Camping Pachaug State Forest, Mt. Misery Campground

October 13th & 14th, 2010

Mt Misery, Pachaug State Forest

(Chapman Area)

 

Our site, I love how our canopy dwarfs our tent.

We rolled into the Pachaug State Forest Mt. Misery Camp-ground around 11am Wednesday morning.  If you’re anything like me the first thing you wonder upon hearing the words Mt. Misery is “why the heck is it called that?”.  Further investigation into the area leads you to names like “Hell Hollow” and there’s even a “Devil’s Den” along one of the blue blazed trails.  There are rumors that the area is haunted but those rumors are false.  The reason the area holds names such as these is because there were so many rocks in this area that it was literally “hell to farm it”.  The early settlers gave the area’s these names & they stuck.  If you’d like to read more about the history of Pachaug State Forest visit Hell Hollow.

The tent and view of the field.

After finally settling on a spot to camp we started unloading our gear and setting up.  Set-up was easier this time because we had decided to bring our waterproof backpacking tent (since we were expecting rain) instead of our 8-man Taj Mahal of a tent that we usually take car-camping.  After getting set up, scoping out the nearest outhouses and giving our strange neighbor who emerged from his tent carrying a half-full jug of urine, which he promptly dumped at the edge of his camp-site (gross!!) a nickname we decided we were bored.  To alleviate the boredom we pulled out our map of the forest & took off down one of the many trails in the forest.  We chose to start off down a trail recommended for horseback riding though foot traffic is also acceptable, which turned out to be a good choice as it was flat and led us through a really neat bog-like area.

I think this is the flattest trail I've ever seen in CT.

Chillin'

Mmm, freeze dried dinner. Actually, it was really good, but portion size was a bit small for 2.

After our walk we picked out a trail to hike the next day (the Pequot Trail) and started cooking up dinner.  We usually go all out when we camp but this time we decided to bring our backpacking stoves and freeze-dried backpacking food to give some more flavors of them a try.  Simplifying the cooking was desirable as the purpose of our trip this time was to get ourselves a base-camp closer to some of the CT blue blazed hiking trails that take a long time to drive to.  In our attempt to hike all 825 miles of CT blue-blazed trails we find it difficult when the days get short, to hike a 7 or 8 mile trail when we have to drive an hour or so to get to the trail.  I wish there was more backpacking available in CT as that would really make it easy.

First campfire. Many s'mores were consumed.

The first night of our trip got colder than we were expecting, we were expecting upper 30’s and we got

Morning view (Photo by Ahren)

lower 30’s.  We were toasty warm in our little 3-season tent though, we decided to use our 40 degree sleeping bags which we lined with fleece sleeping bags, add thermal underwear & a knit cap and there you have it, toasty warm campers.  It was so hard to crawl out in the morning though.  The temp was 34 degree’s when we woke up.  I woke up, laid there with my sleeping bag pulled up over my head until I finally worked up enough willpower to unzip my bag and crawl out…brrrrr.  First order of business, get the stoves going and cook up some freeze-dried eggs & bacon, which was pretty good but kinda watery.  I was wishing I had brought some instant potato flakes to dump in and soak up the excess water, next time I will definitely use that backpackers trick to non-runny food.  After breakfast we had a 15 minute or so drive to the Pequot Trail head.

Ahren enjoying his soupy eggs.

Pequot Blue Trail (7.6 Miles) Preston & Ledyard, CT

We ended up hiking this trail “backwards” technically.  I mean, there’s really no right or wrong way to

Pequot Burial Ground fencing.

hike a trail but we usually do it in the order that the CT Walk Book describes the trail for the sake of simplicity.  However, we had decided we really wanted to see the Sacred Pequot Buried Ground located near the trail first, so backwards it was.  When we came upon the burial ground though we found the gate closed, there was a very low wall there that was easily stepped over, and may have only been there to keep cars out but we weren’t sure.  There were no signs to indicate whether or not stepping over the wall was okay or not so we weren’t really sure what to do and we didn’t want to piss anyone off by trespassing on their sacred land.  Especially since trespassing on sacred land, or private property is often what causes the CFPA (Connecticut Forest and Park Association) to lose their land easement rights.  We continued onto the road-walk portion of the trail before heading back into the woods and into the Rose Hill Wildlife

Blue Heron along the Pequot Trail.

