Final Fifties Hike

The Big 6-0 comes roaring in for me in less than a week, closing out an amazing decade in my life. I decided, sore foot or not, that I needed to get in one last little hike while I am still fifty something. So I went to Maymont, a combination flower garden - wildlife display - landscaping - nature center - historic home property along the James River. I walked about two and a third miles, going at a nice, slow 20 minutes per mile pace. While this hike can't match so many of the ones I've done in my 50's - Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Glacier NP, Mount Rainier, White Mountains, Shenandoah - it was a nice little walk on a hot day, and a fun way to close out another decade of traveling on my feet.

My route is shown in blue. I started and ended at the upper left of the image. The red track along the bottom is part of last fall's hike along the Northside Trail and Buttermilk Springs Trail. (photos here). Maymont is fairly hilly, as seen by this elevation profile. The elevation range here is about 120 feet.

A lot of Maymont is open ground.

There are lots of beautiful flowers in the gardens here:

This nanny goat lives at the childrens petting zoo here.

I rarely get to see this gray fox, but he or she was out an alert today.

This great horned owl was somehow injured and cannot live in the wild.

The black bears here are very popular and have a huge enclosure. This point is meters from the Northside Trail shown in the map above.

There is a beautiful Japanese Garden here, with lots of streams and ponds,

some of which contain large coy:

One of the stately buildings on the property:

This hollow tree was large enough for me to comfortably lie down in, had I so chosen: