Weekend Hike ~ Camden Hills

My brother and his girlfriend visited us from Boston over the weekend, so we took them to the coast for a little hike in the Camden Hills.

One of the highlights of the adventure was this downed tree, which was actually four or five trees, all bound together in the same root mass that unfortunately has very shallow purchase on rocks and they all went down together.

 E and Z enjoyed running down the "bouncy log." Clearly they did not get their sense of balance from me.

There is a cross at the top of Maiden Cliff, commemorating a little girl who fell to her death there 100 years or so ago. My husband and children had fun getting as close to the edge as possible.

I must have spent most of my day hiking with Z--or he was being the most entertaining (the mountaintop handstands were impressive), because he shows up in most of my photos.

I was excited to see tons of the cute little polypody ferns (Polypody virginianum) growing along the trail.

And C discovered a few of these yellow forest violets (Viola pubescens) growing in the trail.

The kids alternated between being too tired to move and running down the trail at breakneck speed--as always.

Afterward, we went into Camden in search of ice cream, but none was to be had this early in the season.