Just a few days ago, I saw a picture of a friend at a nice place which had a great view called Tippling Rock, and I found out it was in Sudbury, a town I had already visited before. I decided to do some more research on the trails in Sudbury, and found 3 other places that might have good views. The first place I visited today was the
Nobscot Conservation Land, the entrance found near the end of Brimstone Lane. The rough route I took is highlighted in pink below.
From the parking area, my original intention was to get to the viewpoint close by, but the tree damage from the snow storm was quite bad here, with fallen tree trunks all over the paths. The paths were a little overgrown with shrubbery as well. As a result, I missed the key intersection where I was supposed turn right to get to the viewpoint. As a result, I went all the way to the Boy Scout Reservation at the top edge of the area. Not knowing where I was, I decided to turn right here to try to head back to the trail, but all it did was make me more and more lost, as I moved onto an unmarked trail that led me beyond the boundaries of the conservation area. Somehow I managed to make it all the way around to the very end of Brimstone Lane, where there were a few electrical towers and satellite dishes there at the top of Nobscot Hill.
As I walked along Brimstone Lane to get back to my car, I saw a private residence which seemed to have great views of the surroundings from the hill, so I trespassed for a few minutes to take some pictures.
Finally back at my car, I tried one more time to find the viewpoint, but dramatically failed once again. I decided to give up on this attempt, but tried to looked for the other nearby viewpoint instead. This I tried to do by walking down Brimstone Lane all the way to the other end of the area to find the trail head there. I found the trailhead easily, but as I headed up the knoll, I lost the trail once again, with everything being so overgrown. At this point, I gave up all hope of finding any good views in this place, and decided to head back to my car for good.
From here, I headed back to my next hiking area,
Tippling Rock, the trailhead found at 641 Boston Post Road. The rough route I took is highlighted in brown below.
From the parking area, the trail was pretty straightforward, and soon I heading up the slopes to Tippling Rock. The views from the top were excellent as they were in my friend's picture.
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| Heading Up Tippling Rock |
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| Tippling Rock |
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| Views from Tippling Rock |
After heading back the same way to my car, my next trail was the
King Phillip Conservation Land, the parking area found on Old Sudbury Road close to the intersection with Wolbach Road.
The route I took is highlighted in pink below.
From the parking area, I took the right trail to head to the Old Berlin Road. I turned left here to walk along the dirt road, until I came across the path to cross the pond. Here are some views of the pond at this time.
From here, I followed the path to the first viewpoint, but there was nothing much to see at the top of this hill. I continued on to the next viewpoint, which was equally disappointing. I then walked all the way around to the footbridge across the pond, which was pretty much falling apart. Luckily, the center of it was stable enough for me to take a last picture of the pond with a lot of lily pads.
Overall, not worth coming back here again. My next destination was the
Davis Farm Conservation Land, the parking area found on North Road right next to the abandoned Penn Central Railroad and close to the junction with Windmill Drive. The route I took is highlighted below in pink. One complaint about the map provided on the website is that the lines indicating the trails are almost indistinguishable from the contour lines, although the large map found at the parking area did help to alert me to where those trails actually were on my small map.
From the parking area, I saw the path leading to the first viewpoint, but as it was very overgrown with shrubbery, I decided to head along the dirt road and enter the target path from its other end instead. However, when I reached the supposed viewpoint, there was nothing to see there. I continued along the path back to my car, bashing through the overgrown plants, then headed back out onto the dirt road again. This time, I ventured further until I found the path leading to the next viewpoint, which had a great view of the croplands down an old ski-slope.
Instead of heading down to the field, I decided to turn around to try to find the other viewpoint nearby, but got lost instead, finally emerging onto the railroad somehow. Here, I decided to head back to my car, using the railroad as a guide. Even so, fallen trees damaged by the snow storm and overgrowth of flora on the railroad made this straightforward trek a little difficult.
