Lake-bound

Lake-bound

After my Sunday Masses on Sept. 22, I went hiking in Harriman State Park.  I parked at the Lake Sebago boat launch parking lot on Seven Lakes Drive.  It was packed--not surprising on a gorgeous first day of fall.

I headed south, and uphill, on the Seven Hills Trail about .8 mile as far as Monitor Rock (so-called because someone found a copy of the Christian Science Monitor there).  Before I got there, I passed by a trail maintenance crew of 3 and blessed them orally.  As I've said often, the NY-NJ Trail Conference does wonderful work clearing and blazing the trails.

Just past Monitor Rock, I picked up Woodtown Road, an unblazed but maintained woods road, another .7 or .8 mile south to Lake Wanoksink, a large lake created by a large dam. 

(This mileage is approximate; the map doesn’t indicate the distance.)  Off this road a faint side trail leads to an old incinerator built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the ’30s.  Now it appears to have been a gathering for beer binges, but the area is almost overgrown.

There were dozens and dozens of other day hikers on the trails, youngsters, seniors, and in-betweens, most of them going to or coming from Pine Meadow Lake, farther south from Wanoksink; 2 woods roads lead to PML’s western end.  Around the lake, north of the dam, there are a couple of small, secluded campsites.  As I was leaving, I observed a chap with a backpack heading toward them.  Along the lake I followed a narrow footpath to its far south end, where yet another woods road also leads to the center of Pine Meadow Lake’s north shore.

Fr. Jim Mulloy and I have camped a couple of times on the heights above the lake, once for this April 2014 outing with Paterson alumnus Jerry Gutierrez (who is now a priest of the Laredo Diocese); another time with a friend of Fr. Jim from Boston.

Sept. 22 was a decidedly more pleasant day than that 2014 outing.  The rest of this day's pix: https://link.shutterfly.com/3yBASXve8Mb.  Total hiking time, 3 hours.  Distance, about 3 miles with a 260' gain in elevation between Sebago and Wanoksink, according to the trail map.  A good hike that still allowed me to be home for Evening Prayer.

A sample of a crew's work
on the 7 Hills Trail