Estimated distance: 5.04 miles
Weather: 60°F, beautiful, clear skies
Resources: Northwest Park, Trail Map
Highlights of the trip: view of the reservoir, great hiking weather
Progress toward 2016 hiking goals: 52/52 hikes; 203.01/250 miles; 31.37/25 miles on Tunxis Trail
Another hiking goal has been reached! I have now completed 52 hikes for the year. In order to complete my mileage goal, I will have to complete another ten, or so, hikes.
My hiking partner and I generally hike in the morning, but today I couldn't get out until noon. We picked Northwest Park as a place that wasn't too far away, and that offered several miles of hiking that wouldn't take us too long. It was an absolutely perfect fall day - comfortable temperatures and pure blue sky.
We headed back behind the museum and toward the reservoir, but only made it as far as the beaver pond. This area of the trail gets very wet, and though we are in a drought, the rain a couple of days ago made us decide to turn around.
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| Beaver pond. |
We went back and picked up the yellow (Wetland Forest) trail that runs along the reservoir up on a hillside. With the leaves off the trees, we could get a good view of the water below.
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| Rainbow Reservoir |
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| Rainbow Reservoir where the trail comes back down near water level. |
From the yellow trail, we picked up the pink (Rainbow Reservoir) trail and then the black (Triassic) trail. We passed by the dam, which did not have much water flowing through the spillway, and walked around a field at the far end of the park.
With a few starts and stops, we found our way to the orange (Softwood Forest) trail and to the other half of the yellow trail loop which brought us back to the woods road we started on and to the nature center.
We stopped at the pond near the nature center and saw a LOT of goldfish. They looked like orange leaves on the branches of the reflected trees.
An excellent hike and 5 easy miles under our belts!
Other visits to Northwest Park:
Hike #30
Hike #9