Finally, I found a path leading to Windmill Drive, from which I finally made my way back to my car and headed to lunch.
My lunch today was at
Franco's Trattoria, a little Italian restaurant serving authentic Italian food. I had the Italian Wedding Soup, and the Pizza di Vongole, which were delicious.
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| Italian Wedding Soup |
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| Pizza di Vongole |
After lunch, I decided to resume my sightseeing in the southwestern 5th Circle, starting where I left off the last time in Wrentham. The first place I went to was
Lake Pearl. I managed to find a spot along Gilmore Road that gave a partial view of the lake.
From here, I headed to a place where I should have been able to find the Lake Pearl Beach, but it turned out to be
Lake Pearl Luciano's, a beautiful function facility on the shores of Lake Pearl which holds events like weddings and corporate functions. There was another partial view of Lake Pearl from the parking area here as well, from which I could actually see the beach on the opposite side.
I resolved to find the beach, which I realized was along Woolford Road instead.
The last place I visited was Lake Archer, the partial view of which I obtained from Rowell Road.
Moving on from Wrentham, Mirror Lake along Mirror Lake Road in Norfolk was next. Views of it follow.
It was time to jump into my next hike, although it was more a short scenic walk than a hike, at the
Stony Brook Wildlife Sanctuary. There is a nice open field where the visitor center is.
The path I took here is highlighted below.
Walking from the main visitor center, I had to walk along a stone path, the Sensory Trail, shown below.
At the bridge separating the Teal Marsh and the Stony Brook Pond, I took pictures here of both sides.
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| Teal Marsh |
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| Stony Brook Pond |
The next set of bridges was effectively a walkway across the Teal Marsh and the Kingfisher Pond. Pictures of the walkway and the two connected water bodies follow.
The final portion of the bridge had been closed off due to a damaged tree in that part of the trail, but I decided to proceed onto the Beech Grove Trail anyway, seeing that the damaged tree was not going to fall apart any time soon, and took some pictures from the observation platform there.
From here, I went back to the junction with the Pond Loop Trail, and turned onto it. Along this section was a beautiful view of Stony Brook Pond, but further on there is also a nice waterfall.
After this, I went to other places in town to visit, especially the town common area.
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| Norfolk Town Hall, 1 Liberty Lane |
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| War memorials at Town Common |
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Norfolk Town Common,
Union Street and Main Street |
Finally done with Norfolk, I headed to Medfield next. My first place of visit was another hiking trail at
Noon Hill. The route I took is highlighted below in pink.
My original intention was to park at the official parking lot on Noon Hill Road close to its junction with Causeway Street, but I actually parked at the other parking area on the same road close to the junction with South Street. From there, I headed toward the Noon Hill peak by heading to checkpoint 23. From there, I turned right to checkpoint 6. All this time, my leg was already starting to hurt from all the hiking I did today, but I still pressed on. I turned right again to head to checkpoint 7, from which I turned right one last time to head to the summit. The views here were great.
From the summit, I made my way back to checkpoint 7, and turned right here instead of going back the way I came to head toward checkpoint 8A. I got a little lost here due to the many curves in the trail, but I finally made it to the checkpoint, at which I tuned right to head down the hill back to my car. I had wanted to see Holt Pond at the other parking area, so I drove there a took a picture of the pond, which was not as impressive as I thought it would be.
Next, I went to visit a few interesting buildings in Medfield, shown below.
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| Town Common beside Medfield Public Library |
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War memorials,
Main Street and Spring Street |
I still had other places to visit in Medfield today, but I had a dinner appointment with a friend tonight, so I went for that at
Ten-ichi Dynamic Kitchen in Natick. We had originally wanted to go to
Minado for the great Japanese buffet they have there, but it was already crowded at 6pm, so we went to Ten-ichi instead. We ordered the Singapore Noodles this time, and it was good, as I had not had it for a long time now. With that, my day of sightseeing was done.
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