US-11678 Mill Brook Bogs WMA

You can't go too far down the road in New England before running into a cranberry bog. Cranberries love the cool weather and grow on ground that might not support other crops, plus they are an easy crop to harvest. The first bogs in New England were planted on Cape Cod in the early 1800s. Mill Brook is a nearby stream that is used as a water source for the bogs here.

Mill Brook Bogs was part of a two-park expedition. It abuts US-4698 Freetown State Forest, and my plan was to find the line where they touch, then work on both sides of the line. Not really a two-fer as I needed to physically move the rig and antenna to the new reference after activating the first, but still an easy way to put two new parks into the log. On the map it appears that there is an overlay of the two, but on the ground it looks to me like the overlay, small to begin with, encroaches on the working bog, and I felt it was simpler to activate the two references serially.

The easiest way in to the bog is to park at Freetown State Forest, which is directly across the street and has quite a few amenities, including pavilions and a splash pad for the kids. Parking is at Freetown Forest headquarters off of Slab Road. There are a few different lots here – take a left at the first lot past the entrance and then drive all the way to the other end, that'll put you at the trailhead you want. You also can park on the north side of the bogs on Howland Road. There's a three-car lot right around the turnoff to Rebecca Road.

Directly off the parking area you'll see a trailhead pointing more or less northeast. Take the trail to the road, turn right, and in a hundred feet or so you'll see a small, unmarked road with a gate. It's across the street from the parking lot. You also can just walk across the lot back to where you pulled in, and walk 500 feet or so down the road to right.

It's tempting to go back to the lot for your car, because this is a fairly long road, about half a mile, with places to park along the side, however there's a gate right near the road and I'm always a little chicken about sticking my car somewhere that I'm not certain I'll be able to get it out of. It's an easy walk, and you'll see several turnoffs on the way to the bog. Note that all of the turnoffs lead into Freetown State Forest, not Mill Brook Bogs...you'll want to keep walking.

It's about a fifteen-minute walk down the access road. The path rises up here, but you can almost feel the open space just beyond.

The road turns to the left, and you'll realize that you are probably on a gas-line service road. Gas cuts are not only handy trails, but they often expose really interesting geology, especially in areas where the line needs to cross a ridge. There's not a lot of that happening here as we are close to the coastal plain, but I did see a fair amount of granite and quartzite along with the expected schists. There's a large gravel pile (and associated boulders) in the center of the area that looks like it'd be interesting to explore with a rock hammer.

Take the left and follow the service road along the south side of the bog. When I visited in November workers were clearing and prepping the fields for the next season, and the bogs would soon be under water. The pond on the west side of the fields stores water that will be used during the growing season for irrigation, but at this time of year it is first used to flood the bog to harvest berries, then once the fields are clear, water will be released to cover the bog as a protective winter layer.

The road continues straight, but once you are past the west end of the pond, look for a trail that heads north, to your right. It leads up a small hill, then down and around the bog on its south side. I stopped for a moment at the top of the little hill, thinking it'd be interesting to operate from, but three piles of what looked like bobcat scat, one recent, made me think otherwise. The hill is still inside Freetown State Forest, but you can see Mill Brook Bogs from it.

I had a rough idea of where the two references abutted, and I zig-zagged a bit past the hill looking for boundary markers. Luckily the person who put them up used the same tree for each set, and once I spotted one set, I looked for the next set to establish a line.

That accomplished, I set up my EFHW on the Freetown State Forest side and worked an even dozen QSOs. It took about ten minutes to take down the antenna and move it to the other side of the boundary on the Mill Brook Bogs side. I picked up the radio and my pack and settled down for another fourteen QSOs in the new reference.

I really thought that I'd work the same operators a second time, but once back in the shack I realized that there was no overlap at all between the two lists. Next time I do something like this I'll post a rough schedule so that people know they can come back in, say, 20 minutes and work me again. My guess is that the first group saw my call on the spots but didn't realize I'd switched parks.

Looking around at my surroundings I realized that it was the recent drought that made it possible to operate from this particular spot. Evidence of submersion was everywhere, from moss-covered branches to water lines on the trees. I've worked a good number of bogs this year and am happy for it as I'm not certain I'll be able to get back in to a few of them, like US-11501 Chockalog Swamp.

I took the long way back to the car, picking a trailhead another 250 feet down the road when I reached the street that led to a really lovely, wide path through Freetown Forest. I spent some time looking at the amenities in Freetown such as its splash pad, but you'll have to wait until that review is posted to read about those.