Weekend Things ~ Three Hikes

I've been trying to get back into my blogging rhythm. I don't know what I've been doing with the time I used to spend here. Reading some. Writing some. A little project-making. Prepping for and teaching workshops (which use up whole days without generating blog posts). Prepping for a big trip we hope to take this summer (which I'll tell you all about once everything falls into place). Not going to bed early, certainly. Then there's our finicky-of-late internet, which is being poached by more and more people around here. Also, C has started vlogging, so perhaps I've mentally passed the documentarist baton to him. Whatever it's been, I had three weeks of photos on my camera, waiting to be uploaded and edited. But here I am and here I hope to be at least a couple of times a week.

We had a beautiful, sunny, three day weekend so Saturday morning, I asked everyone if they'd rather go on one big hike over the weekend or shorter, closer hikes every day. They opted for the latter.

 So Saturday afternoon, we headed to a little trail just up the road from our house--Marr's Hill. The trail runs through a sugar bush and we had to pass under these sap lines like giant spiders webs.

The big highlight of the trail is this stonehenge-like monument with a chair on top from which you can see all the way to the Camden Hills.

 This is such great hiking weather--warm and sunny (nearing 70 degrees), and no b*gs. I know the bl*ck fl*es will be out soon (usually they show up the first of May), so I'm trying to enjoy this bite-free weather as much as I can (* if you say there name, it calls them to you).

Sunday we headed down closer to the coast, to one of our favorite hiking destinations, Dodge Point.

The trail runs along the Damariscotta River (which is tidal and so has a very oceany-feel about it.

We saw two seals in the water near the pier. I've never seen them so far upstream below.

The boys followed the shoreline from the pier to the first beach while I stuck to the trail, thus gaining a few minutes of peace and quiet.

At the third beach--the brickyard beach--this downed tree's root system, which has been there as long as I can remember, has either shrunk or the kids have grown.

I never noticed this part before--part of the root in the center has been bleached white and looks like a pair of hands.

One of my favorite parts of this hike is the old farm road we follow on the way out through a red pine plantation. It looks just like The Hundred Acre Wood to me.

Finally, today we took a short jaunt to another trail in town, The Whitefield Salmon Preserve.

The boys were most excited about the illicit bridge crossing we had to make at the start of the trail. Z went on the hike shirtless and barefoot (pretending to be a monkey) and E wore his backpacking pack with a sleeping bag, two water bottles and two oranges inside of it.

I took a bonus fourth hike on a trail next to the kids' school while E and Z had baseball practice Monday evening. It had started to rain lightly by then, but I stayed nice and dry in my little microclimate bubble beneath my trekking umbrella, while the boys on the ball field got soaked.