Nature Walk ~ Northeast Woods

Mother nature provided another wonderful day for an outing with our Neighborwoodie friends this week as we ventured into the Northeast Woods :)

There were mountain bike jumps to be climbed, sticks to be collected, overly friendly dogs to be dodged and a lot of 'I'm the king of the castle and your the dirty rascal' songs to be sung.

Of course there were the usual trail hazards to be navigated like this very tempting mud hole that begged for boots to be wiggled in....

and an oversized mud puddle covered in a sheet of ice just perfect for some splish splashing *grin*.

My oldest managed to salvage a large chunk of ice from the water before it was stomped on and broken into small bits...

and another girl found a tree branch with squares of ice frozen to different parts of the needles that clanged together as it was shaken about.

Mother nature's wind chime :)

So much fun to be had in the forest :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Nature Walk ~ Puntledge Watershed

This last week seems to have just zipped by so quickly and I'm finally getting a chance to post some photos about our last nature outing with our neighborwoodie friends at the Puntledge Watershed :)

The park starts with this great bridge leading in along the river...

and down to the waters edge where you can find these magnificent old trees with their giant root systems above ground. I'm assuming that it must be due to the high volume of water that rushes through here during the wetter winter months and the current has stripped away the soil over the years exposing their roots.

In fact while we were there the sirens went off signaling that they were about to increase the flow of water coming into the river so we were careful to not let the children go into the water while we were there as it was moving quite fast.

Nothing like using a giant root system as a make shift jungle gym *grin*.

I love catching photos of my boys walking down the trails together :)

The eagles are very active this time of year and we were able to watch a couple sitting atop the trees again that afternoon.

One very exciting find for the kids was the perfectly intact backbones from last years salmon spawning that takes place here. My oldest did most of the fishing for them as he could reach further out into the stream.

They had quite a pile of them collected by the time we left :)

There are some great old fish ladders out in the back of the trail to. They are large logs buried into the stream at regular intervals with their centers notched out creating a series of sort of steps to make it easier for the salmon to swim upstream during spawning season.

We always have so much fun exploring and despite the lengthy travel time it takes to meet up with our friends the kids always claim that every week was the best one ever!

Hugs,
Rosina