We took Sunday off to rest our feet and the rest of our bodies too! But Monday we were back on the trail, and concentrating hard on walking a lot of miles. Compared to some of the scenic sections on other days, Monday was rather tame, but you know I found some cool plants.
Meet the dewberry, a member of the raspberry family. Dewberries grow close to the ground, and the treat for this day was that we found a few ripe berries to try. They are edible, but the wildlife usually eats them before they ripen, so I'd never had a chance to try them before. The taste was sort of a tart red raspberry.
We had been seeing shinleaf partially opened for several days, but I was waiting to picture it until it was fully in bloom. Here you go!
How about a closer view of those little waxy bells? Remember that this is also a pyrola, Pyrola elliptica. This is the most common one, so anyone in the NE US might come across it. The pink pyrola from a couple of days ago is much less common.
Finally, I just liked this trail picture. 15 more miles done!
I have to confess that I had very mixed feelings about the way these last few days of the bulk of my NCT quest played out. There were a lot of parts of it all that I didn't like. We got up early every day to hike as much as possible before the day heated up. That logically seems like a good thing, but I struggle so much with early morning that it never felt good. I also didn't like the way the whole experience was so rushed. On the other hand, there was no reason to stretch these days out. The terrain was easy, and while I didn't want to rush things, on the other hand I just wanted to finish. Just three more hiking days to go...
5 comments:
I am such an early morning person all my life, even with retirement, I don't sleep late - even though I don't usually get to bed until almost 2AM. Of course, I have the luxury of being able to take a little nap from about 2P - 3P every day.
I can understand you wouldn't want to hike in the heat of the day, though. I was wiped out just sitting at a bridal shower on Saturday in Fairfield, CA where the temperature was about 94 - way too hot for me after my foggy climate where the temperatures are about twenty degrees lower.
The little flower is so pretty and what a treat to have a fresh berry!
That trail picture looks very inviting -- even to a geezer like me.
Carmen- I really fade in heat and humidity. I'm a complete wimp in those conditions!
Chuck- you're not an old geezer! anyone can take a walk... I just put a long string of them together.
That trail looks like it goes on forever.
So that's what a dewberry looks like... Berries are a fascination to me (probably because we don't encounter a lot of them locally) and berrying is definitely in the list of things I hope to do for home/earthschool:)
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