Knights Pond Conservation Area

 With the warm weather continuing in New Hampshire, I continued my trend of doing a smaller hike on Sunday with my youngest son. I am really enjoying spending time with him. Today we headed for Knights Pond Conservation Area in Alton. It is in the AMC Southern Trail Guide, therefore on my redlining spreadsheet and had been on my radar due to its relative proximity to our house. That is one thing I have really enjoyed with this redlining, discovering new to me places that I would never ordinarily have known existed. Arriving at the entrance to Knights Pond Conservation Area, we saw 2 cars parked and knowing there was an access road walk to start, I figured that was it and parked here. Turns out you can actually drive 1/2 mile further, though that section of road was quite rocky and rutted in a couple of places. Regular sedans were parked further down though, so it's obviously doable. I didn't mind the extra mile, it's all exercise. Once at the kiosk, it was another 0.4 miles down the access road (this section is gated, so everyone walks this part) to the pond. A loop blazed in blue circles the entire pond. We opted to go clockwise, which entered the woods off the road just before reaching the pond. Although there were quite a few cars parked, we only passed a couple of people out walking their dogs. The trail is mostly flat with some rolling up and downs, but nothing crazy (the steepest incline was walking back up the access road!) The trail is well blazed, and since it is maintained by the Lakes Region Conservation Trust, is in great shape. You can see the pond from almost the entire trail and we had some beautiful light creating gorgeous reflections in the water. The furthest section of pond is a beaver dam/marsh, there is a bridge that crosses the marsh before continuing on the other side. We passed an area marked on the map as a boulder field, which did have some large boulders to navigate between. There is also a side trail marked in white, which I had seen on a map called Peninsula Trail. There were no signs at the intersection, I just happened to catch the white blaze on the tree instead of the blue. This was probably my favourite section of the whole hike. Basically just skirted the edge of a little peninsula that separated the beaver marsh from the pond, it was really pretty though. Sometimes a hike doesn't have to have a big summit or views for miles to be really pleasant and beautiful. I look forward to exploring more of these parks and forests as I continue my redlining quest. If you're in the area, I definitely recommend this trail. 

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