October 9, 2020 - Walpole: Mine Brook

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.

So many changes! Google Maps is now routing me through Boston on 93 South and then to 95 South. I’m definitely processing west and south. In the beginning, I was sent out Route 2.  Then for a while I was directed west on the Mass Pike, I90. Progress! Not only are the leaves turning, but the weather is cooling. For the first time in months I felt possibly underdressed.

Thanks to the Town of Walpole’s maps (by the way, these maps are buried deep on the town website and best found through MassTrails.com) I found a parking spot that’s not in the BCT guide at the Harold Ellis Water Treatment Plant. 

Walpole gets its water from wells near Mine Brook. It was another quirky BTC entry as we slipped into a gap between the chain link fence surrounding the facility and the tree line.

The need for bug spray seems to be a thing of the past but I am still getting those doggone spiderwebs in my face.

The breeze brings the smell of fallen leaves. The trail at this end is wider and shows more signs of traffic.

We are paralleling what seems to be the dry marsh surrounding Mine Brook on our left. It’s got beautiful fall colors whereas where I’m walking is mostly pine trees which are still green and some drought stressed early turning trees in yellow and brown.

After about a mile I am definitely warming up and feeling like I wore the right clothes.

The BCT doesn’t follow the esker the whole way on this trail. I would ask myself, Is this still the esker? and not know the answer because I’m new to eskers, but then when we got back on the esker I knew it right away. And now I want to say “esker expert” three times fast.

Esker panorama with poodle. You can see how it slopes to both sides.

I haven’t seen a human or a human habitation since I left the car but I can certainly hear the roar of fall cleanup going on in what must be the nearby cul-de-sacs.

Marking on this section of the trail is not what it could be. They are very generous with the double blaze indicating a change in direction but stingy with the single blaze indicating which is the new direction.

Fortunately AllTrails is there for me and I have a good enough cell signal to follow the trail.

After a little over one mile I’m in shirt sleeves and backed up to suburban houses and wondering where my turnaround is, but it would be cheating to check the map from last time. There are quite a few downed trees from this week's wind storm blocking the trail. 

Yes, the trail is under there somewhere.

I remove the branches I can and every time I do Sulu thinks I’m throwing a stick for him. At one point the trail was completely obscured and I turned to AllTrails (not my flawed innate sense of direction).

Somehow I missed all my unmistakable landmarks that I photographed so diligently last time. Perhaps they were all buried under giant fallen trees? Either way, I recognized I had gone too far when I saw the tree where I posed Sulu last time after his immersion. But I wouldn’t have seen the small flock of white-throated sparrows if I hadn’t overshot my turnaround point.

Back at the car, I dropped off the poop, gave the dog some water, had a sip myself, cleaned the pine sap off my hands with hand sanitizer and onward. A little road walking (with sidewalks, thank you Walpole) led us to a beautiful pine woods trail. 

Cathedral in the pines with poodle

We are continuing to parallel Mine Brook with the dry wetland beneath us. This section of the trail is very thoughtfully marked with single blazes to draw us to the correct branch of the fork rather than a double blaze to indicate a change of direction followed by a single blaze. And sometimes they spend the big bucks on a directional.

For some reason, compared to the trail behind the water plant, this area has very little downed trees or broken branches from the recent windstorm. I wonder why? Speaking of unanswerables, I also have seen zero poison ivy today.

Sulu on the howitzer in front of the VFW, next to the middle school.  
Not a happy camper.

I made it to the Eleanor Johnson Middle School that will be my departure point next time.  

Returning through the pine woods trail, I saw this sign post for a scavenger hunt.  

I kept my eyes open for stones painted with hearts. I thought it was unlikely I’d see any because of the pine needles that had fallen, but look, I found one!

Happy fall!