Beverly Commons walk

Yesterday was a rare (although not so much this winter...) beautiful 50 degree February day and I decided to take advantage of it! There are a few spots I've been meaning to check out and I either haven't had the time or have wimped out because of the cold, and yesterday I had no excuses.


I've decided I want to start checking out the trails and open spaces in my city (here is the Open Space & Recreation Committee website); for a relatively urban area overall, there is a lot of open space to explore! A coworker recommended Beverly Commons to me a while back so I decided to go there yesterday. It's funny, because there are three 'Beverly Commons' that I know of in the city - an apartment complex (where we actually lived for a few years), the actual city common downtown, and this property. This property, about 160 acres, was used as common area for sheep to graze in during colonial times. Later on granite was quarried in the area and there were homes put up for the workers, of which remnants still exist. It's back to forest now, with some swampy areas and a nice carriage road and lots of trails.


We had about an hour to explore, so we looked at the map quickly & set out. The sun was starting to go down as it was about 3pm, but we still had plenty of light. Pretty close to the entrance we started at was the foundation of the foreman's house (above) from the quarrying days, and we set off into the woods from there. It's pretty hilly and even rocky in some areas - there were lots of side trails so we went all over the place: one trail led out to what looked like someone's driveway (oops), one led up a hill to a little rocky area where there was a fire ring (would be a nice place to bring lunch sometime), and another led to the carriage road (below), which leads to another entrance to the property I think.


It looks like the property is fenced off along some sides to mark off where it becomes private, but there isn't clear signage and some sections of fence are broken and missing, so it's hard to tell. We wandered up a trail to one area where there was a big gap in an old rusty fence, and there was a gully with lots of old crap dumped down in it like tires, old parts from cars and just lots of junk. At first we thought it was still public property but we realized after noticing the fence down that it probably was not. There were a few other areas like this where there were piles of junk or debris and we weren't sure if we were still on public property or not. All the dumped junk and piles we saw looked pretty old except for the tires, which didn't look very weathered, so I don't know what's going on there. (this one below looks like a fallen down shed maybe? I have no idea. I like taking pictures of crap in the woods, lol.)

We made our way around to what we thought was the trail we'd started on (it was) and headed back to the car. Probably spent around an hour exactly wandering and it was just what I needed! Walking in the woods seems to be a cure-all sometimes :) A few more cool photos - a downed tree that looked like a pinwheel, some pretty icicles I found on a little cliff, and an old rusty fire hydrant off one of the trails that made for a really cool pic!



Definitely looking forward to coming back here and bringing some other friends along sometime. Biking these trails would be fun too. And, can't beat the 10 minute drive!

One last picture - I caught a great sunrise yesterday morning! Got up to feed the cat at about 6:30am and noticed the brightest pink in the sky, so I grabbed my stuff & power-walked down to the beach. I missed the bright pink but still got some pretty good shots.

The Look of Winter - OBN photo prompt

I was hoping I'd have a photo from this winter to use for this photo prompt from OBN, but sadly the only snow we've gotten was a) in October, or b) a few slushy inches that disappeared right away. Sigh. At this point since it's February, I'd gladly welcome spring, but I won't be disappointed if we get at least one storm. For now, I present a pic from last winter.



Last year we had plenty of snow, more than enough for me! I took a bunch of photos from our deck during some of the big storms. I like this one because it shows just how much snow tree branches can hold. Pretty amazing and really cool looking too! I do hope there is some snow this year so I can take a walk & get some nice pictures, for now I'll have to live vicariously through what I took last year. :D

The Look of Fall - OBN photo prompt

Getting back on board with the photo and writing prompts over at OBN! The current prompt is "the look of fall" and I have a perfect photo for this.

Went apple picking in September at a local orchard and took a few pictures. I like this one because the color of the apples pops out so much (no altering or saturation done here, just natural sunlight!) and the wispy grass looks kind of like spiderwebs at the bottom. One of my favorite fall activities :) I made applesauce this year!

Worst blogger ever! ..and least active summer in years :(

I CAN'T BELIEVE I HAVEN'T POSTED SINCE MARCH :( I think I stated a few times in my previous posts that I was going to have a busy summer as I was getting married in July! I knew I wouldn't have much time for hiking/exploring or blogging, but I didn't think I would seriously do so much nothing. Wow. I am not letting this blog go & now that stuff has slowed down, I am hoping to be able to update regularly again (and get out to hike more!).

