November 12th 2011: A Day of Catching Up with Old Friends and Meeting New Ones

I found a trail in Wayland that seemed to have interesting views, and decided to first visit the Greenways Conservation Area this morning. The route I took is highlighted below in black.

From the parking lot at the end of Green Way, I proceeded to checkpoint A, then walked through the woods to Checkpoint P and on to checkpoint F, close to the field shown below.

From here, I went to the edge of the Sudbury River to take a picture of it.

There was nothing much to see here, so I headed to checkpoin H, and on to the boardwalk bridge. Unfortunately, there was nothing much to see here as well.

From the bridge, I walked all the way back and on to checkpoint K, then all the way back to my car. All in all, although a nice walk in the morning, there was nothing much to see here.

Moving on to the town of Dover, before venturing into the Noanet Woodlands, I visited some other places of interest.

Dover Town Hall

Dover Town Library

Soldier's Monument,
Centre Street and Dedham Street

Grace Church of Dover

Channing Pond/Park,
Springdale Avenue
between Old Colony Drive and Spring Lane

 It was on to my next hike of the day at Noanet Woodlands. The parking area is at Caryl Park, found on Dedham Street between Oakley Drive and Cross Street. From here, the path I took is highlighted below in pink.

From the parking area, I went onto the red Caryl Loop Trail all the way to checkpoint 3. From here, I turned onto the Noanet Peak Trail and proceeded to checkpoint 6, from which I headed straight up to Noanet Hill to its summit, which had great views of the surroundings.

From the peak area, I turned to the tight back onto the Noanet Peak Trail to reach checkpoint 9, upon which I took another unmarked trail by turning left to checkpoint 35. Here, I headed on  the Peabody Loop Trail to checkpoint 34 and on to the next intersection to start following the various mill ponds downstream on unmarked paths.

At the Third Iron Company Pond, I turned back onto the Peabody Loop Trail and headed down to the Upper Mill Pond, which had a beautiful waterfall at the dam and mill site.

At this point, I was back on the Caryl Loop Trail, and I used it to head back to my car.

I had a lunch appointment with my friend from MIT, where there was a Singaporean food festival going on. I hadn't had Singaporean food in a while, so my friend and I ordered 1 of everything. It's a good thing both of us eat a lot, and we were able to finish several plates of fried noodles, laksa, goreng pisang, chilli crab, bak kut teh, curry puffs and pulut hitam. I was glad I met up with my friend, because I saw a lot of other people I knew from my past at the event, including a middle school friend that I had not seen for over 10 years. 

After spending over 2 hours just eating everything we had ordered, it was time for my next event of the day, bowling at the Boston Bowl in Boston in a meetup event. I had a great time bowling, losing only after teaching my new friends some of the important principles involved in bowling. Maybe I should not have shared my tips in hindsight to avoid losing. On the bright side, my college football team won their game today.

After the bowling session, we headed to the Grand Chinatown Restaurant at 21 Billings Road in Quincy for dinner. We were lucky enough to have among our party a friend who knew the owner of the place, and knew what the good dishes were. We ordered a ton of food, including Thousand Island Shrimp, fried tofu, lobster and roasted chicken, all of which was delicious.

 To end it all, we even had a bowl of pulut hitam for dessert.

All in all, I enjoyed my day entirely, hanging out with different groups of people. It was great catching with my old friends, and having more fun with new ones. Till next time.