Our Saturday walk today was not expected. Rain and mist was forecast for the day (we have reached fifty degree temperatures for some of the last four days) and the softening several feet of snow did not lead us to believe we could have an easy walk without snow-shoes (even tougher for the radar man who has no special shoes and the snow is up to his belly).
But the rain held off and temperatures were again into the forties; we got some fog banks on any open areas! The walking was easier because the warm weather has really compressed the snow cover. Here you can see us looking across the no-name pond where the light wind was whipping up fog off the far side and slowly carried it toward us like a whispy ghost.
The no-name pond is man-made and is about 250 yards long and 100 yards wide. It has a cabin on the far side on the left. The cabin is like a summer camp and the land-owner has a full residence not far beyond the woods on the other side of the pond.
In our visits, we have never seen anyone at the camp although they have kept it well maintained. We stay away during obvious vacation times but find it quite odd that we have never observed anyone there.
The trail on a foggy and cloudy morning
The pond itself has always been a good spot for fall foliage leave pictures and we have observed weasels and ducks, as well as deer and racoon tracks (oh yeah, one dead racoon as well). Our primary interest is catching a moose. We were alerted about twenty years ago of moose tracks coming from the pond and heading through the woods toward our road. We have never seen anything close since.
Last year they put patio chairs out on the far side where we typically sneak up to for a visit. So we now have a very comfortable place to hope for something exciting to wander by.
Last weekend during the February thaw, we did a thorough patrol on both sides of the road. The snow cover had been reduced enough to allow relatively easy hiking through the woods (as compared to staying on the snow machine trail during the peak snow period).