I'll start with stating I have really missed the mountains this year :( This was the first season in four years I didn't go up to the Whites once, and I pined away for them all summer. On top of the wedding (which went fabulously!) and honeymoon both in July and a trip at the end of August, we basically did no hiking at all. We did hike Monadnock with a small group of folks in April, but besides that, a couple of walks in the last few weeks have been all I've done this year.

We went on a cruise to Bermuda for our honeymoon, which was absolutely amazing (neither of us had been on a cruise or out of the country before!), and I took some gorgeous pictures I can share a few of. I have also started playing around with "through the viewfinder" (or TtV as I will refer to it) photography (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Through_the_Viewfinder_photography) and have taken some really neat pictures.

Here's a brief photo roundup of my season!

A few photos from our April Monadnock hike. It was a great time & we had some new friends with us, even though the weather was a bit iffy. Took different trails up and down than we usually do. I was really happy with my performance on this hike since I'd been going to boot camp and running for a couple months at that point!












Here are a few TtV photos I took, the angel in May and the others a few weeks ago. Having a lot of fun with this! Bench angel was at Lynch Park in Beverly, MA and the last three at the Phillips Estate, also in Beverly.





























At the end of August we went on a whale watch out of Gloucester with a group of friends. I hadn't been on a whale watch in possibly 20 years and my husband had never been! We lucked out & saw lots of whales, really close to the boat too.











And... our big trip of the year - Bermuda! We went on a 7-day cruise out of Boston to Bermuda, and it was absolutely amazing. It is a gorgeous place and I took tons of pictures - here is a small selection of the best ones!











































I shouldn't forget a few wedding photos I guess?! We had a beautiful outdoor wedding at a gorgeous old estate in Ipswich, MA. It was hot and humid and sunny, and we loved every second of it :)






So that is my spring/summer and some of my fall, in a nutshell! Despite the lack of hiking we had a blast over the last 6 months and I hope you enjoy the photos. I am hoping to do a little more local hiking before the weather get cold and wet/icy, but we'll see, I have a lot going on in the next month or two. I will have to live vicariously through the other outdoor bloggers in the New England area and catch up on how their seasons all went :) I am happy to be back & please come back for (hopefully) more posts sooner than 6 months from now!

First hike of 2011!

It wasn't quite a White Mountains hike, but it was a hike nonetheless, and I was so happy! Fridays I get out of work at noon and last Friday despite only being about 40, it was a great day. The cabin fever finally came to a head, I had no plans for the afternoon, and I decided to head up to Essex to a favorite local spot of mine. Right off exit 15 on route 128 in Essex is a property owned by the Trustees of Reservations called Agassiz Rock. It's about a 1-mile round-trip hike to the top of a hill with glacial erratics on it - giant boulders dropped by the glaciers during the last ice age. Although short, it's moderately steep in some areas with a rocky trail, so it's one of the closest things near me to a "real" hike.

There are two 'Agassiz' rocks on the route - Little Agassiz, which is the top of the hill and is a specific rock, but is part of a bigger area of rocks to hang out at, and Big Agassiz, which is a giant boulder by itself in a swampy area down the trail a bit from the top. Big Agassiz is usually not directly accessible because of water/mud, but on during a dry day you might be able to get there - usually you just hike past it. Yesterday I headed up to Little Agassiz first - there were two dudes climbing it, so I headed down the hill a little ways to a smaller boulder I like to climb & sit on. There is a very nice view from the top of this boulder and skyscrapers in Boston are even visible on clear days. I basked in the sun for a while, took some pictures (mostly just playing with the settings on my SLR) then hopped off and walked down via Big Agassiz.

(top: Boston skyline [squint! It's there!], middle: perched on my boulder, bottom: Big Agassiz)

I hiked down to the car and, realizing I still had time, decided to check out the trails off the parking area I use (on the opposite side of the road from Agassiz Rock), which I'd noticed before but never checked out. A sign informed me this was wilderness conservation area owned by the Manchester-Essex Conservation Trust, which I'd never heard of before. They own almost 1000 acres of land throughout Essex and Manchester with miles of trails through a swamp and woods. I headed down what looked like an old carriage road to see where it would take me.

Maybe a few tenths of a mile down, there was a boardwalk path that began and lead over the swamp. It was pretty cool, lots of nice views. At the end of this, the Cedar Swamp trail went right, and left would take me to Millstone Hill. I headed towards Millstone Hill, which was a nice short loop up a hill with some nice granite outcrops. I backtracked to the swamp, returned over the boardwalk and took some really awesome pictures of the sky reflected in the swamp on the way back to the car.

