Bay Circuit Diary

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 . As pandemic restrictions have eased, I have had more regular stuff to do, so it’s been a few days since my last hike. It’s Memorial Day weekend and I was apprehensive that the trails would be really crowded, but the temperature plummeted today and I was hoping it would put people off.  It did! I parked at Henry’s Hill across the street from my previous turnaround point. Over the hill and down the other side we went, followed by some road walking, but not a lot, and with nice scenery although no sidewalks.  Then we slipped between two private properties on a narrow SVT easement and into some of the best hiking of the BCT to date.  Poison i...

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 . What a gorgeous day for a walk in the woods! And I'm so grateful that it *was* a walk in the woods - two days with no road walking!  We parked on Brimstone Lane (not a hellscape at all) and took a short trail to where we left off yesterday.  Up Nobscot Hill we went (the high point on the BCT ), and had what the BCT website calls "peekaboo views" (copy clearly written by a real estate agent). The ascent, if I may call it that, was not as steep or rocky as yesterday's climb of Tippling Rock.  The trail doubled back and mostly downhill along scantily blazed trails to Wayside Inn Road, opposite Henry's Hill , our next departure point.  The...

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 . Concurrent with the Salamander Trail What a relief to really hike after so many days of road walking so much of my journey.  Today was short because it was actually the continuation of the Route 20 leg I didn’t finish yesterday.   I plan my route based on where the car will be stationed and how much I can cover without duplicating my path (or actually more than that because I already do out-and-back hikes most times).   Tippling Rock turned out to be a lovely trail.   Apparently, here be salamanders , but I only saw one vernal pool and  certainly  did  not  want to bother them.  There was some elevation, which...

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 . "Hiking" Today was a short dispiriting day.  Despite doing such a long day yesterday, I did not even cover half of the two miles on Route 20 to the next conservation area.  I parked at the trailhead for the Tippling Rock trail (super crowded parking lot because it was a weekend) and decided to bite the bullet and do the 1.2 mile road hike to the Dunkin Donuts .  By the time I finished that I was hot and cranky and stressed about needing to prepare dinner before our scheduled Zoom call.  So I just went home and did not actually experience any nature whatsoever. OK, maybe a little nature Yes, 1776 is the zip code for Sudbury....

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 . Today was a long one.  I parked at Heard Farm where I ended yesterday. I've been there before to run the dog in pre-pandemic times.  There are huge beautiful fields with paths around the perimeter. The BCT just skirts one field and then put me back on the road past Heard Pond , part of the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge .  There was lots of kayaking and fishing activity, despite the mercury warnings for the fish. Leaving Heard Pond, it was more road walking, culminating in a long walk down Route 20. I brought the long line and gave Sulu a few water breaks in the Sudbury River and Heard Pond so he could cool off.  I had a grea...

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 . More Wayland walking, virtually 100% on roads.  It was pretty hot for Sulu, our hottest hike of the year. I was kitted out like Bwana Susan in lightweight hiking pants, lightweight shirt, my new many-pocketed gardening vest from Duluth Trading, and of course the ever-sexy pants tucked into hiking socks look. On the bright side, all this street walking is giving us a lot of practice with loose lead walking!  It was the birdiest day yet, with sightings including brown-headed cowbird, Eastern kingbird, and a female red-winged blackbird. I also had a really good muskrat sighting in the Sudbury River, less than six feet away.  I had to get his at...