Willowdale Epic and Random Adventuring

2 Saturdays ago, Kevin, Shaun, and the Bradleys (Ben, Adam out of retirement and even their Dad, Charlie, who is a thousand times in better shape then I'll ever be) met up in Ipswich to ride bikes at my favorite place, Willowdale. We were going to go to Rutland, VT, but Vermont had been so destroyed by Irene, we kept it local. Since these guys are early birds, we met at 11, and rode the hell out of the place.

We did a total of 15 miles, which was enough for me to be able to cross "do all of willowdale" off my summer list. Technically, I'd have to do 17, but we started on the wrong side and even though I was crazy enough to consider going back in the woods at the end of the trip to hit the 1 small section I missed, I couldn't actually figure out how to get to those sections without riding WAY more than I was willing to ride. And to keep things PG, the area on a person that takes the most stress when biking was hurting a lot.

We hit up the side I hadn't touched yet this year though, and it was just as fun and fantastic as I remembered. What an awesome place, and what a good ride with some good people who thankfully don't mind waiting for my slow ass to catch up and tell them where to go.

We even had a random dude ride with us for a few miles too- a guy who met us on the trail and needed help finding his way out. Luckily for him, I have the whole place memorized, even though I forgot about a 3 mile section when I first told him where to go.

Shaun and Kevin

It was more flooded than I'd ever seen it- this section was fine for people with 29 inch wheels. My 26 inch wheels and I weren't so lucky, and I spent the remaining 5 miles of riding and remaining 8 hours of the day with completely soaked shoes. 

Adam getting intense

I sat in the parking lot for probably 20 minutes, fighting with myself about going back in to ride the rest. I really wanted to say that I rode every trail I knew at Willowdale in 1 outing, and we had blown that ability by starting from the wrong side. I finally got back in the car, saying how stupid it would be to try and find the other trails, and decided to instead be very smart and head to get the best lunch I possibly could, at wonderful Nick's Roast Beef in Beverly. 

On the way there, I stopped to take a picture of a sweet eagle statue on the side of the road. 

If you don't know, Instagram is an application for the iPhone that's like facebook/twitter but just with pictures, where you can make everything look waaaay cooler and more pretty with filters. I am quite obsessed with it, and it has really made me appreciate a lot of the small things in life. If I didn't have a goal to post a picture a day and only post pretty or interesting things, I probably wouldn't have stopped and paid such attention to this awesome statue. But being obsessed, I turned my car around, drove back, parked at some church, and was THAT GUY who was standing on the side of the road, taking pictures of a statue. But the picture came out awesome, and I'm happy I stopped. 

I then decided to make the day even better by heading up to Halibut Point State Park, where sunset had spoiled any hope of me seeing on my trip up the coast a month before. It was a beautiful day, and I was in the area, so why not? I started to feel like heading there first, THEN going to Nick's, but my beef honing system made me get lost, and right when I realized I wasn't going at all in the right direction to the park, I looked up to see Nick's staring at me. My beefdar had purposefully made this happen. It was heaven. 

crazed

sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good

After destroying the beef, I headed up to Halibut Point, but quickly ran into a problem. Even though I had sweat out a large portion of it, combining the time before the ride, during the ride, and after, I had consumed about a gallon of water and a 20 ounce grape soda, and nature was calling, BAD. I decided to combine a panic pee break with my adventuring, blog-having attitude, and pulled over at the James A. Babson Museum in Essex. I have no idea what the purpose of this building is, other than it being very old. But there was a big field behind it that was pretty. 

Past that, there was a small trail which led to a railroad.

Across from that, was this post:

"The end comith 4 U 2012"

OK. Well, that's a bit creepy. Behind this, a subtle rock bridge over a stream led me to a trail in the woods.

there were actually several of these

I have no idea why this trail is here, and the fact that it has clearly been frequented made it even more of a mystery. Back on the main road, about a half mile down, there is a sign that says "End of Vernal Pool area," so I figured this may be some sort of tourist attraction, but when I finally looked up what Vernal Pools are (pretty much puddles that get big enough to last through the summer and breed frogs and other small amphibious animals), that couldn't have been it. Since the path that took me here was so random and hidden, it would blow me away if a bunch of people followed the path I did to just wander through the woods. I followed the trail for quite a ways, and never really saw anything interesting enough to warrant the trail, so I am still really confused. My best guess, after looking at a map, is that the trail is the outer part of Dogtown, a network of mountain bike trails I've heard about that appear to be in this area. But that still feels unlikely, since these were walking trails through an area too wet to want to bike through. 

It was really creepy and oddly nerve-wracking being out there in some mysterious nowhere. I kept smelling weird smells and kept feeling like I was right around the corner from something terrifying. Towards the end of me being there, I even started feeling odd- like light headed and randomly hot. I started wondering if I was just still somehow dehydrated or if something out there was making me sick. I didn't like it, and the more I was out there, I felt a mysterious need to get the hell out of there. I don't know what was going on, it was just a weird, weird place.

But this was some cool woods- to the right of me was thick woods and swampland. To the right was a hill with enormous boulders everywhere- in formations interesting enough that this whole area may just exist for explorers to wander around and look at the rocks. The whole time I was walking, the hill followed me, and rocks were everywhere.

this is bigger than it looks

I climbed to the top of one of the biggest ones, and it looked like further in was just more of the same- boulders and rocks everywhere. On top of one hill was trash and evidence of a fire, but it could have been years old by the looks of things- and could have been scattered by a bear or bigfoot or some sort of monster judging by how much the trash was spread around. It was a weird, weird place. I saw some weird things- like these rocks in particular.

The top one felt flimsy enough that a strong enough wind could easily knock this over, yet a hurricane had blasted through here a week earlier, and there it stood. This meant that either people had been here since the hurricane, or there were forces at work here. 

This tree was interesting:

And this subtly moving in the distance scared the crap out of me:

But for the most part, this was just a really neat, really interesting place that probably only freaked me out so much because I was there alone and I couldn't find a reason for this area to have a trail going through it. Maybe I stumbled upon some weird secret. The places life can take you when you stop to pee and you have the heart of an adventurer... 

currently listening to: A Nirvana concert on VH1