{"id":792,"date":"2023-05-09T15:35:24","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T20:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/?p=792"},"modified":"2023-06-19T13:28:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T18:28:11","slug":"danielson-little-connecticut-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/2023\/05\/09\/danielson-little-connecticut-hills\/","title":{"rendered":"Danielson, little Connecticut hills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I saw two bears today. Otherwise great riding with a forest trail and small roads with little steep hills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I expected today to have some climbing with a long climb in the morning and a bunch of short climbs in the afternoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had spent a bunch of time trying to figure an ideal route between Hartford and Providence. There were two extremes: one was the East Coast Greenway, a winding 105 mile trail, with longer stretches not paved trails; the other was US 6, a major highway, not all legal for bikes but with a shoulder and gentle grades. In between the little roads – no shoulders, not much traffic and sharp little hills. I decided to start with the Greenway route and then cut to small roads for a more direct path that would be closer to 75 miles than 105, and have more climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the morning I was mostly on paths that followed I-84. These were occasionally steep and I had to check my directions. It was while sitting on the bench below that I saw two black bears. I had passed the 8 mile mark and spotted the bench as a good place to stop and refuel for the rest of the climb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I sat down, perhaps 30ft further down the path and across a small bridge, a black bear came out, looked around, wandered on the path away from me and went back into the woods. This was followed by a second bear poking out and going back in. It was all faster than I could power on my phone to get a photo. So all you get is a picture of the bench and not the bears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had climbed most of the distance on the paths, so finished those before a few miles through place known as Bolton. No businesses along my route. I intersected the Hop River Trail which is shown below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The trail was not paved. However, it had a solid surface that was almost as good as pavement. I had a backup alternative of US 6, but ended up taking the trail for the next 10+ miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There was a little covered bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo above shows a good comparison between US 6 and the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here the trail went underneath US 6 with a lighted tunnel. This was getting closer to Willimantic where I had an early lunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After lunch it had a different character to it. More of these small roads. Generally nice but also some hills with grades approaching 10% on my cycle odometer. I walked several of them. When it gets too steep, the weight of myself and bicycle means I am at least as well off walking as trying to push too hard on the knees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Small pond along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This old church was a good excuse to stop and refuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The last three miles were along US 6 but it was all pretty quiet here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stava tells me today was slow<\/a>: 43.69 miles in 5:31:06 or 7.9 miles\/hour. 2234 feet climbed and 3466 calories burned.<\/p>\n\n\n

WP Strava ERROR 403 Forbidden - See full error by addingdefine( 'WPSTRAVA_DEBUG', true );<\/code>to wp-config.php<\/pre>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I saw two bears today. Otherwise great riding with a forest trail and small roads with little steep hills. I expected today to have some climbing with a long climb in the morning and a bunch of short climbs in …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-connecticut","tag-bear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mvermeulen.org\/gone2look4america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}