(top: boardwalk through the swamp, middle: at the top of Millstone Hill, bottom: swamp reflections)

All in all it was a great afternoon. Really refreshed me being outside for a few hours, and I realized again that I enjoy being out by myself. Won't do it all the time, but it is really peaceful being alone in the woods. I will definitely be bringing other folks back to the MECT land to explore the trails more, as I feel I only scratched the surface!

We're planning our new-season inagural Monadnock hike for April 23 and I'm hoping to do a little more hiking between now and then - as long as the snow doesn't stick around hopefully I'll be able to get out again soon!

OBN writing prompt - Childhood Outdoors

A recent writing prompt at the OBN was themed around children's outdoor experiences. There were a few options, one of which was either write about a memory of being exposed to the outdoors as a child, or write about exposing a child to the outdoors. My post will be two-fold, as I'd like to address both of those topics.

When I was growing up, my brother and I played outside, camped a lot, and spent a lot of time at parks and the beach. We didn't watch a lot of TV so being outdoors was a big part of our lives. Our family went camping (coastal Maine) every summer and it was the best part of our year - I think our first camping experience was when I was 3 or 4 and my brother was still a toddler. We were lucky to grow up in a nice apartment complex with lots of kids and a relatively large outdoor area to roam around and play in. There was woods, grass, and rocks to play on and in, and we had a great time. Beyond just spending time outside at and near home, two big trips I took during my childhood really helped shape my love of the outdoors.

The first of these was a cross-country train trip my family took when I was 13. My aunt and uncle lived in Portland, OR and my parents wanted us to see the country, so we took the train from Boston to Portland, then on the way home from LA back to Boston. The train trip was amazing (there and back), but once we got to Oregon it was even better. My aunt & uncle loved road tripping and the outdoors, so they took us to see a lot of things. We went to Mount Ranier, Mount St. Helens, Crater Lake, the Redwoods, and many other great places. It opened up a whole new world to me besides just woods and rocky beach, which was mostly what I got back home. The landscapes were just stunning, and so much more awe-inspiring than anything I'd seen before. That trip left me wanting more of the west, which I would get a year later.

(top: brother & I at Mount St. Helens, middle: Crater Lake National Park, bottom: me on the Oregon coast)

One year later, my eighth-grade class decided to go to Colorado and Utah for our trip. The trip included biking in Moab, doing a program with the Canyonlands Field Institute and whitewater rafting in Colorado. It was an outdoor enthusiast's dream! When we arrived in CO, we stayed in Grand Junction for one night and I was amazed at how beautiful it was, with the mountains towering over everything. Biking in Moab was awesome (although hot & I almost got heat stroke, lol), and the Canyonlands & Arches were indescribable. We were in Utah with the CFI for 4 or 5 days, then we did a 2-night (I think: could've been 3 nights) whitewater rafting trip down the Dolores river. In addition to contributing to my falling in love with the west, this trip kicked off my affair with whitewater rafting - I would go on to do a rafting trip in Maine once a summer for close to 10 years. I sadly do not have any photos from this trip scanned, but it was an amazing trip and I would love to move out to CO or UT someday if life allows it.

Now, my second part of this post, an experience exposing a child to the outdoors. My fiance has a younger brother who's 14, and we try to have him come up & visit us every summer. This past summer we took him canoeing at our favorite spot on the Ipswich river. We spent an entire afternoon on the river, paddling and fishing, and pulling off at Perkins island (not really an island) to have lunch. A couple things to know about my fiance's brother; he's a great kid, but has some issues and was mostly brought up by TV. He doesn't get outside much, if at all, and is kind of scarily obsessed with video games. When he's with us, he does express interest in camping, hiking, biking, fishing etc., but he gets none of that exposure at home. It's pretty rewarding to give him these experiences when he's with us (he lives out of state, by the way, so coming to see us is a big deal).

So, this recent trip while we were on the water at one point, we were floating along calmly & checking out an egret that was on the shore, and he said something to me along the lines of "this is really, like, nice you know, it's nice and calm and stuff? I like it." This is coming from a kid with ADD/ADHD, problems in school, no attention span, who's obsessed with video games and TV and wrestling. It made me SO HAPPY to hear him say that, and I told him. Made both the fiance and I feel really good that we're able to give him experiences like this. Oh, and I believe the fish he caught was his first, even though he claimed to have caught fish before.

