Heading Home On Blue Mountain Road

It was Tuesday morning and time for me to drive home to Albany. I was still disappointed that I'd only managed to get in one hike this trip, but I had a plan. I would begin the drive home by taking Blue Mountain Road, just 20 minutes south of the farm. It's a backwoods road, largely uninhabited and unpaved, where I'd previously found the trail heads for earlier hikes to Azure Mountain and Quebec Brook (see past posts). So I packed up the car, shut off the water to the farm apartment and began the return trip down the marvelously scenic Blue Mountain Road:

All along the road were wetlands, many of which were only a few feet from the edge of the road:

And autumn colors were developing everywhere I looked. I kept stopping to snap pictures, leaving the dogs in the car to wonder what I was doing. Just look at those concerned faces!:

The morning mist was lifting and drifting gently over the autumn hills:

Blue Mountain Road began as a rural road with a few houses and camps. Then the blacktop ended and the road narrowed, but there were still overhead lines for a short distance. Then the road narrowed even farther and the overhead lines disappeared as the road took us deeper into the Adirondack interior:

I was most certainly not making good time on my drive home but I was enjoying the many stops along the road to see the incredible Adirondack autumn beauty. It was a quiet morning with clouds tickling the hilltops and wetlands lapping up against the side of the road. It's a marvelous experience to be able to access wilderness without leaving the safety and comfort of a road:

And then Blue Mountain Road crossed one of the branches of the St. Regis River. I stood on the tiny bridge and snapped a picture looking downstream:

And then looking upstream. This was magnificent beauty and I was awed by the quiet wildness of it all. But I had a destination in mind so we continued on our way. I'll post more tomorrow: