Trustees of the Reservations

Reservation bagging – I’ve joined the “Hike 125” challenge by the Trustees of Reservations.  The goal is to hike (or in my case run) 125 miles at Trustees locations to celebrate the 125^th anniversary of the organization.  I’ve mostly been going to Ward Reservation and Weir hill since they are both nearby.  I figured it would be interesting to seek out other reservations and see how many I can visit during the challenge. 

 

Eric and I were meeting up to head down to NJ/DE for the two remaining Eastern State high points that Eric has not visited, so I took the morning to visit some reservations and get multiple morning runs in.  I hit the road at 7am and arrived in
Phillipston an hour later.  Elliott Laurel was a nice tiny property where I got in a mile of running in some nice open woods and mowed fields.

 

 30 minutes later I parked in Petersham center and ran from the common to the North Common Meadow, getting another mile in on the mowed scenic meadow. 

 

  A short drive later and I arrived at the Swift River Reservation.  I put in 2 miles at the Slab City Tract which was a nicely maintained area with a couple of cool cellar holes. I ran another 3 miles in the Brooks Woodland Preserve which had a good mix of dirt roads and single-track.

 

I had a good one hour break after that arriving at Rock House reservation in West Brookfield about 10:20am.  I did a 3 mile run which covered pretty much all of the trails in this reservation.  There were a lot of boulders and ledges and even a “summit” of sorts.  The scenic vista was overgrown but the Rock House and Carter Pond were picturesque.

 

 I had another hour break, arriving in Hadley at noon for a 2 mile run around Mt Warner.  This was probably the nicest trail I saw over this day.  It was very well marked and smooth, not a rock or root to be found.  The day was turning very warm by now but wasn’t too bad in the woods. 

 

I made a quick stop at the Dinosaur Footprints reservation in Holyoke.  The parking lot was more of a pull-out on Route 5 and it only had space for 5 cars.  Fortunately 1pm on a Thursday wasn’t a popular time.  It wasn’t even a tenth of a mile from the lot to the footprints.  Well worth the stop to see the four prints caught in stone 65 million years ago! 

 

After that I headed up the road just a bit to the Mass DCR on Mt Tom and put in 3 miles to visit Little Tom Mountain.  It was really warm now (well into the 90’s) and I was feeling the heat and the accumulation of 15 miles over 5 hours.

 

I met up with Eric and Murdoch (Eric’s Westy dog) and we drove a couple of hours to Highland NY.  My final run of the day was a nice easy 3 mile run with them on the Hudson Valley Rail trail.  This was a really nice paved trail in Highland that now continues over the Hudson River on the “Walkway over the Hudson”.