Dan Parker Road starts benignly enough, as rideable as anything off-road ever is...
A series of forks in the road presents challenges for the traveller. The first fork (I bore right):
The second fork (I bore right again, despite the little stone cairn on the stump, beckoning left):
The third fork is almost a T-junction. This is where I went wrong the last time, haring off to the right; this time I bore left...
...and was rewarded with the True Dan Parker Road. What had been hard-packed trail with easy grades and a few stones and roots became an exemplary New England Abandoned Carriage Road, all up- and down-hill with big rocks, loose stones ranging from golf-ball to soft-ball size, and a generous load of sand spread over the last quarter-mile or so, sometimes overlaid with pine needles and big sticks that looked like they wanted to get to know my fenders better. It was a challenging ride, taught me a few tricks, and reminded me that there were tricks that I had never bothered to learn which would have come in handy just then. Where I couldn't make forward progress, wasn't having fun, or simply thought my skills weren't up to the challenge, I walked the bike. To be fair to the bike, the Trucker DeLuxe running Compass Bicycle 44mm tires at 50-ish psi handled everything I had the nerve to throw at it, and probably would have handled more. And the S&S couplers held the frame together nicely, in spite of a genuinely hard ride.
It is worth mentioning that Google Maps indicates Dan Parker Road as a bicycle path; trust but verify, as usual. I guess the Groton Town Fathers knew what they were doing when they abandoned this one. All good hilly, rocky, sandy things must come to an end, however, and Dan Parker Road spat me out onto Raddin Road.
To be continued...
rod