Same Trail, New Length

 News from the Appalachian Trail Conservancy note the new "official" trail length.

The official length of the A.T. in 2021 has been announced: 2,193.1 miles! This length changes slightly each year due to Trail modifications/reroutes and more precise measurement of A.T. sections.

Hot Tub and Pools sales up

 Since we are all stuck home, some 94,000 new in-ground swimming pools are to be opened by the end of the year. There is one being built on the lot near me in Westfield as I write this.

And Hot Tubs have grown in popularity by 400% (got ours some ten years ago).

For those who want to do this more inexpensively, try heading to the local farm store and buy a livestock galvanized tub.  Then add a water heater (propane or electric) and yippee, you got a hot tub.

Breakdancing gets Olympic Status

 Can't wait until Paris 2024 when we get to see Breakdancing as a new event!  The spinning and twirling should be spectacular.  

Also good news is the subtraction of Boxing and to a lesser degree Weight Lifting. I mean watching people beat the s&*t out of each other is not what I call a sport.  Just like the fools who drive around in a circle in a fast car is not a sport IMHO.

Rice Nature Preserve, Wilbraham, MA

 No snow in Westfield, but twenty miles east in Wilbraham, the trails of Rice Nature Reserve were at least two inches deep with snow and ice.

Just a shot of the trail here

A view from the top of the hill was pretty nice.

A when zoomed in, got a nice pic of the Mt. Tom Range across the Connecticut River Valley.

A nice bench offered a nice rest, but it was too cold and windy to stay very long.

Along an unmapped Biy Pass Trail and stone wall meandered through the woods.

Want more information?  Or a trailmap?  Will return on a milder day.

Covid and Tourism

 There is no shortage of news related to Covid.  Southwest Airlines is threatening massive layoffs or furloughs if union employees don't take a pay cut.

On the other side of tourism news, Colorado wants the ski industry to get the first vaccines, after essential employees to spur the economy.

And you can always do a Scholar Google search for more stuff to read.

WSU Faculty Showcase

 here are the slides from my animated slide show presented 1 December 2020 via Zoom.

Warner Hill (part two)

Back on the 9th of November, I wrote about our short hike up to Warner Hill in Western Mass.  the plan that day had been to explore the old farmstead found north of the summit that I had earlier detected using LiDAR.  Well that exploration didn't happen, but this past weekend we returned to the area and entered the site from an old wood road from the south.

So here are some shots.  this first one shows the bed of the old wood road north of Blotz Road.

The AT corridor Monument (number 8) is on the northern end of the settlement.

Multiple stone walls are found throughout the area.

And some evidence of the farm like a shovel blade stuck in a tree.

Up into the corridor, the mixed forest and stones are shown here.

More debris found at a site of a cellar hole.

Another shot of the old road (found on older USGS topomaps, but not the current ones.

These walls show up on the LiDAR, so I need to search old maps from Massachusetts Archive.

Here is monument 9, and unfortunately I didn't have the boundary map to find number 10, where a sharp turn toward the Northwest is found.  But I was following the road.