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Bald Hill Goes Musical (Updated 2009) LbNA #45499

Owner:wandaandpete
Plant date:Feb 1, 2009
Location:
City:Exeter
County:Washington
State:Rhode Island
Boxes:6
Found by: Samson n Delilah (3)
Last found:Apr 12, 2014
Status:FFFFFFF
Last edited:Oct 7, 2020
226-231. BALD HILL GOES MUSICAL (UPDATED 2009)
A melodious collection of RTRW stamps on a pretty piney 1.5 mile loop in west central RI

Phantom is MISSING - Oct 2009

When RTRW recently donated this sweet collection of stamps commemorating musicals we all know and love, we immediately started thinking about where we had seen many of them, and where would be a good place to hide them for others to enjoy and perhaps bring back some memories for them, too. We had seen most of these musicals at PPAC (Providence Performing Arts Center), but certainly had no wish to try planting around there in the middle of the city! Even the Warwick Musical on Bald Hill Road in central RI, where we remember seeing some wonderful musical tent shows when we were just kids, is now just a RI memory spot amid miles and miles of strip malls! In fact, nowadays one of our pastors always seems to get a laugh in his sermons by using the term "Bald Hill" metonymically for "excessive consumerism", so no planting there either!

There is, however, another Bald Hill in RI, far removed in spirit from the hustle and bustle of that other one, and this is the one you will have to find to get to these boxes. It is actually very easy, and quite convenient for the "CT Crowd" to reach as well. Just follow route 165 until you see the sign for Summit Rd./Bald Hill Rd across from the old Exeter Baptist Church, and drive south a few hundred feet to limited parking on the left, or park back on Frosty Hollow Rd across from the church and stroll down to the North-South Trail crossing.

From the red gate, follow the blue blazed trail up the old dirt road. When you first spot a white blaze on a tree to the right of the trail about 100 feet ahead, look for a long fuzzy green rock taking a catnap on your left. Go behind the rock and as you face it, look in the left side of the horizontal crack for Cats.

MISSING:
Continue uphill following the blue blazed road past the white blazed trail until you reach a "Y" junction of dirt paths. Look left at four large pine trees and see the solitary boulder between the shadows of the third and fourth tree. Hidden below the front of that boulder lurks the Phantom of the Opera.

Take the left prong and continue uphill on the blue blazed road, then slightly downhill passing a stone lined water-hole on the right before spotting a large boulder on the left with a substantial well-rooted pine tree growing on its roof top. Behind where the curved leg of the right root and the rock meet at ground level, tucked under a small stone is the Fiddler on the Roof

Continue awhile on the blue trail until you reach a road junction with a tree wearing two blue blazes and a red triangle. Turn right here onto the unblazed dirt road, and shortly right again. This is the Loop Trail. Stay on the main trail (right/straight at the road fork) and continue up to where the old road levels off. The oak originally mentioned in our clues is gone as of Jan. 2009, so now just look for a very short stump on the right near the height of land. About a dozen steps after that stump, also on the right, is a pine tree rising out of an uplifted mound of needles. Look behind it under crossed branches and a stone for Jesus Christ Superstar.

Follow the unblazed dirt road loop trail gently down until an unusual rock appears on the right, about 40 steps past a 25 foot snag on the left. This rock with its foliose lichen reminded Pete of a small version of the slimy frog in "Pan's Labyrinth", but we did not try to plant a carrot in its gaping maw because it might have fallen in too deep. Instead, look under a small lichen covered stone on its carefully camouflaged right back side for The Fantasticks.

Continue on unblazed dirt road until it ends back at the junction with the blue blazed road. Proceed left going downhill past a stone wall on the left and continuing all the way down to the bottom where a stone wall can be seen coming in from the right. At the closest approach of that wall there is a small side path going off to the right. A large pine tree stands about two steps in front of the wall to the north at this point. Without touching the smooth curved branch that rests like a staff against the wall directly behind this tree, merely remove one small stone that sits like filling sandwiched between two larger wall rocks just below and to the left of it. Wrapped in a leftover scrap of what was once my costume for the Bulgarian Suite when I danced many years ago with the international dance performing troupe "Narodno", please find and carefully replace Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat . Hope you enjoyed this colorful little series, and have many pleasant musical tunes going through your head as you wrap up your trip!