Welcome to Susan's Bay Circuit Diary! This blog follows my adventures with my dog Sulu hiking the Bay Circuit Trail. Feel free to subscribe (see the little "subscribe" oval above). The rest of the past posts can be found using the little menu on the left. If you are curious how this all started, go here.
We have crossed the Rubicon! Or, if the Rubicon is the Mass Pike, we crossed it.
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| The Mass Pike from above |
In my piecemeal walking way we are making our way south. We parked at the Ashland Town Forest and then did a quick, hot walk to where we left off on the 25th. We did the road walking first number one, to save the forest as a treat and number two, hoping the forest frail will be shaded and cooler as the temperature would be climbing.
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| Community Spirit |
We passed this place, the Oregon Club (named after the road it's on). They say it was a speakeasy back in the day and I can well believe it.
Back at the car, I offered Sulu water (he is more often hot than thirsty) and girded my loins for our walk in the woods (lots of Classical warrior imagery today for some reason), if girding the loins means tucking my pants into my socks for tick avoidance. The Ashland Town forest is well-loved in a good way, with beautifully maintained boardwalks and clear maps at trail junctions. It looks like the parking area on Oregon Road is the “back door” - I was the only car and did not see anyone on the trail on that side of the forest.
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| Fresh gravel to keep the feet dry |
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Beautifully maintained boardwalks
The hot, humid weather brought out bugs of all descriptions, especially gnats that wanted to fly into my eyes, nose and mouth. I’ve seen some guys on other trails wearing those beekeeper-style hats and that sounded pretty good today. It might be time to upgrade to my broad-brimmed summer-weight sun hat, thus rounding out my bwana outfit, and maybe some bug spray would not be a bad idea either. I was windmilling the end of my leash quite a lot to keep the bugs at bay. It was a bad day to forget my handkerchief as Sulu’s mouth was very moist and every time I gave him a piece of cheese I wanted to wipe my hand. As Ashland Town Forest is on-lead only and we are working on loose leash walking, that was quite a few pieces of cheese. The terrain ranged from mature forest to younger, sunlit forest with a typical New England stone wall following much of the trail. Unusually, there was not one water feature for Sulu to cool himself. I set myself a time limit so I would not get caught in the heat, so did not reach the other side. My next trip we’ll park on the other side and complete the trail.
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| This flower is very hard to photograph. I believe it's a Starflower. |
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| Ubiquitous New England stone walls |
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Oak blossoms everywhere
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This fungus looks like someone was spraying foam insulation into the tree and there was a hole.
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