If we're able to have him come visit this summer, we're going to take him somewhere to do a hike, I think he'd really like it. We may not be able to have him up this summer because of the wedding, but we're going to see. It's nice that he's older and still enthusiastic about doing things like this with us, instead of being a mopey teenager & wanting to stay inside.

I think being outdoors is an absolutely essential component of a good, physically-and-emotionally healthy childhood; I'm grateful for the experiences I had as a kid and happy we can provide a little of that to my future brother-in-law. We plan to raise our kids the same way I grew up: loving, respecting and enjoying the outdoors and being able to appreciate the wonders of nature.

REI Garage Sale

This past weekend, our REI had one of their semi-annual garage sales. Despite the cold and predicted snow, we got there around 8:00am and waited in line until 10:00 when the store opened, at which time we had a battle plan for someone to run to shoes, and the rest of us would head for gear. Let me give a little background on these sales: REI holds them four times a year - it's a sale of returned & damaged merchandise, sold at ridiculous discounts. Sometimes the damage is bad enough to make it not worth buying the item, sometimes it's repairable, and sometimes the "damage" is something like busted packaging, and sometimes the item was simply used and returned, so they can't sell it as new anymore. You have to be a member to purchase from the garage sale (membership is $20, and is lifetime), and you can become a member same-day to buy from the sale.

We discovered these sales about 2 years ago so I promptly got a membership, and we've been going to almost every sale since then. There are actually people who camp out overnight to be the first in the door for the sales - the deals are that good. An example of some of the better things we've gotten over the years, among many:

• Numerous pairs of hiking boots for my fiance, who goes through shoes quickly - he can buy a pair for $15 or less at the sale which were either worn, had something small break on them, or "leaked" (we've never found any to actually leak). I got a pair of Keens two years ago for $12 that supposedly leaked, and I've hiked in rain, snow, and hail in them and they have never leaked. They're my favorite boots!
• Backpacking packs for myself and my fiance - retired rentals, nothing wrong with them, for $19.99. Perfect for us beginner backpackers, although we'll probably upgrade eventually to something lighter. Mine's a size small, although not a women's, and still fits me pretty decently.
• 4-person tent - my brother grabbed this one last year, for $20 I think, it's a Kelty and probably about $100 new. It was missing a rain fly - he puts a tarp over it and uses it for their annual guys-only camping trip.
• Trekking poles - my fiance has found two single trekking poles at the sales - one needed a pin to hold the height, which he rigged with something, and one was missing its basket. Got them for pennies on the dollar. He prefers to just use one instead of two, so they work perfectly for him (they were designed to be singles, not part of a pair)

(my $19.99 pack, on the trail on Camel's Hump in 2009)

Pretty much, if you get in early to grab at the good stuff, you can find some amazing deals. Thing is, REI has a 100% satisfaction guarantee on everything they carry, so a lot of the things at these sales are just returned or used, not damaged. People do get in quickly and rush the gear table, so you have to be quick to get the good stuff. Another trick is to wait around until after the initial rush is over - people will hoard things but then look through their stuff and put some back, so vulching around can sometimes net a good item.

(My fiance on the trail this past fall with his $19.99 pack, $12 pole, and $7 hat, all from garage sales. His pants may've been a garage sale find too...)

This year, I left disappointed with not one thing :( However, the guys made out pretty well - fiance spent $25 on a pair of $140-regularly priced Lowa boots that were simply worn & returned, my brother got a $75 Leatherman multi-tool for $12 because the blade was straight instead of cerrated, and our other friend got two pairs of boots and a tent. There was a Burton jacket for $35 missing a zipper pull, which I could've easily fixed ($200 jacket regularly), but I realized I don't need a new jacket and behaved myself and didn't buy it. I was sad because I'd wanted to look for snowshoes, but they were snapped up before I even got into the store.

If we're able to make the one in the spring, I'll be looking for snowshoes again (missed them all this time), and maybe packs for something lighter. I don't need boots and I'm good on clothes for now, so we shall see. We'd like to camp out for one of them sometime, just for fun! REI.com has a list of store locations and the garage sales will be listed under the store events and classes. I know our Boston area REI stores do them around the same time, so there probably won't be one around here for 3 months or so, but check out your local store's page & keep checking until they list one! If you go - remember to get there pretty early if you want a chance at the good stuff. Bring camp chairs, layers if it'll be chilly out, and lots of coffee. The other folks in line are usually pretty cool :D