Yesterday Lindsay and Alden had an errand to run in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont so we also stopped by the Town’s Memorial Forest off of Concord Ave (and Almshouse Road). We have been here a couple of times now and there are plenty of trails to turn this hike into a long or short walk. We took a picture of the trail map on the sign since there weren’t any paper maps to take with us. For the most part the trail map on the sign is correct, although we found some of the sign posts knocked down and a couple of the trails are only used lightly.

We followed the Black Trail (logging road) to the Red Trail Connector where we ran into a group of students who looked to be out on a field trip looking at trees. Lindsay noticed some pins in trees on the Red Trail, so perhaps this is the location of a long term ecology project.

After climbing up the side of the hill and watching some very quiet and tame red squirrels we turned back down hill on the Green Trail. We found a great looking Jack-in-the-pulpit just before we crossed over the Black Trail and continued downhill toward the Blue Trail and the Moose River. A few awesome gusts of wind made both of us stop and look up as we heard broken branches crashing down. Luckily nothing came too close, but as soon as the wind died down we hurriedly made our way down to the Blue Trail.

We marveled at all the kinds of ferns growing in the understory and found a bushwack trail to get down to the Moose River.

Alden preferred retracing our steps so we did just that: Blue Trail, Green Trail, Red Trail, Black Trail back to the car. This was a fun side trip that I’m sure we’ll visit again.