Long Hill, Beverly MA

After wasting the gorgeous day that was last Wednesday sleeping, I decided I was getting out for a little while Friday afternoon! I rounded up the husband and a friend of ours and we met up at Long Hill in Beverly, less than 10 minutes from where we live. I'd been here as a kid but not in a long time, and figured checking out the house/gardens and the trails in the woods would be a nice way to spend Friday afternoon.

Long Hill is an old estate with beautiful gardens and trees surrounding it. Despite it still being the off season, the warm weather had some things blooming already, my favorite of which were the weeping cherry and dogwood trees. The weeping cherries are gorgeous and I spent a fair amount of time gawking at and shooting them. The dogwoods (I think they're dogwoods) were also in full bloom and were a gorgeous bright white against the blue sky and the other trees.

After walking around the gardens we hit the trail. There is a 1.2 mile loop trail through the property with several short accessory trails, but we just did the main trail. It was a perfect day to be in the woods - warm, about 70ish, and breezy so we had no bug problems! (yes there are bugs out already, unfortunately) It was a nice easy trail with lots of stone walls to see and some plank bridges over mucky areas. We stopped at a huge fallen tree and I climbed out on it a bit. There were frogs all over the place but I was only able to catch one that didn't see me and take a few pics!

We finished the trail up and had a drink with our friend at his place, which is very close by. By the end of the day my allergies were acting up, but that's to be expected with all the trees blooming so early. This was a great, close-to-home spot to spend a little time and I will definitely be coming back to see the gardens in full bloom!