{"id":3113,"date":"2019-09-28T20:16:45","date_gmt":"2019-09-29T00:16:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=3113"},"modified":"2019-09-28T20:16:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-29T00:16:45","slug":"woods-water-frogs-and-fowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2019\/09\/28\/woods-water-frogs-and-fowl\/","title":{"rendered":"Woods, Water, Frogs, and Fowl"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two weeks ago I went for an afternoon ride that followed some more old roads through forests. I actually left the house in the morning, but initially rode into the Mt. Tom State Reservation<\/a> to meet others for a wildlife presentation there (I’ll write more about that in a separate post). After that, and a picnic lunch, I struck out down the old portion of Reservation Road down into Easthampton. This section is closed off to cars, and is really more of a hiking trail with some chunks of old pavement in it. I rode it once last year<\/a>, but headed upward at that time. In both directions, some walking of a bike is necessary, as it is too steep to ride.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I passed through downtown Easthampton, then rode up Park Hill Road, which I had not been on before. I took that north, then west, until I got to a point where the pavement ends, and there is just dirt trail going into the trees (click on photo to embiggen):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Asphalt<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I followed this west, as I’d seen on a map that it would come out on pavement again. It did, after maybe half a mile, but there was a point where a large tree had fallen on the path, and so I had to climb through and around some branches with the bike (it was not quite as bad as that sounds). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once on the other side, I continued on the paved road, which soon came to an end at Glendale Rd. I headed south on that, going down hill, then up again, and passed by a winery there (called Glendale Ridge). Here is the view from the ridge, over some grape vines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"View<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I kept going south on this road and another until I hit Route 10 in Southampton. I turned there to head further south, and for a bit I followed a less busy parallel street: High Street. It runs a bit higher than 10, and at one point I was able to look downhill (east\/southeast) toward 10:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Green<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

High St. stopped at Fomer Rd. and I then got back on Route 10 for a bit, before turning onto Brickyard Road. I had been on the other portion of this road back in May (the portion to the east of route 10), but this time I headed southwest, which was all new to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a pleasant ride with a bit of uphill, and a bit of down, and eventually the road passes into Westfield, where it changes name to Root Road. I continued following it south, and then it bent southeast, heading toward downtown Westfield. Before I got out of the rural part of the city, I did stop for a moment by a marshy area:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Small<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I could hear, but not see, frogs in the area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not ride all the way downtown. This road eventually ran into Routes 10\/202 just south of the Mass Pike, and I jogged onto that road, then onto Holyoke St., which runs east, parallel to the pike. I followed that road all the way to its other end, still in Westfield, at East Mountain Road. Here I went a very short distance north, passing under the pike, and then headed further east where I passed a gate and got onto the old road that I had ridden in May<\/a> in the other direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, I was able to find a better path, so that I only had to cross the railroad tracks – I did not have to walk along them. Here is the view along the tracks, looking southwest, then northeast:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Railroad<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Railroad<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I headed across and back onto the “road”, and continued east, but soon came to a blockage. There was a tree down, or perhaps multiple small trees, so I had to make my way around, walking the bike through the underbrush:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Road<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I continued along until I passed the gate that keeps cars out, onto the regular road (Prospect St. in West Springfield). At this point, I turned north, passing around another gate and heading up a completely unfamiliar path\/dirt road. The map had shown me that this route should connect to the Ashley reservoir in Holyoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I had gone a ways north, there were a few large, deep puddles in the middle of the road. I thought they looked semi-permanent, and in fact they were home to some number of frogs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Small<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Small<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Those were the best photos I was able to take – other frogs moved away when I tried to get pictures of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon after these puddles, I came to the railroad tracks (same ones I had crossed earlier). I walked along them for roughly 50 feet, and came to a break in the bushes on the other side, where I did indeed descend into the Ashley reservoir land. Here is the reservoir, seen from the south end:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Grassy<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I rode around to the west side, and just before passing out of sight of the water, I spotted a great blue heron, and took some pictures. Not being able to get very close to it, they aren’t very clear. This is probably the best one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Tree<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I rode on to the north, eventually turning east and coming near the water again, and then headed south, where I saw another heron. This one flew away before I could even try to take a picture, but I also saw a cormorant a ways out in the water:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From there I headed home on familiar Holyoke streets. The distance for this ride was about 40 miles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next ride: the final training ride – BikeFest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago I went for an afternoon ride that followed some more old roads through forests. I actually left the house in the morning, but initially rode into the Mt. Tom State Reservation to meet others for a wildlife presentation there (I’ll write more about that in a separate post). After that, and a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3127,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3113\/revisions\/3127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}