Dunning Pond Hike

My spouse Randy and I decided to brave the hot, humid weather and take a hike yesterday. I broke down and had bought a new pair of boots in a effort to find a pair that don't hurt my feet. So, I wanted to take a fair length hike in them to test them out. We started out for the Northville - Lake Placid trail, the Whitehouse to Piseco section but the road leading to the trailhead has a bridge washed out from the recent flooding so we skipped that trail. We headed a little north, past Wells to this Dunning Pond hike. It's supposed to be 3.4 miles to the pond but the guidebooks say it's actually a little farther than that. Anyway, we sign in at the trailhead and a sign is posted that the Bridge is Out. Since I didn't have the guidebook with me, we ignored the sign and went on our way. It's actually a snow mobile trail and in pretty fair shape for hiking. We reached the washed out bridge and took a rest and snack break. The creek there was wadeable, only knee deep at most but we decided to turn around at that point and head back to the car. About 1/2 mile into the return trip a thunderstorm hit and we did the rest of the way back in the rain. Kinda made me glad we had not decided to press on to the pond. This morning I looked in the guide book and it turns out we were not far from the pond. We had actually done 3.2 miles to the washed out bridge and the pond was another 1/2 mile or so. All in all, a 6.4 mile round trip in 2.5 hours. My right heel hurt but the problems with my toes was not. So, the new boots allow room to keep my toes from hitting the ends and callusing on the side of the big toes. A big improvement. We'd like to go back to this trail, spot a car at the other end and walk all the way thru to Gilmantown Rd entrance to the trail, a little over 4 miles.