This weekend was the most beautiful weather. Temps in the 70s and lower humidity. We spent a lot of time outdoors!

On Sunday, we went for a short hike. We had already biked 18 miles in the morning, so we didn’t need a long exercise hike, but just out to enjoy the day.  We decided to check out Cole’s Woods, which is about a mile and a half-ish from our house. It’s a little section of woods nestled in between the Northway, the mall and housing.

Cole’s Woods was initially built for cross country skiing and was one of the first trails in the US to be lit at night!  Below is the  squiggly line of paths available. The red line is a 5K loop and that is all lit at night.

Also to be noted –

Lyme disease is endemic here (like rabies), so you do have to be careful. There are a lot of ticks around here. I actually found one on me after working in my garden beds when we first moved into Radiance Manor and I was getting rid of the overgrowth! Ick.  Anyway, we sprayed ourselves with bug spray as a deterrent.

These paths are so nice. Smooth and wide.

There is no way you could really get lost because the trails were all really well marked, although they criss-crossed higgledy piggledy all over the place. The area is small and you bump into “civilization” on all sides. It was a little confusing to follow the path we wanted. We were trying to go on the red line. There were lights along that route in the trees:

It would be really cool to come here and cross country ski in the winter. You aren’t supposed to walk on the groomed trails, so we would need to ski it.

There was a lot of this going on:

It’s like one of those Choose Your Adventure books. Remember those? I loved them.

We crossed over a stream:

That blue color was reflection from the sky. Isn’t it cool? I didn’t color edit this picture at all. It was a cloudless, bright blue sky day.

Mr. ‘Merica Bear:

We reached four corners:

The paths all cross over each other here and make….four corners.

There is a monument to someone who really made the trails happen.

And he was an Olympian in 1952 as well.

That sign close up:

We did see some Phragmites, though:

That stuff is bad. It’s an invasive species and very aggressive. It will choke out a lot of water/marsh plants like cat tails.

Crossing back over the stream:

What a gorgeous day it was. One of those days where you say “This is why I live here”. 😀

The trees along here are incredibly tall as well. It seems they go up for miles:

And check out that sky.

We ended up only doing 2 miles. Somewhere we got off the main 5K path and ended up on some of those secondary ones, but we ended up back at our car just the same.

This is definitely a keeper trail. It’s so close to home and a great spot on a hot day with all the shade.