While We Were Gone... Driving Leg, Hartford to Simsbury

 

On July 8th, while I was still hobbling about on my bum knee, The Girl Child and I took care of an 11-mile on-road leg of the East Coast Greenway connecting Hartford to Simsbury.  We had already previously decided, based on a worrisome walk of a short on-road bit, that while we will traverse the entire 3,000 mile Greenway route, we will only walk the 1,200 or so miles of dedicated trail, for safety reasons.  Fortunately they are constantly adding more dedicated Trail pieces along the Route, so by the time we are all done with this 15 or so years from now, we will need to go back and walk some new pieces to actually complete all the trail pieces!  My hope is that by the time Clara walks the East Coast Greenway with her future daughter, the entire 3000 miles will be one contiguous dedicated Trail.

Above, where the on-trail portion of the Greenway ends at the Legislative Office Building Parking Garage in Hartford (we will end a walking leg here soon).

Below, I soon was extremely glad to have decided on driving this piece, as there were several road closures along our route which would have been an absolute nightmare to negotiate if we had been walking.  More reassurance that our decision to avoid walking on-road portions of the trail is the right strategy for us!

I was unable to take a lot of photos of this leg because, obviously, I was driving. This was the last portion in Hartford, and after that a lot of it was on narrow back roads with no way to pull over and snap a picture.

Our end-point at the trailhead in Simsbury.  I meant to go back and grab a picture of the Pinchot Sycamore on Route 315 in Simsbury, the largest sycamore tree in Connecticut, which we drove right past on our route, but I completely forgot to do that. At some point when we are out that way again I will stop and get a photo and add it to this post.  It really is a beautiful tree worth seeing first-hand!

This leg brought our totals to 36 miles walked, 51 miles traversed, 2953 miles to go.  We had intended to begin walking again soon after this drive, but my goats slammed into me in the pasture, setting my progress and recovery back several weeks.  But never fear!  There is more trail news to come soon! Very soon....