Two Hikes One Day

When it comes to hiking, in the past I had two general ways that the trips would start.

One way was that I would pick a destination and a calendar date. I would then contact someone to join me, and as long as our schedules and the weather held out the hike occurred.

The other way, was the way it would usually happen. I would decide at the spur of the moment that I was in the mood for a hike. I may or may not have had a precise destination. I'd call a friend and go, or sometimes go it alone.

This current year has started out just about nothing for me in the way of hiking. I just haven't had the motivation.

A friend called yesterday. "What are you doing?" he asks. My answer was I had plans to go with my sister to visit a store's closeout sale. "Give me a call later if you feel like doing something later," he said. "What did you have in mind?" I asked. "Hiking." he said.

I called back after the store visit, knowing that it would be up to me to come up with a suitable destination. It wound up that three of us went. Rather than I initiate the start of a hike, in a sense he did. So it began.

The destination was Bolton Notch State Park in Bolton, Connecticut. The main path through the park was a former railroad bed, part of the Airline Trail. It was fairly level and smooth and several people were riding their bicycles on it.

According to a sign there: "On this site once stood the Bolton station of the Hartford, Providence, & Fishkill Railroad. The railroad was built from Waterbury to Providence in the 1850's"

We walked a bit along the railroad bed trail. It had ledge along some of its side, rising fairly high and a stream that ran along parts of the trail. We later turned back and then took a path leading uphill eventually to the cliff area. There was a some graffiti and nice view of the highway.



I had seen an internet reference to there being a marble zone up there with some caves, some large enough for a person to fit into. I was only able to spot a small amount of marble. There were some gaps in rock, but not what I would call a cave. Perhaps I just missed them and they were nearby. I may try a second trip later to see if I can find more of the marble and the caves. Most of the rocks in the area were metamorphic. Mica schist was very noticeable, sometimes with a sprinkling of garnet.

We came back down to the railroad bed, and went a bit in the opposite direction of out starting walk. There was some construction equipment, and where they dug exposed some pegmatite material. The trail then led under the highway. I found this very interesting, as we were in a nicely arch tunnel.

That could have easily been the end of our trip, but we decided to head down to nearby Gay City State Park. Why there? I had heard that there were some ruins of an old mill there and wanted to have a look.



We had a quick walk around. It was rather funny as one friend did not want to follow the path I thought went to the ruins, because the mosquitoes were biting too much for him. We decided to just walk around a bit in sunnier parts of the park. We walked along the pond and then saw a sign that said Mill Ruins. I had misread the map. How cool. We did get to go the ruins after all.