rain rain, don't go away...

stay at least another day! the word around the state is draught and even though we have had a few inches this july, it has been fairly hot and dry. so when a quarter of an inch came through last friday am, i was disappointed we didn't get more. the forecast was for an inch or so on sunday so i didn't jump off a cliff or anything. saturday was sunny and cool-ish, which would have been the day to take a hike, but pam and sadie were having a massage session and i had plenty of lawn and gardening--which is nice to do when it is not beastly hot out. so we planned for sunday.

pam's idea was to go explore the AT trail from goose pond road up to moose mountain, but we got to cleaning and organizing things way too seriously and it was raining steadily--yeah! so we didn't get out of the house until after two in the afternoon and decided to go up and over town hill, our backyard hike.

as soon we started up the wood's road we met the first of dozens of red efts. the rain was more like drizzle at the moment but things had been wet down a good bit and what pam dubbed FLFs--frail little fellows--seemed to be there every few steps.  i had her take out the phone and snap some photos thinking this would be a cool blog post...

the little orange newts live the first few years on land and can be seen quite readily when it is moist out. they mature, turn olive green, and spend their days in a pond or lake. as adults they are called red-spotted newts or eastern newts, sometimes even salamanders. we were seeing all sizes of FLFs, sometimes they would scurry off, sometimes just sit there, maybe under a leaf, maybe not. we got shots of various stages--one very early almost a translucent orange, lots of middle bright orange, and one late turning green and really hard to see.



we had to be careful not to step on them. a couple of them were scurrying around so that pam suggested taking a video. that didn't work out so well for me as the FLF was hard to keep on screen let alone in focus.

when we got to the other side of town hill and were headed down the south end of the old bear pond road we ran into a huge top of a poplar, probably blown over in that microburst the weekend before. we got around it and i grabbed a small leafy branch to wave about my head to chase of the deer flys. they were pretty bad, but fairly easy to swat or shoo away. as we got to the upper beaver damn and marshy area, i was excited to see it dry enough to cross over and continue on the road. well, dry enough, but really squishy--my crocs sunk in right to the edge of my socks. pam announced that it was a good place to turn around.





on the way back we saw a green frog and pam got a great picture of it poised to jump. we also spotted a wood frog, and several american toads--one TLT, tiny little toad--along with dozens more of the red efts. the wood frog took some really close observation to sort it out from the dirt and leaf litter. we went through a pretty good raspberry patch and did a little picking of the red, easy to see fruit.





although our bodies were damp, our spirits were high as we came down our side of the hill and hit stark hill road. it wasn't moose mtn and the AT, but we got quite an amphibian show without driving!
i was thinking about a hot tea, maybe some chocolate if i could find any when we got home...