November 24th 2017: Heading South for the Day

It has been a while, but I headed south today, going for a hike at the Richard T Larkin Conservation Area at 373 School Street to try to find Shining Rock. There is no trail map available, but I followed the instructions on https://trailsandwalksri.wordpress.com/2017/06/16/shining-rock-northbridge/,
and was able to get to the beautiful views on a rock cliff face, and the coordinates for the scenic area is 42.151123, -71.635549. If you have trouble finding it, it is located near the 14th hole of the Shining Rock Golf Club,

with trails leading into the woods and the scenic spot. Definitely a great start to the morning, although I had to be pretty careful walking around the cliff's edge.

heading back to my car, I proceeded next to the town of Mendon to explore the Mendon Town Forest. The path I took here is shown below in pink.

The fire tower could not be accessed, however,

and the waterfall at the mill area was just so-so.

Overall, not really worth the hike, unlike Shining Rock.

From here, it was on to the town of Millville for a hike at the Southern New England Trunkline Trail, where the path I took to find the Millville Lock and the Triad Bridges is shown below in pink.

The view of the Blackstone River by the Millville Lock

was pretty good,

although those from the Triad Bridges were better,

although the bridge was a little icy this morning, and I almost slipped here.

From here, I headed into North Smithfield RI,

Union Grange Hall

Old Kendall Dean School

Primrose Pond, 76 Pond House Road

Lake Bel Air, 45 Overlea Road

going for a hike at the Fort Nature Refuge, where the path I took is shown below in pink.

There were pretty nice views of the water bodies here,

but I got somewhat lost at the power lines due to the inaccuracy of the map.

It was a good thing that I decided to look around for a bit, finally finding the route around the corner. I did not get very far though before getting lost again, this time going for quite a bit before finally realizing my mistake. The route I had to go was actually partially hidden behind a log, and somehow I managed to find it. The views of the water bodies here were not as good as the first though,

and there was a fallen tree which forced me to give up my hike at the final water body.

Pretty good hike though.

With that, I called it a day for sightseeing, grabbing a Vegetarian Pizza (Spinach, mushroom, eggplant, zucchini, artichokes, tomato slices)

from Gusto Pizzeria and Spaghetteria, a takeout place in town.

Not bad actually, with lots of toppings, for a vegetarian pizza.

For dinner, we headed to RFK Kitchen, a high end place in the town of Needham.

Sadly, no one else was here the entire time we were, which might have been a sign of things to come. We got the Wings (sweet and spicy)

and the Faroe Island Salmon (couscous sundried tomatoes, olives and capers).

The chicken was not too bad, with lots of tangy spicy sauce, but couscous portion of the salmon tasted a little weird because of the capers, and the tomatoes did not help either. Not sure if I want to come back here again, and there wasn't anything much else on the menu as well. Oh well. A pretty good day for hiking though.