US-2416 Ames Nowell SP

I'm not a mountain-biker, but boy, do I love those guys. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, and for state parks and forests in my area there are often just a small number of marked trails, mainly loops that cater to casual hikers and dog-walkers. When the bikers move in, they create intricate meshes of small trails that invariably take you to the really interesting places in a park. A good example is US-4702 Gilbert Hills State Forest where the bike trails outnumber the official trails by a margin of ten-to-one. You'll only see those trails marked on maps when someone uploads the GPS track to a mapping service like OpenStreetMaps. I spent a lovely summer doing just that at Wrentham State Forest, wandering the paths with my dog Maggie and then editing and uploading files each evening.

The park surrounds Cleveland Pond, which is a recent addition to the landscape. In the mid- to late-1600s and into the early 1700s the site was used extensively for agriculture and various types of milling, including a sawmill and a grist mill. Evidence of this period is all around you – I'm not sure where I've see so many stone walls in such a small area. The walls vary in age and construction style, and to a trained eye tell the history of the place. The walls are low and mainly for sheep and boundaries.

There are foundations, drainage ditches and berms, old tools – if you have an interest in the early history of the area you could easily spend a few days here. Beaver Brook, which runs through the park, was the site of an early 1700s grist mill, and the remains of some of the structure and an adjacent storage area are right on the main path around the lake.

You'll even find some of the former inhabitants still here! There are a few small burials scattered around the woods.

The area was useful as a quarry, too, which was common practice in colonial times. You'd find a good-sized boulder of the type of rock that you wanted, which often were slates and other layered stone, but also granite and limestone, and, later, ores such as iron and copper. Dig a pit in front of the boulder, back your cart into the pit, then cleave 'sheets' of stone off, and they end up in your cart. You can often date a quarry by the marks that the tools left in the stone, with feather-and-wedge techniques predating more modern approaches.

The trail is relatively flat around the lake, and if you stay on the main five-mile loop you can't really get lost, just keep the lake on the same side as you walk about. I found that each mile provided a different environment, one part a soft pine forest, another filled with young hardwoods, and yet another grassy and stony. There's a short boardwalk with a bench or two to enjoy the waterbirds, and one section is under high-voltage lines (try to avoid that for activating!).

I chose a large outcropping to set up the station on. It turns out the rock has a name - The Ruckus - or at least that's the name of the trail that goes up and over it. What I learned as I hiked was that most of the spidery non-official trails that the mountain bikers made go up and over an outcropping. There were five or six of them just in the spot that I operated from, and sure enough, a biker would occasionally pop out of the trees, zip up over one, and then disappear back into the woods.

The equipment for this outing was a KX2 feeding 10W into a Gabil GRA7350T vertical sitting on their tripod mount. I used four 16.5-foot radials arranged more or less on the compass points. I like this antenna a lot, it uses a whip and a loading coil and packs down small, and I feel like I'm getting just as good or sometimes better signal reports compared to the 40m EFHW I have been using. It's certainly lighter and takes just a few minutes to set up.

Another thing I took with me that was unusual was a microphone. In nearly 100 activations I'd only logged two or three voice QSOs, mainly because I felt that no one was going to hear my tiny signal coming from my tiny antenna. You know what? I was wrong! I spent about 20 minutes on 20m SSB and logged 12 contacts, and even had a few short conversations. I'll always be a true-blue CW guy but I think I'll start packing the mic in the bag for some variety.

I spent a little over an hour activating and logged 42 contacts, many with folks who are becoming old friends that I am happy to hear.

I've got the pack down to sixteen pounds, and I'm not sure I can make it any lighter without moving to a MountainTopper or similar radio. Some of the weight is in a power bank that weighs one pound, but it'll power the phone and the rig (and iPad if needed) for an entire day, and I'm not leaving that at home. I moved to a slightly heavier pack, a Gregory 30L, from my Osprey Talon 22L, so there's some extra weight in the pack itself, but the Gregory supports it well. I'm day-hiking, not overnighting, so I don't need a lot of supplies. I think packs and loads are one of those things that POTA activators are constantly tinkering with!

Back to the trail, there are definitely some more "interesting" bits to navigate. Around three miles in I could see the trail continuing on the other side of this:

It took a few minutes to find a path to the other side. In another spot the bikers had placed a convenient rope to hold on to while making a crossing:

Crude, but effective! I found that leaning to the left while holding the rope gave me enough balance to scamper across, at least until the last two feet...

Here's another approach they took, though this one is a quick way up a rocky slope...

By far the most interesting thing I ran across was what to my eye is an archaic burial site along the shore of the lake. To be clear, I only have a 10-minute impression of the structure and have not started to research it, but I'll be doing work here this coming summer (2025). I also want to point out that my fields are engineering and computer science, not archaeology. That said, when I saw this thing I immediately thought "classic Mississippi culture stone box burial". The box has a head and foot stone and I believe that it originally featured low walls and a stone slab top. It's about seven feet long, four feet wide, and is situated very close to a due east-west line, with the 'head' on the east side.

The orientation on the solstice sunrise / sunset and the spot near the lake are common burial features among native people, however the Massachusett and Nipmuc who lived in the area typically buried their dead in rock-covered mounds without this sort of formal structure. I think it is worth surveying the site to see if there are other structures nearby, and I would love to find someone to do a fluorescence sample to get a date from under the 'head' stone.

I like this park a lot. Ames Nowell has some interesting terrain, good paths, and plenty to see and explore as you circle the water. And if you just want to sit at a table and enjoy the view while you operate, we've got you covered.