Photos by Kris (pardon me, Reyn)

Just as I was finding them interesting & rather endearing!

<sigh>

mostly they eat bad bugs..... I think the hummingbird is an anomaly.

I'm on the Cape (Cape Cod) and my dad and I went hiking today. The trail is the Great Island hike in Wellfleet, MA. You can do several different over-lapping loops and we did a middle-length one that took us about 2.5 hours.

Here's someone's sketch of the land. The strip of land is a combination of sandy beach between hilly forests located between Wellfleet Harbor and the Cape Cod Bay. The top of the map shows the parking lot. The first stretch of trail runs through a pitch pine forest and then into a small, marshy, tidal inlet on one side and a beach on the other, separated by a high sandy bluff. After passing along the marsh, the trail cuts into a longer bit of forest called (lo-and-behold) Great Island. It continues to a smaller island and then on to a bit of beach only exposed at low tide.



Our hike...... Just into the woods from the parking lot is a grave stone dedicated to an unknown Wampanoag woman and to the tribe itself. Visitors have taken to placing found items on the grave after hiking through the property.



Along the marsh path, we came upon an abandoned boat with this ironic sticker in it.



We hiked up and down over the wooded Great Island and breaked for a nut and water break before heading on. This was our view.



We decided to loop back at this point along the harbor side beach. I dubbed this beach the graveyard because we saw dozens of dead water birds (ducks and gulls) washed up and in various stages of decay. Also, there were patches of clam shells and oyster shells washed up as well. Here is the beach head. There's a person in the distance for scale, but you can't really see her.



Here's one of the more palatable dead birds. I liked the way the bones were arranged. Be thankful I didn't take a shot of the freshly dead bird the gull had been poking at.



A final note. While a large pod of endangered Right Whales has been feasting on zooplankton off the end of Cape Cod for the last few weeks, we didn't see any from the beach on the bayside. My mother and I had gone to Race Point and Cove Beach which are at the very end of Cape Cod and had seen some off the ocean side from a great distance.

For further reference, a map of the outer cape. The hand is pointing to Wellfleet. Across the water from the finger tip is the National Seashore. The long strip of land (my dad and I are arguing about whether it's a spit or not - can a spit have a spit?) is the area where we were hiking.

strolls in
takes a look around


NICE SHOTS!!

Thank you! Are you sticking around for a while this time?

LOL - I do what I can

Right now I'm doing it between sales calls.

New hike:

Waldon Pond


Dasha and I stopped the hike around the pond to walk along these busy RR tracks.


Tragically, she lost a leg. But she's a trooper.


One of the cagillion chipmonks which were scampering about.


They're trying to get back to the natural New England Kettle Pond landscape..... We saw in bloom: mayflower, lady slipper, bunch berry. Out of bloom: clethera, pipsisewa, wintergreen, itea(?), blueberries. Non-bloomers: sweetfern, mushrooms, bayberry, mosses, ferns. Trees: beeches, paper birches, maples, hemlocks, oaks, pines.

I WANNNA CHIPMONK RIGHT NOW!!!

get me one!

....please.

*looks cute*

They are! They are cute (I imagine you're feeling the way we feel about koalas). And they make a cute shrieking noise too. Did you see the squirrel?

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oooh, i haven't. tough day for the skwirril, eh?

It must have been, it let me take a few shots before it scampered away.

Cool pics

AMIGO!!!!
where've you been?

i like the new dagvatar...

hehehehehe

rank thou, yeg!

I have commented on the avatar as well, but have received no feedback.

I'm cool with that.

Dag and I are tight.

where? i didn't notice.

but thank you, preventatively.