The Leonard Pond Trail - Part 1

The access road to the Leonard Pond trail was directly across the road from the access road to Jamestown Falls (yesterday's post). But this time, we had to park at the trail head and hike - which was just fine with my joyful dogs:

We began in a coniferous forest, a boreal forest type, filled with the wonderful aroma of Balsam Firs:

The forest type kept changing as we walked, in this place a hardwood forest, but with pines and spruce just ahead:

I stopped to admire and photograph this wonderful ferny moss growing on a fallen log. Notice the Pixie-Cup Lichen at the top center, just below and to the left of those red spots:

The trail was lovely and easy walking:

We walked through a Red Pine forest:

I later read that the Red Pines had taken over after the forest fires of the early 1900s:

A variety of lichens on a pine branch:

We saw this green oasis just off the trail and stopped to investigate. It was a designated campsite, and a beautiful one at that:

There was supposed to be a spur trail which would lead us to Leonard Pond but there were a number of such trails and I had left my trail guide back at the car. Oops. We kept trying branching paths and then returning to the main trail:

I finally decided that we'd gone beyond where the Leonard Pond spur was supposed to branch off, so we just took the next one we came to:

And it was a beauty. Pond or no pond, this was a lovely forest and we were exploring. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: