April 27th 2021: Hiking at Great Meadow Conservation Area, Grafton

 Today for lunch, we got takeout from Grill 352 in Worcester, this time getting the Beef Gyro and Lamb Gyro Rollup (syrian bread, lettuce, tomato, grill onion, green peppers, pickles, tzatziki sauce).

Pretty good, although the raw onions might have given me heatburn for a bit. 

Later in the day, we decided to go for a hike at Great Meadow Conservation Area in Grafton, where the path we took to get to the water body is shown below in pink.

The going was simple at first,

but due to misintepretation of the somewhat poorly drawn trail map, and lack of trail markings, we went southwest instead of going west at the trail intersection, only realizing our mistake when we arrived at the Great Meadow swamp area, which luckily was the best view we would get of the entire area.

From here, I was able to get us back on track, having to trudge through the wetland area to get to our target water body. However, when we arrived in the area, we got dioriented and did not identify our target water body, getting lost and even going around in a circle. Eventually I figured it out, although the water body we were looking for was nothing special either. Thankfully, we were able to find our way back out, although the path we took was still not my intended path as we got lost again. Overall, a nice view of the swamp, but not a great hike.

After getting back to the car, we decided to get dinner at Grille 122, a bar restaurant in the Linwood area of the town of Northbridge. Pretty typical decor for a bar restaurant.

We got the Hawaiian Margarita (pineapple, Triple Sec, coconut rum, tequila)

and the Mediterranean Chicken (spinach, sun dried tomato, feta, lemon garlic wine sauce, linguini).

The drink was a tad strong, while the pasta a tad sour. Overall, not that great a meal here. Not feeling satisfied, we decided to head across the road to Pirate's Cove, a takeout place serving ice cream and seafood.

we got the Banana Split (chocolate peanut butter, coconut, strawberry),

the Clam Chowder

and the Clam Cakes.

The clam cakes were crispy, but did not have much clam meat, and were a little on the salty side. The soup was not bad, as was the ice cream, although a tad overwhelming with sweetness after a while. Overall, an okay day out for hiking and eating. At least my other half got to try a banan split for the first time.