A Mid-Week Walk

   Hi everyone.  Happy middle of the week. 

   A few weeks ago I had an appointment down in Portsmouth. It was a beautiful day at the shore; one of those days where the breeze came in off the ocean and made the temperatures right along the coast a good 15 degrees (F) cooler than inland. I had thought about going to the state beach for a while after my appointment, but I figured by the time I was done with my appointment (since it was the perfect day for sand and surf), the beach would be really crowded. Instead I decided to head over to Odiorne State Park and go for a walk. It was really a lovely one too.

   The state's done a lot of upkeep there, so the trails were cleared and set for walking. I first headed down towards the beach area of this park. You do get people who come to this "beach" to enjoy the sand and water, but since the only way to get there is to walk in through the trails or boat in,  this beach doesn't get crowded like  the bigger beaches just a couple of miles down the coast.

   I would have walked out to the point along the beach as the tide was low enough to do that, but when I came around a corner, the beach was rather busy. Grin. Rather than disturbing the geese, I turned around and headed back into the woods. 

   The shade felt great anyhow.

I thought this tree  had an unusual shape.

     Out at the point there was this big bunch of tiger lilies. The state had also mowed the grass here. I wonder if at some point in the past, long before this was a state park, there was a house here. A friend who is an archaeologist told me that one clue she often has about the location of  no longer existing buildings  is where you find clumps of flowers that are not wildflowers.

    It's always fun to come out to this point since 1) the views are so pretty and 2) we boat through the water here. I like seeing the view from another perspective.

From there I went back into the woods along the trail.

     Some of the Second World War coastal defenses are still here. When I was newly retired and came here I wondered if the graffiti was from any of my former students. Now I've been retired long enough  my former students are (hopefully) no longer irresponsible teenagers and are responsible adults. 

    There used to be some actual art graffiti on some of these walls, well done butterflies and birds, but now the graffiti is just messy scribble and a waste of paint and viewing. I continued on.

   Pretty soon I was back to the parking lot.

   I hope you enjoyed taking a walk with me on a beautiful summer day. And hope you are having a beautiful summer day also.