In search of good weather, Bruce and I went south to Connecticut to climb Ragged Mtn., which was to be the 388th mountain that Bruce has climbed.   Since dogs don't have as long a life to climb mountains, perhaps people should multiply my mountains by seven to get a comparable total.
     We started out at 11:20 AM on the "Red Dot" trail which has rectangular blue blazes with a red dot in the middle.  The trail goes up and along a large traprock ridge, with many ups and downs.  If you like lots of exercise, this trail is perfect for you.
     Some of the wildflowers that were out were wild columbine, pale corydalis, blue violets, hobblebush, field pussytoes, and mountain sandwort. 
     We reached the first of a long series of lookouts at 11:47 AM with interesting views of a lake/reservoir down below.  By 12:30 PM we arrived at the Big Boulder lookout and had lunch.  After we finished we met a man with a very large expensive-looking camera who told us that he used to live in Isle La Motte, VT. 
     By 1:06 PM we reached the lookout where the trail stops going west and turns north.  Here we met a man and two teenage boys with very short military haircuts.  One of the sons told us that this was indeed the summit of Ragged Mountain. 
     Between 1:00 and 2:15 many clouds rolled in and it became mostly cloudy, but then after that the skies cleared up again.  Heading north, we went down gulleys and up steep knobs.  We ascended a good 100 to 200 feet from the supposed "summit" of Ragged Mtn.  By 1:30 we reached a knob with no views that we think is the actual summit of the mountain. 
     The trail then turns and comes back out to two overlooks above Wessel Reservoir.  Here there was a terrific boisterous wind, as you can see from our photos.  We arrived at the second lookout at 1:53 PM.  You can see Hartford CT off in the distance from here.
     Shortly after that we met a man and wife and three pretty teenage daughters who were doing a loop in the opposite direction as we were.  They were happy that we could confirm to them that they were on the right trail.  The daughters petted me and said what a good dog I am.  It's always nice for us dogs to meet friendly humans on the trail.
     The plan was to go past the Yellow Dot trail and then take the White Blue trail to complete the loop.  But we missed both of them.  We even passed the next one, the Green dot trail, but then doubled back and found it.  The Green dot trail has blue blazes with a green dot in the middle.  Where the trail intersects with the blue blazed Metacomet Monadnock trail we were on, the green had faded and the blue had faded and it looked at first like an abandoned portion of the blue trail.  But we figured it had to be the side trail because at 2:34 PM we were coming up to a swamp which was beyond it.
     Going back a little way, we took the Green Dot trail, which goes on an old logging road and is not all that scenic.  Many areas were flooded and would be buggy later in the season, but today there were not many bugs out at all.  The one redeeming quality of this trail was the very clever bridge it has at the end of it, a photo of which is in our picture section under "The Psi Guys".  Near the way out we saw some very noisy ATVs going down the Red Blue trail.  We continued on towards the parking area.  Here we  met a man and a large brown dog named Ben.  We were back out at 3:15 PM.
     We only did one loop, leaving several other possibilities to pursue on another trip.
     
    

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