We walked along the Osgood River north of Paul Smiths, found a great spot for the geocache, and hiked up and down through the woods...
This bend in the river made a perfect spot to stop and sit for a moment...leaving all of us with wet bottoms...
We saw a Great Blue Heron, and this tree...chock-full of woodpecker holes...our walk took us through a bunch of different forest types...
After we found our way back to the car, we went for a snack over to Mountain Pond, a gorgeous little pond with fall colors, high cliffs, a family of loons, high winds in the trees, and not a soul anywhere nearby...
Gail took a small lay-down, while Ben ran around in circles, enjoying the strong winds, which at times blew clouds of water droplets off of the surface of the pond...like rain from below...some loons were fishing about 50 yards off-shore...
Ben and Gail and I shared some granola-bars and dried fruit and water in lieu of lunch...Ben likes dried banana better than dried mango...
Gail took this cool picture of a huge pine tree over her napping spot...when the wind was blowing at full strength, she could feel the roots underground flexing and swelling the ground under her...
Ben and I rough-housed a bit, and played chase around the campsite at Mountain Pond, before heading out for another walk...
We walked back into the woods, on the way up to Grasse Pond, and had a beautiful walk through some ancient forests, some of which had been burned over in the great fire of 1908...this huge-plank bridge over the Osgood River made a nice stopping point, on our way in and out...the water passing under us and wind carried along the corridor of open sky made by the river made for a very pleasant break...
By the end of our walk, Ben had skinned knees and was wiped out, but he had a great time running around and exploring the woods and looking for (and finding) wee-beasties along the way...
We found this toad hopping along the trail, and Ben hopped after it to pick him up and check him out...moments before finding the toad, we came across a huge snake sunning itself in the middle of the path, and Ben was ready to chase and tackle the thing in his excitement about exploring the woods...
One of the trees that we came across was a huge white pine that had been hollowed out by fire, perhaps the fire of 1908!!!...Ben went inside and had fun looking up the hollow into the tree for what seemed like 40-50 feet...as you can see from the picture below, the interior is still charred from the fire, and the bark is thickened and darker than that of the surrounding trees...
It was a fun day out and about...exploring the woods in places that we had never been before and wringing the juice out of what could have been a "stay close to home" day...
2 comments:
Amazing adventures once again with great photos as well. Thank you for now taking a pix of the 'snake'...very thoughtful. As I read your notes, I was prepared to exit ever so quickly, but didn't have to.
That should have been "NOT" taking a pix of the snake...not "now"
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