Merrill Creek Reservoir, Washington NJ

This past weekend, we took our spring trip down to visit my husband's family in NJ. They live in the part of the state that gave it the name 'Garden state' - there's lots of farms and forests and open space where his family lives, and if you ignore the rednecks, it's a beautiful area! Usually when we're there we don't have time to do anything like hike, but this trip we had some time while the older nephews were still at school and went out with my sister-in-law, a cousin, and the youngest nephew.

Merrill Creek Reservoir is a really nice area about a 20 minute drive from where my sister-in-law lives. It's a 650 acre reservoir surrounded by about 2000 acres of woods. There are miles of trails around the water, but we did maybe a mile total since we had a 4-year-old with us (he did a great job though!) We saw some deer running away from us in the woods, ruins of some old farm houses, and sat at the water for a little while. It was beautiful and maybe 70-75 degrees out, perfect day for a hike!

My sister-in-law was saying how she wants to start taking her kids (4 boys in total) to do more hikes since she loves it so much. We always want to take the kids out when we're visiting, but don't usually end up having the time. I'd like to try to make time for it going forward though... at the very least I want to take her oldest (12) on some hikes since he's a scout and loves hiking too. Hoping to explore more trails in NJ after doing this!

Shooting the moon

I got a telephoto lens for Christmas! It's awesome and I'm so excited about it, but really haven't had much of a chance to take it anywhere yet. About a week ago I was inside, feeling kind of bored (and unwell, or I would've taken a walk) and noticed the moon rising in my skylight. It was dusk so the sky was still pretty light, and the moon was big (close to full). I figured why not play around a bit - so I busted out the telephoto and tripod and did some experimenting.

It took me a few tries to get the settings right, but I ended up with some surprisingly good photos, especially for being taken through the skylight! I was going to go outside last week for the full moon and try again but it was cloudy. This shot is the clearest. It isn't altered at all, just cropped so the moon is in the center of the photo. I'll post more as they come!

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!