2021-01-06: Surprise Result Road

For my first walk of the new year, I continued pushing towards my last few walks in Greenville with a seven-mile loop through several roads in the eastern section of town, south of the hamlet of Surprise. These very rural roads were mostly forested and empty, although there were a surprising number of interesting things and scenic views along the way. Weather for this walk was cold, around 30 F with some winds and pretty consistent cloud cover. I don't usually walk in clouds, but capturing a town includes capturing its weather, so I'm making an effort to walk more in all conditions.

Roads walked: CR-45, Gayhead-Earlton Road, King Hill Road, Rolling Hill Road, Surprise Result Road, Tranquility Road

Pine forest surrounds this section of wetland near the Coxsackie border along Tranquility Road.

The tips of bushes poke through the ice and snow in a swamp that flooded before it froze.

Snow drapes some year-old hay bales at the edge of a field along Surprise Result Road.

Another cemetery in the King Hill region. This one, with graves dating to the 19th century, seems to be home exclusively to Kings.

A view of Berlin Mountain, over forty miles away, over the bare winter forests of Greenville and New Baltimore.

A snow-coated field sits below the vast forested terrain east of Greenville.

Dead grasses poke through the thin snowy crust in a cut hayfield along King Hill Road.

The 45-mile-distant https://phosphorescentwave.blogspot.com/2020/09/2020-08-11-mount-greylock.html, its peak obscured by icy clouds, presides over an abandoned quarry atop Potic Mountain.

Misery Mountain (center) and other peaks of the Taconic Mountains form a surprisingly prominent backdrop to the views from King Hill Road.

A view to the north shows open fields beneath an unnamed hill covered in snow-textured forests.

A few rays of sunlight lit up the trees of New Scotland's Wolf Hill, fifteen miles to the north.

Dark hills to the north rose above King Hill Road as it passed near the summit of King Hill itself.

This old communication station at near the top of King Hill along the road. I searched some numbers and codes listed on the padlocked doors, but couldn't find any information on it.

These massive antennae were angled downwards towards the ground. Messages on their bottom right corners warn "DO NOT [unreadable]".

A view towards a stone quarry cut into the north end of Potic Mountain's six-mile ridge.

Forests sit below the distant skyline of the Taconic Mountain east of King Hill Road.

A close view on some houses in easily-visible hills along distant Route 51 in Coxsackie.

This view northwest along the mid-Hudson Valley is perhaps some of the flattest land in Greene County.

In over two years of roadwalking I had never walked through a construction zone before today. A number of trucks were present trying to repair some underground cable. The workers waved me through the closed part of the road, it was neat seeing all the equipment in action close up.

Evening's rays backlit a field along King Hill Road, looking like the final scene from a movie.

Wooden fences bisect a field along Gayhead-Earlton Road, near the Coxsackie border.

This old wooden barn sits at a low point along Route 45 near a tributary of the Potic Creek.

An unnamed brook runs through this open field behind a large building.

A close-up of the small creek, where the liquid water keeps the grass snow-free within a few inches of its surface.

Near a crossroads across the border in Coxsackie I found the fattest and most docile deer I had ever seen in the wild.

After a brief staring contest with my narrow-angle lens, the deer fled into the nearby woods.

This tree-shaped crack in the ice along Surprise Result Road seemed creepy enough to capture.