Dogtown MA | Tales from the Hutt

Saturday, 07-Dec-13

I’ve wanted to go hiking for a while… so I chatted with Daniel and Terese, we looked at a few places, and settled in on staying close to home – There was a lot of random stuff to get done this weekend, so the Loj or CT was out of the picture. Instead, we aimed for Gloucester, a small park on the remains of a small colonial village called Dogtown. It had been abandoned due to the poor soil and rocky land after the war of 1812, though a philanthropist had commissioned a team of stonecutters to carve large phrases into a series of boulders along some of the trails. These were intended to be inspirational to the homeless that had a tendency to hang around the abandoned town… whether it worked or not is debatable, though the fact remains that there isn’t anyone (that we saw) living there now…

Wake up when Terese’s outside. Run in a bathrobe to let her in before Ringo freaks out. I do not succeed… though everything works out without much difficulty.
Pack up lunch and gear and everything, choose a restaurant that we’ll meet Daniel at, and head to Gloucester… in the Mustang, with the top down, of course. I mean… it’s only BARELY below freezing out, why would I keep the top up? Don’t be silly.
We meet Daniel, and have breakfast at a small diner called Georges. It’s pretty well recommended online, and I love the feel of it. Definitely a small-town diner in a small town. We’re not in Gloucester proper yet, by a long shot, so it’s still nice and quiet.
I have far too many breakfast. I tried the “Deans Special”, which is almost a challenge for the Diner. It’s four pancakes, four eggs, five bacon, and Hash Browns. I expected small pancakes… but nope. These cover a full-size American plate. They are massive – as of writing this a week afterward, I still have some leftovers in my fridge. It’s nuts.
After paying and packing up the leftovers, we head into Dogtown. Top down again, of course.
- hiking and exploring happens – the terrain is beautiful, very New England. Small trees, scrub brush, and a ton of low stone walls crisscrossing the landscape. The trails are quite well marked though, which is really nice, and the weather is perfect for hiking.
- The goal here today was to do some hiking, but also to climb a bit. Daniel had his Crash Pad, so we kept a lookout for any boulders that could be climbed.
- As we loop around the trails and pass a pond / lake (that would be AMAZING for Kayaking, btw) we do a short bit of climbing and a bit of photography fun.
- On the map, there’s a large note talking about a communications tower – we finally find it, and use it to figure out exactly where we are. We’re not exactly where we intended to be, but thankfully this turnaround brought us to a far end of the park – giving us a very nice walk back toward the cars that would bring us past nearly all of the carved boulders.
- Find our first engraving, then do some bouldering on a large house-sized boulder. It’s ok climbing, but nothing particularly interesting. Cold, but acceptably so. We play a bit, then get a move on toward the next few targets…
- Start chasing engravings! There are 24 of them in total, though only 18 or so are on the main trail. Most are short, some even a single word. Though there is one boulder that we found that had “When work stops, values decrease” written on it. Yeah… these engravings definitely are aiming a message… of Capitalism!
- We find a boulder with “Spiritual Power” carved on it, and do a large bit of climbing. This is by far the best climbing of the day – the carved boulder is huge, with a large crack splitting it in half. Not so large that you can fit a full fist into it, but enough for some very fun hand-jams. Daniel and I climb the crack, and I actually make an ascent using nothing but the engraving.
- Starting to get dark, so move it on and head back to the cars right-off.
We make the hike back out, relaxing and chatting as we go. As per the usual, we get back to the cars right as the sun sets behind the trees.
Head home, and make a dinner of a ton of random little things… apples and cheese, shrimp, peaches, mead, etc… It’s good, and kind of nice to have a gnoshing dinner, instead of a single large course.
Terese and I watch Gladiator, before crashing for the night after a very successfully adventurous day.