September 20, 2021 - Lowell

 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.

From before M to the asterisk

Urban navigation on the BCT is challenging because the trail is not well differentiated from the sidewalks and the parks.  There’s no official trail parking so I secured a random street spot. Added to that, I was trying to follow the trail “backwards” (south to north) which is always more difficult.

Once more it was me, Sulu, and Benny in the stroller. After finding the trail, it turned out that the paved trail along the Merrimack River  was blocked off for some kind of construction. 

This is a bit neglected but lovely stretch of trail.  The trail starts where the Concord River comes into the Merrimack. Both rivers were quite high with all the rain in recent days. The river was harnessed many years ago for the industrial needs of this old city. Now Middlesex Community College uses a glass bridge across the river to unite their campus.

We crossed in front of Lowell Memorial Auditorium with panels commemorating generals,  war heroes,  wars, and battlefields: a sort of a broad commemoration of all things.

We then picked up the trail (after a little casting about) along the Merrimack River behind Lowell General Hospital with just one row of buildings between us and the river.

I chose this route today because it looks stroller friendly for Benny. Benny is really failing;  he just sleeps the whole time.

After crossing the busy intersection we are now in a neighborhood of small houses and low-rise apartment buildings. The Merrimack River is on our left over a guard rail and down an embankment.

It’s supposed to be a climb down the embankment to access the trail from here. Once more AllTrails came to my rescue showing the BCT leaving the road at the junction of Stackpole and Corrigan. It looks like a really challenging bushwhack to access the Merrimack River Trail from here. Perhaps it will be easier from the opposite direction. We didn’t cover a lot of mileage today but we did all that we could that was stroller friendly.

The previous weekend Walter and I had done a tiny hike on the Pemigewasset in New Hampshire. We crossed the Appalachian trail twice and I noted that the blazes that they use are the same as the BCT. That was probably part of the inspiration for my hitting the trail today, but ironically I have not seen one flipping blaze today. Que sera!

I tried a new water dispenser for Sulu that I picked up at Westminster as a giveaway. It’s the kind where the long bowl folds up against the plastic bottle. He accepted it surprisingly well.

On my way back I noticed somebody spent some money on this river walk once upon a time. There are bird sculptures on top of the bollards that block cars from driving on it. There are some handsome plants that were planted at one time.

Sulu picked up a cluster of nasty little seeds during our tiny bushwhack to find a connection to the Merrimack River Trail. They were irritating his face. I picked quite a few off but I think he’s in for a brushing later.

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