Keene, New Hampshire

We arrived in Brattleboro, Vermont, set up the Motorhome and headed for Keene, New Hampshire for day.  Keene is the site of a large 18th century glass works and is now a college town for Keene State College.

The inscription on the right side of this entrance is very interesting…I would not fit in the “normal” school.

Keene State College was founded in 1909 as a teacher’s college and is primarily a liberal arts facility.  It is relatively new but did have some older buildings…

This is a Civil War monument in the town square.  I am not used to seeing a Union soldier on the top of these monuments.

A canal that winds its way through Keene and the college…

Between Keene and Brattleboro, we took side roads and wound up in Spofford Village. This village was founded in 1825 around a series of shops powered by Partridge Creek and specializing in the manufacturer of bits, augers and gimlets.  They also began to manufacture “patent accelerating heads” for hand spinning wheels (wool).  These attachments provided rapid spindle rotation that was suited for spinning the wool from Merino sheep.  Walking through the brush up the creek, I came across the remnants of one of the mills.

This stone was a little too heavy to haul down the creek and up the hill to our truck.  It is still there, after almost two hundred years.

The creek was running and provided some neat views through the heavy underbrush.

Back in Brattleboro, I went to a running shoe store to find out about the local running trails.  The two young men operating the store knew nothing about running, running trails and probably running shoes.  I did go “downtown” and locate a bicycle shop where the owner was more than happy to provide me the information about a pretty neat system of trails that were recently repaired by WestRiverTrail.org.  They even game me a map!

This is a shot of a detour that was caused by the replacement of a highway bridge.  I started on the trail a little after 7:00 PM and sunset was at 8:20 PM.  I decided to turn around after crossing over the Green Iron bridge over the West River, a little more than five miles downstream, near the town of West Dummerston (it was starting to get dark).

This view is going up through the brush.  Because we were so far north, there were no snakes, no poison ivy and no poison oak.  Clear sailing!

This is the sunset at the turn-around, taken from the Green Iron Bridge.  That is the West River that feeds into the Connecticut River in Brattleboro.

This is the highway that was under construction, causing the minor detour.  Due to recent rains, much of the downhill portion of this detour was washed out and muddy.

Hwer are a couple of sunset shots from the trail on the return.  It did get dark and it became a little difficult to miss the roots, rocks and stumps.  I saw one other person (on a bicycle) outbound and one person, again a bicyclist on the return. It was a pretty isolated run for more than 10 miles but a very good trail.