TWO PEAS AND THE POD: OUR RETURN TO WINHALL BROOK

TUESDAY

TRAVEL DAY
YEAR #3 - STOP #29

Our first order of business after arriving back here at Windhall Brook Campground is to attend to the emptying of our holding tanks at the dump station. After eleven days out in the forest they are damn near full.

On our last visit here we only had four nights, but this time we are staying for nine. That should give us plenty of time to get our laundry and grocery shopping done and still leave enough time for a little sightseeing. We have a few days of rain and thunderstorms in the forecast this week so, as always, we'll have to plan around them.

THURSDAY - Today is the perfect day weather-wise to go do our sightseeing. Just eight and a half miles south of camp is the Ball Mountain Dam on the West River. All the rain runoff water in the area, including Winhall Brook, empties into the West River and ends up going through the Ball Mountain Dam, creating electricity for the surrounding towns.

Water levels are down really low at this time of the year but during the spring thaw all the snow melt raises the levels up to what you can see along the banks of the river.

Ball Mountain Dam

Just below the dam is Jamaica State Park. We went there to check it out and found they have a pretty nice campground with a swimming beach and picnic area along the West River. Just like Winhall Brook they have a bridge you must cross to enter the campground but it's not nearly as narrow as the one at Winhall Brook.

Jamaica State Park entrance bridge

Last on our list of things to do today is a visit to 125 foot tall Hamilton Falls, even though to me it appears to be more of a cascade than a waterfall.

There are several different hikes that will get you to the base of the falls. You can hike north 3 miles from the campground at Jamaica State Park or you can hike 1-1/2 miles north from the Ball Mountain Dam. When we were at the dam earlier today there was a large family preparing for a hike, at the time we didn't know where they were headed.

A third option, the one we chose, is to hike 3/8 mile almost straight down to the base of the falls. Of course the only problem with that is after you're done visiting the falls, it's a 3/8 mile almost straight up hike to get back to the parking lot where you left your ride.

When we got to the parking area above the falls there was only one other vehicle there, so I thought we would have a view of the falls almost to ourselves. Turns out that large family we saw back at the dam was also hiking to the falls and got there at the same time as we did.

The couple sitting on the rocks on the left side of the photo took off when we all arrived, after having the falls all to themselves for most of the morning. The rest of the people in the photo, plus a few other outside of the camera view, were the same ones we saw getting ready to hike from the dam.

They all came to spend the day swimming and climbing the rocks. We just came to see what there was to see. The climb back up the 3/8 mile trail to reunite with ROVER was not easy. But we were glad we did it and would maybe consider one of the slightly longer, more level hikes, if we were to do this again.

TUESDAY - For just one brief hour today our Fulltime on the Road Timer (found on the top right corner of every blog page) was displaying nothing but twos. I felt it appropriate for a blog named TWO PEAS AND THE POD. It's only occurred once before (1:1:1:11) and if you think about, never again will all the numbers on this timer be all the same. Why? The same reason you can't seem to get all your work done, there aren't enough hours in a day!

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