Active long weekend

 I kicked off July with a long weekend of running, biking, hiking, and a little swimming. I missed doing the Chelmsford race, but my ankle/foot just did not feel up to racing. On Friday I headed out and got in a nice run on the Londonderry Rail Trail, then onward for a fantastic, rare Friday morning ride. 

A migraine hit which had me feeling off for the remainder of the weekend. I set up camp in Bear Brook and got in a nice swim to cool off. The water was bathtub-warm but still felt good to get out of the heat and humidity. 

After that I headed over to Epsom for a run up to the highest point. It was buggy and the footing was a bit rough over the 1.1 miles that climbed over 600’. The view was terrific, but the haze cut down on what I was able to see. It was a rough night with temps only getting down to 70 and high humidity. 

I got up a couple of times to see if I could catch the International Space Station, but low clouds kept it out of sight. 

I got in a very buggy run on the camp road and ended up with welts all over my back from deerflies feasting on me. I woke up with something wrong with my left ear which was not feeling right. I headed over to Concord for a nice Holiday group run and checked out the ceremony at the capital building.

 After that I headed over to Bow for a hike to the town high point. The unofficial trail to the summit became overgrown after 100 meters so I bushwacked straight to the top. The summit was covered in blueberries and featured a nice view that like the previous day, was obscured due to haze.

 After catching the fireworks, I decided to head for the hospital as I now had no hearing in one ear. I was worried it might be related to my migraine but also thought it could be water from the swim that I couldn’t get out. I ended up spending 6 hours in the waiting room overnight and another hour getting my ear taken care of (water and wax). It was a relief to get my hearing back, but I was exhausted from being up over 24 hours

. No time to rest as I headed over to the Northern Rail Trail for a nice 10 mile run in the much more refreshing conditions (68-74 degrees but lower humidity). I checked out the geocache near the Hannah Dustin statue and after that it was on to the always fun Sunday ride, closing out the weekend with a nice 2 hour ride in optimal conditions.

Town Bagging

 I had scheduled Friday off as my car needed repair for a recall notice and it would require that the car be in the shop the whole day. Al B also had Friday off and offered to drive for some town high points. Game on!

We met up at 9 am and spent the next 7 hours visiting 12 town high points. Most were just drive ups but we did have a couple of short hikes. The best was a 1/2 mile snowshoe hike to the highest point in Holliston. In order:

Reading (drive up) back yard looked no higher than front and no one was home.

Lincoln - Drove up Reservoir access road, then hopped the fence (tough for me, I'm not very flexible).

Weston - Drive up, owner did not know he had the highest point but was happy to let us visit his back yar.

Westwood - Drive up, between two house, both having construction work done and no one home.

Wayland - Drive up, no one home tromped around the yard a bit.

Millis - Between two houses, owner knew he had the high point and had no problem letting us check it out.

Medway - Parked at the end of the circle and bushwacked to the town line. A bunch of deer in the woods.

Holliston - snowshoe hike on marked trails. "Summit" had a stone statue.

Norwood - Couldn't get in near the tennis courts and the water towers were fenced and had active construction. Bashed around a bit on the cemetery side.

Brookline - parked behind the Benevolent Association and checked out the very high fence. Squeezed in along the fence and the brick wall.

Newton - took the Waban path and found a hole in the lower fence, scrambled up the hill to the upper fence (nothing higher within).

Watertown - parked behind the building on the top of Meetinghouse hill (used to be Trinity school) golf course built around it. Walked over to the nearby high point.

Rhode Island town high points

I had some time to burn before the end of the year and Al had me interested in finishing the town high points in Rhode Island. We’d gone earlier this year and had it down to just 8 remaining of the 39 cities/towns in RI. We met up at 5:45 am and I got myself a large coffee from Dunks to help get me to the start of this long day. Our first stop was Burriville and we were greeted with temps in the 20s and a strong breeze. It wasn’t too bad in the woods but tough getting out of the warm car. Our first high point included 3 miles of running and a very short bushwack (off trail hiking). 37 minutes later we were back in the car and heading further south. Next up was a .9 hike in some beautiful open woods in Smithfield followed by a drive up (a house was the highest point) in Johnston. Then it was off to Cranston for a 3 minute hike into the back yard of a creepy abandoned house, the highest point was next to the remains of a former home or garage. A longish drive later and we were in Westerly for a ½ mile jaunt on a nice trail and powerlines, with a short bushwack into fairly open woods. Now we turned north (a little) and hit Charlestown for some minor illegal activity.  The cell tower road had one sign but the tower appeared to have not been used in years and none of the woods around it appeared to be posted. We crossed some powerlines and hit the high point and then returned via a different route that included going down a dirt driveway (not posted in the direction we were going) and a .7 jog on the road back to the car. South Kingstown was our penultimate town with a 1 mile on another powerline and some bushwacking. Al has a knack for finding game trails and the whack wasn’t too bad. Our final high point of the day was Providence, we parked by an underground reservoir and walked the road and nice paths to the top. There was a view of the city on the way down. Next up we drove over to Lincoln and got in a great 7 mile run on the scenic Blackstone River Bike Path. A gem! The ride north was a bit rough with a couple of accidents slowing things down but we made it back safely covering 8 high points, about 15 miles of hiking and running, and 300 miles of driving in 11 hours. Now we will get to work on Massachusetts town high points.

Town high points

 I had done a few town high point visits during my days of running in every town in MA, NH, VT, RI, and CT.  It wasn't top of my list of things to do but a fun addition if it worked out as I was always looking for something interesting in each town.

Recently I'd done a few town HPs while visiting fire towers in RI and teammate and hiker extraordinaire Al Bernier has been working on some of the high points in New England.  With the lingering furlough (Government shutdown) we met up this week to put a dent in the RI list.

RI has 38 cities and towns so the list is reasonably short.  On Monday we checked off 17 RI town HPs and one MA along with a couple of 5 mile runs in places I had not run previously.  It was a long day with 13 hours in the car covering almost exactly 300 miles.  I've got 8 left to go in RI and Al has 6.  Great fun!

 

Towns I've run in

 The drive down and back from Florida got me to run in 14 towns I'd never run in before.  I had runs in (north to south) almost every state on the Eastern Seaboard.  MA, CT, NY, PA, MD, VA, NC, SC, GA, and FL.

Town bagging

 Last week I got in a couple of runs in Maine.  I've been planning out some of the Maine town runs as I hope to (eventually) run in every town/city in Maine.  This could take about 10 years with 482 to do and so much driving (and so many with very little in the way of roads).  The five towns I got this week put me over 1,700 total.  As this is my game, I set the rules.  Minimum run of 3 miles but if I step in a town during that 3 miles it counts.  That means a lot of 2 (or 3) town runs along town lines.

Grand total:		1701
New England total =		1137
			All 50 States
State	No. Towns run in		1585
MA	351	=All!	GA	7
NH	259	=All!	MO	7
VT	256	=All!	NJ	7
RI	39	=All!	SC	7
CT	169	=All!	WV	7
			AZ	6
ME	68		ID	6
			MN	6
NY	69		AR	5
NC	40		KY	5
FL	26		MI	5
CA	24		IN	5
PA	22		ND	4
OH	21		NM	4
CO	17		WI	4
VA	17		WY	4
MD	15		IA	3
HI	12		LA	3
WA	11		MS	3
NV	9		MT	3
AL	8		TN	3
OR	8		TX	3
SD	8		DE	2
UT	8		NE	2
IL	7		OK	2
KS	7		AK	1