Management Area. This part of the trail was nice, pretty typical trail, we even saw a Blue Heron walking around the edge of a small pond.  We ascended Rose Hill, stopping at the top for a quick lunch from our food bags.  The descent from Rose Hill is where we started having problems with the trail.  Well, in truth, since the start of the trail we noticed that the blazes were sparse and turn blazes were often poorly done or non-existent.  As the trail began to follow along an old Tote road we noticed we hadn’t seen a blue blaze in quite awhile.  However, the trail description described the trail as following an old woods road so we figured we were okay and whoever was in charge of painting blazes slacked off.  Eventually we came to a fork and there were still no blazes.  The fork to the right looked as though it had been created by an ATV, the fork on the left looked like the woods road turning to the left.  We chose to go left.  Eventually we came to another fork, still no blazes but we could hear Rte 117, at least we hoped it was Rte 117.  At this point we had two choices.  Bushwhack to the road through private property or turn back and hike back to where we

Hiker limbo! How low can you go??

last saw a blaze and try to find the trail.  Considering the scarcity of blazes on the good part of the trail we decided to bushwhack to the road.  We hiked over the the road and climbed up the embankment and over the guard-rail.  We were indeed on Rte 117.  I looked left, then right, and just as I began to wonder if I should get my compass out Side Track pointed to the right and said “This way.”  Must be nice to have reliable direction sense.  We walked up Rte 117 to Rose Hill Road, turned left and walked a couple hundred feet down Rose Hill Road and found where the trail crossed the road there.  We turned left and were back in the woods though only briefly, we came into Lincoln park where we promptly lost the blazes again.  We turned in the direction the trail was supposed to head and eventually found a tiny blaze on a tiny pine tree, then

I believe this is a comb-footed spider. (Photo by Ahren, ya'll know I'm not getting that close!!)

it was onto some more road-walking up Lincoln Park Road, then it was time to run across Rte 2 and apparently after crossing Rte 2 you then take a right at the pile of beer cans and you’re back in the woods.  Again we found ourselves trying to figure out where the trail went due to scarce blazes.  We eventually came to a long section of trail that followed a utility corridor.  We spent a lot of time crossing in and out of the woods and criss-crossing the corridor and various tote roads.  Now, when a trail criss-crosses various old woods roads and follows them here and there blazing is VERY important because it’s easy to lose the trail.  The blazes were still scarce with turn-blazes being done incorrectly if at all so following the trail was really tough, we lost it on and off but just followed the road down the utility corridor when that happened, it all went the same way anyway.  At one point we regretted following the blazes instead of staying on the road because it led us through a horribly overgrown area littered with blown down tree’s

Does this look like a trail to you? Me either but there was a blue blaze on the tree on the left. This is where we had to pick loads of burrs off our pants, several times. 😦

that required not stepping over but actually climbing over.  The trail was a mess, several times we had to stop and pick loads of burrs off of our pants and at one point I managed to get a thorn stuck deep in my knee.  It had gone through my pants and into my skin.  I didn’t realize it was so deep and tried to take a step only to find myself in severe pain.  I stopped and pulled it out, not nice.  This part of the trail led me to use language that I cannot repeat in polite company.  Eventually we came out onto a beautiful woods road before ending up in another mess of overgrown weeds, repeat this a few times and you have the rest of our hike.  We eventually came to a road run-off which we climbed up, stepped over the guard-rail on the side of Rte 165 and there was Ahren’s little white car waiting for us.  Pick off a few more burrs before hopping in the car & it was off to pick up my little blue car at the beginning of the trail and head back to camp for some much needed, and well earned, dinner.

Me taking a break on the rock scramble, the trail goes over these rocks in a desperate attempt to keep ATV's off of this land easement.

Side Track taking a break on the rock scramble.

A car we saw along the trail...can anyone tell what kind of car this is? (answer at the bottom of the page) 🙂

The end of our hike, technically the beginning of the Pequot Trail.

