however, has not. With my son's Boy Scout troop, we hiked 8.7 miles.

First, there are no pictures. I didn't take many, but none are included because when I asked if anybody objected to having photos posted on the internet, a couple scouts said yes. I don't know if they were serious, but then again, I didn't ask. We picked up where we left off, on Kenyon Hill Road.

Five scouts, the Scoutmaster, and I entered the forest and walked until it turned into a well groomed community. We followed streets until we reached route 138. We turned right towards the Richmond Elementary School. There was a farmers market going on, but it was across the street. The boys decided not to investigate. We turned left onto Nooseneck Hill Road, where we saw and smelled cows.

We turned left onto Buttonwoods Road. A little ways up we turned North into the woods again. Soon we stopped for lunch. The trail connects with the "New London Turnpike", which an ATV would be hard pressed to traverse in comfort. Along the way we crossed a makeshift living room, complete with couch, rug, and lamp. We joked that this is were we should have lunched, but clearly few would want to touch the junk.

A little bit more road work, then we were back into the woods. We crossed under route 95. We followed the trail until it turned onto Tuft Hill Trail, a dirt road off of which I parked. The boys and Scoutmaster chose to walk the boardwalk around Roaring Brook Pond to the paved road. I brought the van around.

There was a lot of street walking, but it was fine. Much of it was very pretty. The weather cooperated and we managed to get through the tenderfoot material for our youngest scout.

North South Trail, Ninigret to Kenyon Hill Road

Saturday, September 5th

This hike was supposed to be the previous Saturday, but weather got in the way. In the meantime I developed a chest cold that I hoped would clear up in time. It did not. I hiked anyhow.

We drove down before 7 in the morning and put my wife's van on Kenyon Hill Road, about 17 miles from our starting point. Piling into the other van, Scoutmaster Kelley, my son Peter, two other scouts, and I drove down to Ninigret. We parked on East Beach Road. It was about 8:30 before we started walking. The trail markings were exceptionally clear.

We followed East Beach, crossed route 1, then entered Burlingame State Park. The bugs were ferocious. As usual, I resisted putting repellent on. While in Burlingame we saw a strange ant. Very large (about an inch), and orange and black. I'd never seen anything like it. I let it crawl on my hands to get a better look, and maybe a picture, but it moved too fast and quickly dropped off the other side. Eventually I got it to cross the back of my map and got a shot of it. The picture wasn't much, but the following Tuesday at work I googled it to find out more.

What I learned was that what I let crawl on my hand was a Velvet Ant, which is actually a female wasp. It also goes by the name Cow Killer Ant because the sting is so painful, it is said to kill a cow. And I let it crawl on my hand. It won't actually kill you, but if it's a painful as I'm told, it would have ended the hike real fast. I stole this picture because it matches the bug we saw.

We continued through Burlingame. We spotted a couple deer. Somewhere near the half way point, we stopped for lunch. I ate too much, but the mosquitoes seemed to eat more. After Burlingame we were walking on roads for what seemed forever. A jeep stopped and asked us directions to the campground. I was tempted to say continue driving, then turn right into the woods, but that wouldn't have been very helpful. I did the best I could. Later a man stopped to ask us if we were hiking the North South Trail. I said yes, up to Arcadia. He eagerly told us how great the trail was. The man who stopped behind him was less enthusiastic.

After walking through Wood River Junction, we finally reentered the woods near the Carolina Management Area. Here there are corn fields, high as an elephant's eye. This is where the trail markings finally let us down. We continued following a farm road when I noticed three things: the grass on the trail was very tall, we hadn't seen a trail marker in a while, and the sun was now in our face. We were off the trail. We came to a point where we could see landmarks we passed earlier that clearly indicated our location, so we turned around. There is a jog in the trail that is perfectly obscured. This is described in the book, but I don't hike with a book in my hand. They could have prefaced the paragraph describing the turn with CAREFUL: or some other words of warning. Two woman on horseback happened to be coming out of the wood on the trail we needed to follow.

Back in the woods, we continued through Carolina. Evidence of horse traffic was in great quantity, if you catch my meaning. We watched our step. We banged a left on Pine Hill Road and passed a hunter check station. We crossed the road for the final mile and a half of the hike. The trail turned into a forest road, then a dirt road, then a paved one. We walked by some very interesting houses. Soon after that, we came upon my van. I have never been so happy to see it. It was about 4. We hiked for about seven and a half hours, including lunch.

I expect to do another leg of the trail, maybe in the 12 to 14 mile range, but I have no plan to do it soon. With the additional off trail walking, I estimate we hiked around 18 miles, much further than I ever have before. I've done more strenuous hikes that took longer (Katahdin back in '07 took twelve hours), but this was different. My hips hurt, my feet hurt, my shins hurt, my thighs. A couple advil later and some extra rest, and I am fine, but boy oh boy was I sore on Sunday. And I've been dreaming about expensive hiking boots.