Our Summer Vacation. Days Three and Four... July 7th and 8th.

 We woke up with nary a care in the world. We'd slept great and we both headed down to sit by the lake before even thinking about breakfast. How could it be a bad day when a smiling Painted Turtle is the first thing you see?

We sat there watching the pond life wake up. More Painters hauled themselves out to enjoy the morning sun.

I checked on the local Redbacks and they were present. The flash was behind a leaf for this shot, casting a greenish glow over everything. I like it.

While deciding what we wanted to do with the day, we sat and watched. Heavenly. A couple of Painters hauled up right in front of us. Unbeknownst to us at the time, a Snapper popped his head up in front of the tree.

He's gone in the second shot and the bottom turtle was exchanged for a smaller model!

With the help of the 30-year-old guidebook, we decided to stay pretty close and hit up a state forest that wasn't far from our cabin. Lots of streams had me thinking Springs again. Supposedly, there was a pond up at the top of a mountain, 2 miles up and two miles down, that we decided we wanted to see.

We got there and found out that you can now drive up to that lake! But the road was closed for tree work. We looked around a little pond at the bottom while we decided how to hike up. We heard a few Green Frogs and finally got our eyes on one.

A welcome (and for some reason rare this year) sight, a pretty Pickerel Frog.

We noticed that the pool was stream-fed so we went to see what was living there. Andrea struck first with a (rare, again, since they rarely are) cooperative Two-Lined Salamander.

I then flipped a Two-line and a Dook! The Dook was a bit shy, though...

The Two-line skedaddled when I uncovered the Dusky.

Our choices to get to the top were... a winding trail through the woods that followed the stream up, or a paved road that ran parallel to it. We chose the trail. More chances at nature. It was a good choice.

The old guidebook had said "salamander heaven" and that it was. In the stream, Dooks were ever-present.

Up on the trail, every piece of bark had a Redback under it. Here is an interesting colored one... white legs!

A few more Dookies.

We were still finding Two-lines, too. Salamander heaven for sure!

You know, two miles up sounded pretty easy, but there were a few spots that were tougher than others. I'm not going to lie... it got pretty hard in a few spots. Oh yeah, my spare hiking shoes from the trunk of the car fell apart and I was in my Crocs. And my back was still out a bit. But that wasn't the worst of it... that was yet to come!

We finally hit the right altitude for American Toads.

Here is Andrea looking under some bark (and probably seeing a Redback!). Note the steep incline the trail goes up beyond her.

Another American Toad.

The steep trail wasn't the problem. The problem was, as we got way up there, the trail was narrow and right on the edge of a perilous drop. I was behind Andrea and started thinking about her falling to her death. If she slipped, she'd have fallen 80 feet with nothing to stop her. I started to panic. We did take another trail, one that ran parallel to the wooded trail but wasn't as close to the edge, for a short while but that one, according to the trail map, would veer off and away from our target pond.

We eventually went back to the sketchy trail and the last leg of the climb wasn't too scary. We finally got to the end of that trail, hooked up with another and got on to the paved road. We were rewarded with wild raspberries and, eventually, a scenic view. I believe that is New York State in the background.

The guidebook lied... that was 3 miles.

Great Spangled Fritillaries were enjoying the feast up there.

We actually descended just a bit before we found our pond. I guess, since we didn't see anything endangered or anything, it's OK to show the name of the pond... pretty cool sight.

The good thing about the road closure? We had the place all to ourselves. We lounged, relaxed, soaked our feet and spent over an hour up there just reveling in the glory of nature. Green Frogs and Bulls were calling from all around. I finally found one of the noisy Greens. I couldn't catch his throat fully extended but did OK...

That totally made the harrowing moments on the trail worth it. I had even seen a Garter slither off (unphotographed). But... we had to get down now.

We stopped a few times up near the top. At a campsite area (empty, of course) I flipped this chubby Erythristic Redback and as I photographed it, a normal colored one jutted out underneath it!

We found a few more Erythristics at this altitude. I was almost going to put a moratorium on these beautiful beasts!

Unfortunately, the hike down was uneventful and long. There wasn't any flipping to do and no water nearby. We were happy that we'd taken trail up, even if it got scary at times, because we saw lots of nature. This was just trudging down the asphalt. My back was in mortal pain. Then, thanks to a trail map saying a trail was paved when it wasn't, we missed our cross trail to get us back to the pond that we'd parked at and it added on two miles of hiking.

Obviously, we were toast by the time our butts hit the car seats. We'd done over 8 miles, going up, then coming down and had earned the right to vegetate the rest of the day. We drove "home" and walked straight to the lounge chairs and sat watching the water. It was getting late but one Painter was still out there...

We weren't going to, but we figured we'd earned the hot-tub. A long, hot soak with jets blowing all over our tired muscles was just what we needed. Sleep, obviously, came very easily.

We had to be out by 11 AM on Friday morning. We'd slept pretty late so our time was at a premium. We still made time to lounge by the lake for a bit. The Painters were up and enjoying it.

We bid farewell to the beloved cabin and grabbed some breakfast. Before leaving the area, we wanted to revisit the Sanctuary where we'd seen the Snappers and Painters in the rain on Tuesday. We figured we'd see more basking Painters since it was sunny. We were right.

The Snapper King was again (still?) in his sandy culvert.

Little fellas.

Some distant female Wood Ducks... and a Painter noggin.

This perch became a source of amusement. Three young Painters were having a log roll as they tried to all climb up...

They finally succeeded.

Look out... that grumpy ol' shedding guy is about to fall into the drink!

As we were leaving, I kept hearing the call of my arch-nemesis, the Marsh Wren. There were many of them and they even had houses for them. They were landing on the house, in the trees, on the reeds. And I failed. As I so often do.

From there, we went North, up to the corner of Massachusetts, to a State Park that might be our last chance for Wood Turtles. We weren't sure how to navigate it when we got there... there was no parking along the river, so we went up to the Visitor's Center parking area and took it from there. It is a remarkable place. Here is the only White Marble dam ever made in the US.

There were many spectacular views. Here's a look deep down into a chasm.

Lo and behold, the first photographed snake of the week... a beautiful Garter.

The only other critter we saw there was this Redback.

Then things got even more interesting. We walked the short trail system there (just over a mile... perfect after yesterday's marathon) and nearing the end, I looked up a hill and saw a standing rock slab with a hole in it. I've watched enough Folk Horror films lately to know that it can be many things, including ritualistic to praise the old gods and shit like that. So we went to look around...

We surely did not expect to see this...

No, not what we expected to see at all. And, they were arranged in a circle.

Well, there was a sign with a newspaper article down by the parking lot that explained them. In 2004, there was a community outreach art project and local youths were paid to make these cement sculptures. But it never explains why they chose these ghostly forms or why they are set up in a Pagan-inspired circle.

At any rate, they were supposed to be removed a couple of years ago because they are falling apart. I'm glad we got to see them before that happened.

We were just about ready to leave. We saw a car parked next to a river at the end of the road. We decided to join them before the 3 hour drive home. There was a fallen door in the parking area and I flipped an in-the-blue Garter that gnawed on Andrea's knuckle.

I also flipped a Two-line.

But, like the whole week, it was all about this...

And that was our summer vacation. We didn't see a ton of different animals and missed out on our targets, but it was a memorable trip and we discovered what really makes us happy. Sitting together, watching the water and nature, and feeling peace.