We enjoyed dinner around the camp-fire before heading into the tent to look at the CT Walk Book and pick out trails for Friday & Saturday.  As we did so it began to rain, which we expected so no problem there. After picking out our trails we went to sleep.  I awoke a couple hours later and really needed to go to the outhouse, it was pouring!  It couldn’t wait though so I took off my socks, pulled my pants up to my knee’s and put on my poncho and out into the weather I went.  I quickly discovered that our camp-site was practically a pond!  It was so flooded.  I was REALLY glad I had taken my socks off and hiked up my pants because the water just poured into my clogs.  We were dry in our waterproof tent though, which was good.  When I got back I didn’t want to bring too much water into the tent with me so I dropped my poncho onto the tarp outside before slipping into the tent.  Unfortunately I had managed to drop my poncho into a puddle and it was useless now.  Crap!  My feet, my pants, and the sleeves of my shirt were drenched despite my efforts to keep them dry.  I climbed into my sleeping bag and checked the weather.  The weather really wasn’t looking good.  Thunderstorms and heavy rain predicted for later that night, then all day Friday.  50 MPH wind gusts Friday, then 40mph Saturday & Sunday.  Hiking with wind gusts, and camping in a tent for that matter is dangerous due to the risk of blow-downs so we decided to pack it in.  We stuffed everything in our tent into our sleeping bags and Ahren stuffed it into the back seat of my car and brought me my hiking rain gear (rain pants, rain jacket) and we dropped the tent & canopy and stuffed them into the back of his car.  At 1am we hit the road for home, arriving around 2:14am.  It was nice to be dry, warm, and in our cosy bed.  We got up around 10am to find that the weather report looked a lot different, and while still cold and rainy it would have been manageable to stay after all.  Not much to be done about it so we had some breakfast, unloaded our wet crap from the car and hung it out on the clothesline to get rinsed off by the rain, then it’ll dry when it gets sunny again.  Looking outside now though it’s still pretty cold and gusty even though it’s not raining heavily.  It’s probably more pleasant to be home and we’ll try to bang out some more blue trails tomorrow and Sunday provided the weather cooperates.

All in all it was a pretty good trip.  The hike on the Pequot trail sucked but we’ll write the CFPA a letter to inform them of the crappy trail conditions.  They encourage people to let them know when they run into bad trail conditions or problems on the trail so we will.  After all, how can they fix things they don’t know about?  The majority of the CT CFPA Blue Trails are wonderful, when hiking 825 miles of trails you’re bound to run into some duds here and there.  Par for the course I guess, we’re still happy, healthy, and we somehow managed not to acquire any ticks so we’re good.  🙂
 

The answer to what kind of car that was.  🙂

It's a Dodge Dart! 🙂 On a side note, Side Track found one of the doors after scrambling up a rock formation to peer down a sheer cliff.

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Weekend Vacation Nov. 6th-8th 2009

My husband took me on a weekend trip this past weekend.  I had no idea what we were doing except for two things: there was a cavern tour involved and a jacuzzi.  That was all I knew until Thursday night when I also learned there was a play involved and we were not only going to New York, but to Massachusetts as well.

We set off Friday morning around 9am.  We started with a breakfast in Windsor, CT at Cracker Barrel.  After that and a quick stop to refuel we headed towards New York.  About 2 and a half hours later we reached our destination.  Howe Caverns, New York!   We had a reservation for the Lantern Tour at 5:30pm.  We arrived early enough in the day that we had some time to kill before our tour.  So, we checked into our hotel and decided to see what else there was to do in the area.   The first hotel was a normal motel room, nothing overly special except for a spectacular view and being greeted by flowers, wine, and fudge for after the tour…mmmmmm!!

We spent some time looking at the things to do in the area and decided it might be neat to go to the Iroquois Indian Museum, which was pretty much just right around the corner from where we were staying.  After that we drove into town for a quick dinner at Arby’s before our cave tour.

The cave tour was really neat.  The lantern tour is ages 16+ and it’s much smaller groups than a normal tour.  There were 6 couples including us if I remember correctly.  It started off as a regular lighted tour.  Then, at the end of the typical cave tour, with all the typical bad cave jokes, you’re handed a candle in a tin can and all the lights in the cave are turned off.  We then proceeded down the underground river Venus in boats.  Seeing the cave as it was originally seen.  After the boat ride the tour guide took off by himself out of the cavern leaving all of us to explore the cave on our own for 45 minutes.   We meandered slowly back towards the entrance, stopping occasionally to let another couple pass or stick our candle’s into holes in the wall to see how far they went.  It was a neat experience.  After we arrived back at the entrance we were taken back to the lobby and treated to cookies and drinks.

After the cave tour we headed back to the hotel and dug into our wine and fudge.  This apparently did not settle well with my poor husband’s tummy though as he quickly got a bad stomach ache after we finished.  I stupidly didn’t bring anything for an upset tummy so I gave him some baking soda mixed in water, which tastes like crap but works quite well, and we went to bed.

