St. Regis River Flow Trail - Part 1

I take the dogs to the St. Regis River Flow trail at least once each year (and hopefully more often), beginning at the boat launch. The trail is largely meadow and riverbanks, with lots of wildflowers. And it's the best place I know to find Cardinal flowers. We parked near the two piers and boat launch:

No one else was there, so I let the dogs off the leash and they wasted no time getting wet and muddy:

But I soon called them away from the parking area and we headed for the trail:

This must have once been all forest, but it's largely meadow now, and a great place to find wildflowers and for happy dogs to run:

We arrived at the trail, which is more or less kept mowed, and turned upstream parallel to the river:

One of the most common blooming flowers was Meadowsweet, Spiraea latifolia, a member of the Rose family. It is a small bush and absolutely beautiful:

 And there was lots of Common St. Johnswort and Spotted Knapweed:

The trail became a sort of dirt road, just right for my lame legs and the dogs to run amok with joy:

There are a certain number of access trails to the river which I always take. When we got to the first one, the dogs knew just where to go and ran excitedly toward the water:

Indeed, the water was lovely. You can see the two piers in the background. That's where we were parked. But we'd just gotten started. I'll post part 2 tomorrow: