Jenkins Mountain Trail, Part 2

My formerly weak legs were still feeling fine as we hiked the gradually ascending trail toward Jenkins Mountain. The trail was conveniently located high atop glacial eskers. I would have suspected that there'd been a railroad track there once upon a time if I hadn't read otherwise:

When the trail took us close enough to one of the many beaver ponds, Seamus of course went into the water for a drink and a cooling off:

A small bridge led us beneath a small, secondary beaver dam. It appeared to me that after the pond rose sufficiently, the beavers had to block this low spot to keep the pond deep enough. Amazing engineers, those beavers:

After the dogs all crossed the small bridge (you can see Seamus' giant footprints), they all trotted over to the water's edge again:

But then the trail led up and away from the beaver pond to once again follow the tops of eskers:

More Red Trilliums and Trout Lilies along the way:

We were almost past the biggest of the beaver ponds, so I snapped a photo of it one last time with that rocky peak in the background. I still suspected that was going to be our destination:

This was on April 30 and the spring flowers were just getting started. Even though the winter had been mild and spring had come early, with temperatures near 80 degrees in early March, these northern mountain plants seem to have known better than to begin ahead of schedule:

Happy dogs in a beautiful setting:

The Trout Lilies which hadn't yet been in full bloom at the lower elevations were in their full glory higher up. I guessed that to be because they got more sunlight. I'll post more tomorrow: