10 posts tagged “lake”

We hiked Katahdin in Baxter State Park on June 13. Turns out it was the nicest day all month! The mountain -

From inside the bowl -

The view east from the trail -

The view south and west from Baxter peak -

Looking north from the Knife Edge -

The Knife Edge - the way we came -

Back at camp -

We climbed it last weekend. It's a ski hill, which meant for wide open trails. It was windy & snowy, but a great hike.

The Appalachian Trail traverses Saddleback ...

It was definitely alpine at the top.

Here are some photos from a recent kayaking expedition to Runaround Pond in Pownal. We saw painted turtles & plenty of interesting birds and heard peepers and wood frogs. And no humans but us. It was serene.

I love the upside-down view ... Here's an osprey eating a fish. And my travelling partners.

We saw plenty of signs of wildlife on our skating expeditions, but the only actual wildlife we saw was an immature bald eagle gliding by. Here's a nest - osprey perhaps?

One of several duck houses: A bat house, modified by a woodpecker ... A muskrat lodge:

And a beaver lodge, of which we saw several, although we couldn't tell if there were any beaver around. Perhaps they had all been trapped. Even so, they'll be back.

This is Sewall Pond, on route 127 in Arrowsic. A vast sheet of perfect ice!

Yes, that is an iceboat in the distance. It was nearly flying it was moving so fast. And this is an icebike. Studded tires make it possible ... This fellow is drilling holes for ice fishing. Here are the icefishermen (boys) checking for fish. I guess this isn't what they were after ... it was frozen into the ice ... from a previous expedition, I suppose.

This weekend we had perfect skating ice on the ponds near the ocean. It must have been just warm enough that the snow, sleet, and rain we got last week in town was all rain hard by the coast. Then we had artic cold, which froze everything solid. These photos were taken on the ponds near Reid State Park on Rt 127 in Georgetown. We were the only ones there on Sunday.

That shine on the ice is NOT water, as the temperature was in the teens (with a 20mph wind!). The ice was perfect! There is a peninsula that separates parts of the pond & provides an interesting obstacle. A detail from the 1st photo of this post. The dead trees add interest too. Usually we can skate in between them (makes for a good game of tag) but it was too bumpy, from the old snow. Skate tracks ...

Coffin pond, in Brunswick, mid-October. A good skating pond in winter. Plenty of wildlife the rest of the year - painted and snapping turtles, lots of little trout, which are stocked for children-only fishing, herons, ducks, other birdlife ...

A reflection, same place & time.

That's what it is. An old beaverdam/pond in Millinocket, near Wadleigh Pond. Still, still water ...

Not such a great photo but I like it anyway.

This is Upper South Branch Pond, in the northern part of Baxter State Park. If you want to be alone in the woods in a truly beautiful place, this is a good place to start.

 

That's North Traveler mountain in the distance, Center Ridge to the right. There's a great trail that goes up Center Ridge, then east and north to Traveler, then north and west to North Traveler, then back to the campground at the north end of Lower South Branch Pond, about 11 miles through a number of quite different forest and alpine habitats.

At the point where center Ridge meets the water, the pond is quite narrow, with a corresponding rock face on the opposite side. The day this picture was taken, we stopped for a rest there and a single loon began calling. Its call echoed back and forth between the rock faces on a day that was otherwise perfectly still. It was positively ethereal.