The next morning we spent leisurely getting up and around.  We headed out for coffee and bagels then came back to pack up and check out.  After checking out of the hotel we stopped for lunch at a restaurant we saw the day before.  “Rubbin’ Butts BBQ”.  With a name like that how could we not stop?  Hubby had pulled pork, which was fabulous while I stupidly ordered chicken, I should have had the pulled pork!  Anyway, after our lunch we headed off to Lenox, Massachusetts, where we would enjoy “The Hound of Baskerville” a comedy put on at our favorite place,  Shakespeare and Company!  After the play we checked into the fancy hotel of the trip!  The Kimball Inn.   We checked in, I explored the room, then we headed off to find somewhere for dinner.  After dinner we spent the evening lounging about the fancy hotel room.  Sunday morning we headed home a little earlier than expected as nothing was really open in the area.

All in all it was a great little vacation.  We enjoyed a great cave tour and a little taste of luxury!   Enjoy the pictures.

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Camping at Pachaug State Forest ~Green Falls~ 09/20/09-09/25/09

We enjoyed a very nice camping trip again this year.  We left home to head to the campground Sunday morning knowing that most people would be clearing out to get back home for the week.  When we arrived we found a couple of groups still packing up and only one site occupied by people who didn’t look like they were going anywhere. We drove around the grounds a couple of times stopping to check out sites until we agreed on site #3.  The reasonable amount of privacy plus the large fire-pit with a fabulous chimney rock settled it for us.  We immediately began setting up.  The first night we sat around after setting up and making dinner and just enjoyed the peace and quiet.  Only one other site in the campground had campers, it was fabulous.  While sitting around the fire we heard an incredible noise.  A Fisher Cat!  If you’ve never heard a Fisher Cat screech it sounds like a child screaming, it’s terrifying if you don’t know what it is when you hear it.  Fisher Cat’s are part of the weasel family and they’re vicious little creatures, though not dangerous to humans or larger dogs.  Later in the night, maybe around 1am or so I heard Coyotes yipping off in the distance.

Monday, after breakfast, we went for a short hike with Sara around Green Falls Pond.   I had begun to feel ill, as if I was coming down with a cold, I hoped it wouldn’t get bad and carried on,  we once again enjoyed the quiet until around 8:30pm a group came in.  They were loud and obnoxious until finally quieting down around 2am or so.  Around 4am I heard cars start up and pull off.  The group wasn’t camping, they had come in to party all night and leave early in the morning.  Jerks!

Tuesday we went for a 4.5 mile hike, I was feeling a little better but didn’t want to overdo it so we did the shorter hike.  We had some neighbors by now, they had come in and set up, but they were quiet so after our hike we enjoyed another quiet evening by the fire.  Again, around 8:30pm those same people came back, the noisy partiers!  I was getting annoyed at this point and the park ranger didn’t come around anymore by this point in the evening.  We went to sleep despite the racket only to be awoken at 1am or so by a huge explosion.  All we could figure is the idiots had put something on the fire to cause it to explode, a can of lighter fluid or something most likely.  Around 4am I heard engines revving repeatedly.  At least they were leaving and luckily they didn’t return after that night.

Wednesday we took a drive over to the Mt. Misery campground and walked around to check it out.  We’re thinking about a trip there in mid-late October since it’s one of the few campgrounds still open by that time of year.  We were expecting rain so after our walk we had to stop at the store to pick up another tarp to cover our tent with.  We retired early because of the threat of rain and played Skip-Bo in the tent.  The rain didn’t start up until around midnight and I didn’t sleep well after it did.  Rain coming down on a tarp is loud!!  The rain finally subsided and I got some more sleep.

Thursday morning we went for a 5.4 mile hike with Sara, the hike started at the campground we were at and ended at the Mt. Misery Campground.  Thursday night we built a roaring fire to use up the last of our firewood, finished off the s’mores and went to sleep dreaming of hot showers.

Friday morning we packed up and went back home.  We then spent the day unpacking all the gear, setting up the tent to clean it and air it out and all that good stuff.

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Old Orchard Beach, Maine ~May 2009~

Well, this year marks our tenth anniversary.  Time has flown, it’s hard to believe it’s been ten years already!!  We decided we should do something special, so we went back to our favorite spot in Maine.

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