October 14th 2013: Hiking in Warwick after Hang Gliding

After my first experience with hang gliding earlier today, I drove back from Charlestown, NH toward home, stopping in the town of Northfield, MA for lunch at Rooster's Bistro, a small town diner looking bar restaurant. Before that, I took a few pictures of interesting buildings around town.

First Parish of Northfield, Unitarian

Memorial, 69 Main Street

St. Patrick's Church, 82 Main Street

Northfield Baptist Church

At the restaurant, I decided to get the Chicken Marsala after looking at the menu which did not have anything interesting on it. The meal came with a caesar salad as well.

Caesar Salad

Chicken Marsala

As expected, the meal was as uninspirational as the entire place. Absolutely terrible. At least it managed to fill me up.

From here, I headed into Warwick, where I decided to continue my exploration of the Arthur Iversen Conservation Area, which I partly explored a few weeks ago. This time, I decided to explore the eastern leg of the trails, the path I took being shown below in pink.

The view of Rum Brook was just ok when I came to the bridge crossing it, but otherwise there was nothing much to the area.

From here, I headed to my next hike, at Mount Grace State Forest nearby. The rough path I took here to try to find the summit of Mount Grace and Little Mount Grace is shown below in pink.

After parking at Ohlson Field, which had a beautiful view of the mountain,

I decided to take the path to the summit, thinking the hike would be short, like it seemed from the map. Instead, it seemed to take forever. After reaching the fire road, it was still another half hour before I finally reached the summit, where there was a fire tower.

There was no fence around the fire tower, so I took the opportunity to climb it, and was rewarded with awesome views all around.


















After climbing back down to solid ground, it was time to try to find Little Mount Grace, which I had had pretty good views too. I tried to look for the path leading to it, passing by it on the fire road because the sign said it was the Metacomet Monadnock Trail. Eventually, I decided that it could possibly be the way to go, and decided to take a chance. My efforts paid off, and I found the vista, though it was not as good as the actual mountain itself.

I made my way back to my car, walking along the road back to it, and by then it was way too dark to do any more sightseeing.  I could not use my phone to find a restaurant to eat at, so I decided to drive home instead, stopping at the first restaurant I saw that wasn't pizza. Unfortunately, today was Columbus Day, so a lot of restaurants were not open, except for the Chinese ones. I ended going to Tea Garden in the town of Athol, a small town Americanized Chinese restaurant which thankfully wasn't a takeout place. I decided to get the Crispy Walnut Shrimp and Chicken (Honey glazed walnut and creamy lemon sauce over jumbo shrimp and crispy chicken),

 which actually wasn't too bad, although I got bored after eating it for a while.

With that, I called it a night, satisfied with my day of hang gliding and hiking.