Hubbard Park

The other day, I went looking for photos here in my blog of a hike we did with Lukey and Kenzie back a few years ago but I couldn't find them anywhere in my blog. This sent me on an even longer search yesterday sorting through my old hard drives looking for these photos. I couldn't remember the date. I couldn't even remember the year but I knew that I shot a bunch of photos while on this hike with the kids.

I eventually found the photos from this hike in a folder from August 15th, 2022 which happens to be the same day that Lukey and Kenzie got to shutdown a running diesel locomotive at the Montpelier train station. I guess I was in a hurry to post the photos of them shutting down the locomotive and then I forgot about the photos from the hike.

So, on August 15th, 2022, we loaded Lukey and Kenzie into the car and headed down to Montpelier. There is a short hike behind the Capitol building that Sheila often walked during her lunch break (when she was still working at her office in Montpelier across the street from the Capitol building... she's been working from home since the pandemic and various subsequent floods) but I had never done this short hike and neither had Lukey and Kenzie so that was our plan for this day. We planned to do the short hike and then go to lunch at Sarducci's.

The lunch at Sarducci's that day is probably what reminded me of this hike because we are taking the kids to Sarducci's today for their birthday dinner.

Heading toward the Capitol building to get to the trail head behind the building...

Starting the mild climb upward...

A view from the tower at the top of Hubbard Park... the trees have grown tall enough on one side of the tower to obscure most of the view particularly if you are short. If I propped myself up on my toes, I was able to get a better view. Lukey and Kenzie only saw trees out this direction though...

I don't remember whether Lukey was hiding from the brutal, relentless flies or if he was looking down toward the ground... or both...

You can actually see some of the relentless flies in this next photo... maybe he didn't shower on this day? I'm kidding, the flies were swarming around all of us!

When I was quickly scrolling through these photos, I passed this photo below but quickly scrolled back to it because it seemed to have a black bear in the background... that shadow to the right and behind Lukey sort of has the shape of a black bear!

After this short hike, we headed over to Sarducci's for lunch. While we were eating lunch, we heard a locomotive rumble past the restaurant (located in the original Montpelier train station) so, after we finished lunch, we made the short drive over to the current Montpelier Junction train station to see if we could catch up to this train. Some freight loads of granite are always running through this area daily.

That same locomotive was still running when we arrived at the station and, as we were admiring the running locomotive, the engineer asked if we wanted to help him shut down the locomotive... of course, we jumped at the chance! My blog post of that rare experience can be found here.

In a short while, we'll be picking up Lukey and Kenzie from their dad's house and then heading back to Sarducci's for their birthday dinner... we're all looking forward to that!

___________________________________________________________________

In hindsight, I decided to add a few photos from our visit to Sarducci's after our hike...