We spent three strenuous days cutting new trail, blazing, raking & signing then stood back, admiring our newly planted cedar post sign and made the statement… ‘Now alls we have to do is GPS the thing and we’re done with it!’
The next morning we were back at the signpost with GPS in hand, ready to trek almost due east a mere 1.5 mile, then turn around and retrace our steps… A pretty simple day ahead compared to the previous three, we thought.
We leisurely started out on our journey being careful to mark a waypoint where the trail angled a bit and, oh ya, we can’t forget to mark the stream crossings and certain points of interest, now can we? Lisa was taking critical waypoints and I was marking down on paper things to remember. We wrapped up the project mid-afternoon and called it a day. I could hardly wait to plug the waypoints into the computer when we got home to see how far we had gone with this trail!
What I saw dumbfounded me! We had actually started the trail just 'ouest' of the Chartierville Junction of 257 Nord and 212 ouest in Quebec Canada, passed through customs without passports and evidently no one saw us…headed south, swimming across Lake Francis - trudged through Nash Bog in the Nash Stream Forest - sloshed thru the wetlands between Page Hill and Tug Mountain outside of Lancaster, straight through the Mt. Washington Regional Airport - skipped the conventional trails like Liberty Spring Trail orThe Falling Waters Trail and just plunged through the valley between Lafayette-Lincoln-Little Haystack and Owl’s Head through the White Mountain Nat’l Forest - swam across Newfound Lake just west of Lake Winnipesaukee, down through Keene NH and into Massachusettes, just missing the Quabbin Reservoir, Phew!
From there we took a quick jaunt through Connecticut and crossed Long Island Sound just east of New Haven… came ashore near Flanders and exited land again by Fire Island… kept on swimming the Atlantic Ocean until we’d obviously had enough and turned around approximately 90+ miles east of the North Carolina coast - Shackelford Banks, just south of Pamlico Sound, to be exact.
Our return trip was pretty much the same route with slight variation - Seems like if we swam a lake going down, we swam it going back, never learning a dog-gone thing! We made it back to Chartierville by mid-afternoon and somehow got back thru US Customs (Ya Right!) to our original little spot on Round Pond Road all in a mere day - How’s that Team Granite? So don't bother emailing cohos@cohostrail.org looking for GPS Coordinates for the Round Pond Brook Trail 'cause there ain't none!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Drop a Line...