Marsh and Beach Hike

Yesterday, I had time to take an hour and a half hike in Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.  It was a cool and cloudy day, but the effort of walking was such that I stripped off my fleece after a while.  It was also still warm enough that I saw the noses of a few turtles poking from the water's surface like a submarine's periscope.

First, I hiked along the bay, spying on a little group of American coots as they swam away in formation.

Back Bay was very calm this day, and the marsh vegetation looked kind of golden.

Then, I continued on a trail through the marsh.  I wanted to visit the memorial to Richard McCormick Hodge.  It is nice to know something about this young man, who died way too young.  Here is a view of his memorial from a little distance so that you can see the pond behind it.

And here is a close-up of the tree frog on the memorial - so cool!

From this point - where I had spotted two animals that I will write about later for one of my "What Am I?" (here is one of them) features - I hiked back to the access road and along the marsh to the observatory blind.  Like is often so, there were no animals to see this time.  Other times, I can hit the jackpot!  So I decided to head to the beach with the short amount of time before dusk.  It is a beautiful beach, backed by nice dunes,

and is fairly pristine all of the way to the North Carolina border.  The recent Super-storm Sandy, which kissed our coastline, had rearranged some of the dunes and also made the beach more level and wide.

It was a very nice walk, and in the next few days to come, I will be posting more about some of the wildlife that I saw.