After work (and dropping off Mollie at the restaurant), I went off in search of a new place to hike just across the Connecticut River in Norwich. I’d seen the dotted lines of trails near the Ledyard Bridge on Google Maps but hadn’t been exactly sure how to access them - there also weren’t any prominent signs on VT-10A. In the process of locating the trailhead, I stumbled across the Montshire Science Museum - it looked pretty cool and like a fun place for a school field trip. They had a nice trail complex of their own which apparently required a fee to use but I couldn’t figure out how to pay (because they were already closed). I decided to check it out anyway... First, though, I parked on a side street (1630) and ended up having a nice conversation with a local cop - he told me where to find more trails (e.g., Parcel 5 Loop). After I walked back to the museum entrance to start on one of the well marked trails. The snow was almost solid ice but, on every third step, I fell through to the softer snow underneath. I ended up putting on my spikes to make sure I didn’t slide down any steel embankments into the River! One of the trails followed a path with a scale model of the solar system - the inner planets were all close to the main building but Pluto was 1.8 miles away (I didn’t walk out that far). When I headed back to the main road, I found another trailhead (for the Hazen Trail) and walked on it until I got to the highest point in the area - I could see prominent buildings on the Dartmouth campus from there. The full moon has risen and looked huge in the darkening sky. I was probably in the area for about an hour and walked about 2.5 hours (done at 1730). After my hike, I drove down to Lebanon to help out at the Sacred Heart Fish Fry with my fellow Knights of Columbus. It was our Parish’s second observance (this year) of a Lenten Friday evening and there was more food (and more people) compared to last week. In addition to fillets, fries and coleslaw, each to-go box included delicious desserts made by the ladies of the Church. There was good fellowship and fun as we worked in the kitchen and outside (in the falling snow) with the fryer. The looks on the faces of our fellow Parishioners as they picked up the meals made our night. Somehow, we managed (thanks to Bert’s planning, John’s frying and the Ladies’ baking) to serve everyone who wanted a meal. After a year full of restrictions and canceled events, it felt good to add a simple, yet significant, element of “normalcy” back into our lives!
