{"id":132,"date":"2007-08-19T14:08:12","date_gmt":"2007-08-19T19:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/08\/19\/fogs-and-frogs-and-birds-in-bogs\/"},"modified":"2007-08-19T14:14:51","modified_gmt":"2007-08-19T19:14:51","slug":"fogs-and-frogs-and-birds-in-bogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2007\/08\/19\/fogs-and-frogs-and-birds-in-bogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Fogs and frogs and birds in bogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend I hiked section 8 of the M-M trail<\/a>, which I had done once before (about a year ago<\/a>). This was different from my other hikes, in that I got up early and hit the trail at 7:15am, as opposed to hiking in the afternoon. This had the big advantage that it wasn’t blazing hot – the temp was around 60 degrees when I started out.<\/p>\n

There was an added interesting feature to doing a morning hike. Namely, that as I drove from Northampton to the Eastern end of the trail section in Amherst, I passed through a bunch of fog that as covering the river and half of the town of Hadley.<\/p>\n

Luckily for me, much of the fog was still there when I reached the first scenic lookout, on the Western slope of Long Mountain:<\/p>\n

\"riverfog1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It looks kind of like other pictures of clouds seen from mountaintops, until you realize that the mountain I was on only rises a few hundred feet above the valley floor.<\/p>\n

\"riverfog2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"riverfog3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"riverfog4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The only other pictures I snapped on that hike were of a beautiful spider-web in the woods, which isn’t really visible in any of the shots. Too bad. It was a notable hike, though, because I got to the Western end (the Notch visitors’ center) in about 2 hours and 25 minutes. Last year the same hike took me 3 hours and 10 minutes. It’s true that I stopped to take pictures less this time, but some of that 45 minutes I shaved off is because I didn’t have to rest as much. Spending a good chunk of this summer hiking has put me in better shape, with better endurance.<\/p>\n

A bit later the same day, I went to the swampy portion of the Norwattuck trail to look for herons. And indeed, I saw a few. The first one I saw was closest to the trail:<\/p>\n

\"heron1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"heron2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I walked further along and saw one a ways away:\"heron3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After walking a bit more without seeing another, I headed back. When I got near the point at which I’d seen the first one, some other people walking past noticed a heron in a tree:<\/p>\n

\"heron4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I think this might have been the same one I first saw, as there was no longer a bird in the spot I’d seen it. Continuing back toward the car, I just managed to distinguish one more a longer distance off:<\/p>\n

\"heron5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I also checked out some water near the trail that was full of lily pads. In there, I found a frog on top of a pad:<\/p>\n

\"anotherfrog.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And also a frog partially submerged:<\/p>\n

\"froghead.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Frog head!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend I hiked section 8 of the M-M trail, which I had done once before (about a year ago). This was different from my other hikes, in that I got up early and hit the trail at 7:15am, as opposed to hiking in the afternoon. This had the big advantage that it wasn’t blazing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}