Daniel Webster - Back in January

Back in January when we were still getting weekly snow storms I drove out to Daniel Webster. I think I posted one photo from that trip then forgot about it. Now that I've moved my daily photo posts (see above) I need to get back to the hiking.

It was quite cold that day and I waited until almost noon to go out. Obviously this makes the pictures not spectacular, but my car can be iffy of snow and I wanted to let the plows clear the roads. I apparently didn't wait long enough as several roads in Marshfield were still covered in packed snow. At Danial Webster the parking lot had just been plowed and a woman and her daughter were shoveling out the entry building. The daughter actually asked if I was a biologist or something since I had snow shoes and had been the only person silly enough to show up. I dislike breaking trail. The main reason being it's exhausting. I prefer a slightly broken trail, so walking back wasn't too bad. The snow was drifting rather impressively however and within an hour my entry prints had been erased in several places. I do wish I had managed to get a photo of the blowing snow, but the angles were off.

I didn't see much in the way of wild life, a few standard winter birds and not much else. There weren't even any deer, but that is likely due to the time of day. The snow was deep enough the boardwalks were almost obscured. I missed go on my standard Secret Trail as I wasn't sure it would be accessible. The normal entrance to it was covered in snowy branches, and walking across the field to find out it was impassible would have been a waste.

The snow had piled up in plenty of strange shapes over weeks of freezing, thawing and wind.

It's amazing how snow can look so much like desert.

random note: I hate the posting interface here and I'm going to have to start doing these in HTML.

Daily Photo - So Much Snow

Path at Daniel Webster, I had to turn around. This is the newest 8 inches of snow. I did get to break trail as even at noon no one else had shown up to snowshoe.

Daniel Webster - Freezing Dawn

At 5:45 AM my alarm went off. After hitting snooze a number of times I got up. I quickly checked the weather and saw 30 F. Well, that's cold, but I should be fine. By 6:17 I was in the car. I forgot my hand warmers, which turned out to be a disaster, and that knit hat hat I took is not as good as my wool Bula one. When I arrived I was surprised that defrosting my windows had actually caused frost to form on the inside of my car's back windows. This should have been a sign. it was bitterly, excruciatingly cold the entire time i was there. It was worse up near the parking lot, but by the time I left I couldn't really move my fingers and felt like I was walking balanced on two bricks. That said I did get some nice pictures. A few days ago I pulled out my camera's manual again to fiddle with live View. I know people had thought it was such a great feature when I bought the camera, but I'd never actually used it. in a nutshell if you're shooting from a tripod at a stationary object it increases your ability to focus by like a million times. This led to lots of frost pics. Live View can get stuff like this, rather than by chance which is how I was doing it. Out of 300 or so photos today only a handful are out of focus ones of frost. Admittedly I also have the camera on a two second timer and had the mirror lockup enabled. Right in the middle of me freezing my butt off I got to listen to numerous close by shotgun blasts. A minute later I heard "Did you get that doe?" out of the woods ahead of me, and I saw a guy in orange walk by. I'm not sure exactly where Daniel Webster ends, but that seemed mighty close to conservation land. I looked it up and shotgun deer hunting ends in 3 days, then it's primitive firearms... I heard a few from farther away later. Someone also put a little feeder on the viewing window and some accommodating tufted titmice posed for me. On the way home my mother texted me asking how cold I was. It turns out it was actually 7 F out. I just lightly check the weather and was actually looking at the high for the day. What did I learn? Always bring the good hat. Hand Warmers are essential. Always drag the tripod (I actually got a good distance from the car before going back for it this time. I nearly whacked myself in the head since I'm iffy at spotting critters at a distance my lenses are capable of, so that means mostly frost subjects at Daniel Webster.)

Daily Photo - Isopod

Spotted this guy coming down a tree at Daniel Webster.

Daniel Webster - From 1/6/10

Dawn to 9 AM Daniel Webster.

Daily Photo - Crow

Crow at Daniel Webster early this morning.

Daily Photo - Frost

Hoarfrost on leaf. I hauled out of bed yesterday before dawn and got to Daniel Webster about 20 minutes before sunrise. There was awesome frost on everything.

Daniel Webster Morning

At some point I will really figure out that is takes me about 25 minutes, unless I'm really rushing, to get out of the house in the morning. Maybe I'll even remember that it takes 45 minutes to get to Daniel Webster, so if I really want to be there at dawn, getting up at 6:45 am isn't going to cut it. On arrival around 8 am I really loved the moon. There was still some nice light, but not much of an angle anymore. At least I found some nicely colored leaves. The weather was quite odd. It started out cold, but switched up to almost 60 degrees F. There were a few dozen green and brown grasshoppers trying desperately to get out of my way. I kept herding them to the middle of the path. Due to the warmth I saw some slightly out of season insects. I was chased by freaking mosquitoes in November. The above isn't one of those color picked images, nor is it photo shopped. The gray leaves until recently were under water and started to rot. the brighter leaves fell at some point after the water disappeared. This is not the latest dragonfly I've seen, but it does appear to be the same species as last year's November 12th visitor. There were three or four that teased me back and forth up the path. I have a bad habit of moving dew soaked leaves and such from shade to sun to try to catch glittering water images. I fount two Wooly Bear caterpillars. One was motoring along in the path. I convinced him onto the leaf to get the grass out of the way. I think this is a white wooly bear, but I'm not sure. I discovered earlier this year that white caterpillars are very hard to id if you don't grow them out. This is only one of three I saw this morning. All were on a boardwalk over standing water.

Daniel Webster

Another Sunday morning at Daniel Webster in Marshfield. I'm extremely lazy about going out in October and November, partially due to the weather, but also due to the fact it now gets dark within an hour of getting out of work. It keeps raining on the weekends, so I keep getting trapped at home. Above and Below are only different due to a twist of the circular polarizer. I took some colorful leaf pics before my basic proclivities reappeared and i noticed all the fungus covered tree limbs that fell down the day before. There were plenty of weird berries and such ready for the critters willing to eat them. Canadian Geese, there's a closeup farther down. Even the Poison Ivy is changing pretty colors. Reflections of sky. There were a few dozen of these guys all over the place. Oddly enough the only other birds I saw in large numbers were crows and starlings. Overall I had fun, though it wasn't as interesting as it has been before.