Page Pond Community forest is a relatively new conservation area in the town of Meredith, NH. I hiked and geocached part of the area a few weeks back, near the old quarry site on the Quarry Trail. I went back with my son and granddaughter recently to find more of the geocaches hidden there and do more hiking during this time when we’re staying pretty close to home.

The map above is the most recent map of the trails in the forest. These are available at the trailheads where the “P” indicates parking. The online maps don’t show all of the current trails – the map above was revised January 9, 2020. There’s a total of 30 geocaches hidden within the confines of this community forest right now.

We parked at the Blueberry Hill Trailhead today and came in from a different direction. Our main objective was the Old Mill site and the Mill Dam. I’d also looked for the larger size geocaches to find since my granddaughter likes finding the bigger containers.

After our last adventure where I found a water bottle wasn’t enough for me, I invested in a backpack with a 2 liter water bladder. I tried that out today.

The trails were well-marked and pretty easy to follow. This was about the largest incline we found. We had a one-day break after a pretty heavy rainfall and the trail wasn’t muddy to the point that we were blocked at any point.

There were nice areas through the forest with bridges over the larger water crossings. We saw small waterfalls in the stream that runs through the forest and once powered the old mill property located inside the forest.

The mill property itself was pretty interesting. I could see in the middle where the water wheel had once been. It’s pretty impressive to see these structures where the land around it provided the rocks for the foundation, and that’s all that remains any longer. The top was marked off to keep people away as the rocks are no longer stable, but we could walk up pretty close to it.

We walked a total of 4 miles on the trails and ran into 8 people during our time there. It wasn’t very busy mid-week during the quarantine. We found 7 more geocaches, meaning I’ve found a total of 16 of the 30 geocaches currently in the forest. I’ll have to come back another time to finish it up. Danny found two of them, and Boo found two (one just pointed in the right direction and the other I spotted and sent her to “retrieve” it with a big hint). I found the other three. One of the geocaches was attached to a beech tree, so we learned that a beech tree has smooth bark.

This is Page Pond, for which the forest is named. It had a couple of beaver dams at one end, although no sign of the beavers themselves.

The trails here are good for novice hikers without much of a strain. The stewards do well providing updated maps at the trailheads. There’s plenty of pretty scenery and interesting things to find. If you’re a geocacher, there’s a lot to find here.