Built in 1904 as a tribute to Charles Eliot the famous Landscape Architect who was instrumental in preserving the Blue Hills Reservation, little has been done since to maintain the Eliot Tower and Memorial Bridge. A complete restoration, however, is now, finally, in progress.
So part of my reason for wanting to hike the Red Dot Loop Trail was to see how some of the mitigation efforts were coming along, in particular the installation of these jute mats intended to control the erosion that had been taking place where the trail meets the so-called Summit Road. Unfortunately, most of the seed that had been sown underneath has failed to produce, probably because this was done late last fall (November:?)--not the ideal time to be sowing seed in Massachusetts.
Once off the plane, I made a bee line toward the Blue Hills Reservation, a 7,000-acre state park in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. I had heard about some work being done on towers there and I wanted to go see it for myself. To get there, I hiked the rather prosaically named Red Dot Loop Trail.