Frost on its way ?

We have had frost warning for the past several nights but nothing yet. Time to start thinking about trips.

Snakes on a plain

We stopped at the Dana town common: Dana .
We have been there before and wandered over to the location that was the Graveyard. Next to it was I believe the church. All thats left is the foundation and we were checking it out and spotted 4 black racers. They were about 2-3 ft in length. This was the baby at the top of the foundation. Where the heck is St Patty when you need him. Only kidding snakes rock ! Anything that eats mice gets my vote.

Let us show you

Well its not exactly a salad bar but we were walking along and saw this piece of moss. At least we think its moss . Pretty cool. Probably good with blue cheese on it, but then again would tree bark would be passable with blue cheese..

Houston we have a Problem

Or at least this pilot did. We knew there was a jet crash site in Quabbin after looking at Geocache logs. We couldn't find the site during the fall, but we were obviously successful this time. We talked the ranger who said the crash happened in the 50's. The jet was a trainer and was lost in a storm heading back from N.Y. He radioed he was low on fuel and apparently the protocol is to ditch in Quabbin. Here is a link to a great site about the crash . Jet. Thanks Karl. I guess its the biggest wilderness area in MA. Anyhow they "cleaned up the site ". Its amazing how much is left. Must have been a big old mess. We checked around and figured out this was the approach the plane took. The pilot bailed out as was safe but the plane needs a little work around the edges.

Having a Ball

The temps started to rise and what happens is the snow of course gets sticky. This means the crampons ,on the bottom of the snowshoe bindings ,get full of snow and form a nice ball under your foot. Its like dragging five pounds of extra weight along and results in the snowshoe sliding around. So you have to "bare boot it" as we say. Lucky for us we were on the way down so we only had about a mile of bare bootin.

At the beach

The Beech trees seem to hang onto leaves a long time. It was cool listening to the wind rattling the leaves up here. The area had a pretty good population of Beech and Birch.

Shadow puppets

Just a shadow puppet show.

Monkey Man

Last weekend we did a quick run up the Robert Frost trail to a spot we call Monkey Man. There is a rock that sticks out of the cliff that looks like a monkey's head. It was covered with snow so I didn't shoot a picture of it. I will grab one once the snow melts some. At this rate it might be July. What a winter!

What time is it anyways ?

No watch no problem. If we assume the sun is due south at high noon or there abouts. You can use a compass to tell what time it is. The stick is due south ( its actually a little off after I looked at the picture) and the shadow is the time. The key is the fact that the sun sets in the west so you just kind of slice up the degrees until sunset and away you go. You do need a rough idea about the time the sunsets. It was about 12:30. It works good enough in the woods where I don't really care what time it is anyways. Another trick to tell how much daylight is remaining is to put your hand up horizontally. Then use your fingers to measure the number of them that will fit between the sun and the horizon in the west. Every finger is about 15 minutes of daylight remaining before the sun goes below the horizon.

I suppose you could just wear a watch but then what would you Blog about ??

Older than Me !

Way older. This tree was certainly around to see some history.