June 30, 2020 - Sherborn

Welcome to Susan's Bay Circuit Diary! This blog follows my adventures with my dog Sulu hiking the Bay Circuit Trail.  To get new posts in your inbox, please 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 a break in the hot weather, ushered in by thunderstorms. There are still rainstorms roving around, but unexpectedly there was a clear patch of weather, especially in the Sherborn area.  So I jumped in the car with Sulu and headed for the trail. 

Once arriving at the designated parking location, I spent about five minutes in the car figuring out where the trail started, using Google Maps, AllTrails, the BCT written description and map, and the compass app on my phone.  It was time well spent and saved me time flailing around the elementary school campus where I parked. 

The breakthrough was finding the service road, which led me to a shady, quiet oil pipeline trail (the town did a clever land swap in exchange for running the pipeline back in the day). For once I remembered the bug spray, and was very grateful.

A petroleum pipeline?

One of my readers recommended I try an app to report invasive species. I’m sorry I forgot to install it as there was bittersweet everywhere.  Sulu was leaping over the vines that twisted across the path like a dolphin over the waves.

Not as leapy on the way back. but vines.

A small amount of road walking (sidewalks! Thank you Sherborn!) brought me to the Town Forest, on the opposite side from where I was before.  

I believe this is an American Linden.  Smells fantastic!

Tree cutting removed the signage and blazes to the entrance, but thanks to AllTrails, I knew I was in the right place. I’m not sure what they are doing with the tree cutting, which is quite extensive.  

One cutting site

It looks like they are removing pine trees and leaving maples and other deciduous trees.  Perhaps the clearing by the entrance will become parking, as I haven’t found a public area in Sherborn yet with parking.

The BCT branches and turns were really well marked.  Sulu got lots of off leash running in the forest, although I did put him on lead to cross the live rail line.  I forgot his cheese today but even without it he recalled off leash, and his loose-leash walking was doing well too.  It’s gratifying as I’ve been focusing on this during the pandemic.

We met almost no-one in the woods except a dog walker with seven (friendly) off leash dogs. We ran into her twice, actually, so Sulu got practice socially detaching. 

We reached the cell tower where we turned around last time uneventfully, and headed back to the car.

The dog definitely needs a bath.

The next leg of the BCT in Sherborn is called the “Ring of Fire” because it’s on the edge of the crater that became the Boston area - I’m looking forward to see if I can see the volcanic rocks.

This is the walk where we definitively crossed from Map 8 to Map 9, so there’s that too. Map 8 remains unfinished because of the no-dogs reservoir.

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