Two early fall hikes

Concord River looking South

Concord River looking North

Last weekend, we took advantage of the very dry summer to walk the "dry season" river trail from the Greenough Land here in Carlisle along the Concord River as far as the National Wildlife Refuge (which doesn't allow dogs).  As expected it was incredibly easy and very satisfying.  The river along this stretch is completely unspoiled.  Apart from probably a more substantial bridge on the Nashua Road, the vista no doubt looks today much as it did when Henry David Thoreau and his brother John navigated it in 1839 as described in his A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.  I now have that book as an "ebook" on my iPhone and am planning on finding out what Thoreau was thinking as they paddled from one Concord to another.

From Mt. Pisgah looking East

From Mt. Pisgah looking towards the reservoir

Yesterday we drove to Southwestern New Hampshire for a more substantial hike: to one of our favorite places – Pisgah State Park.  See previous blogs Darwin and Newts and  Basking in an Indian Summer.  We hiked from the Reservoir Road access point to the top of Mt. Pisgah.  Well, almost to the top.  I didn't have my GPS loaded with topo maps and there were a lot of trees and not fantastically good visibility.  We actually missed the summit by about 1000' horizontally and 60' vertically.  Oops!  We did have a lovely view (see left and below) from where we were sitting eating our lunch though, just East of what we thought was the summit.  We could see Mt. Monadnock quite clearly (although in the photograph, it is obscured by a branch of a nearby tree, on the extreme left).  
The wonderful thing about this view is that, except for a couple of distant antennas and, I suppose, the reservoir (see photo on right), there is nothing in the entire view that is man-made.

Normally when we hike in this park we are entirely alone, apart from our dogs that is.  But on this particular day, there was a cross-country race through the park.  The distances were significant (23k and 45k) but most of the runners seemed to be at least 40 and many were 50+ I'd say.

If you'd like to see our actual track and more detail, go to Early Fall Hike to Mt. Pisgah.

Pixie, wait!

OK, but do try to keep up.

Pixie likes to hike at the head of the column, going forward like a scout.  Sometimes she wanders off on her own and can't be found.  This happened yesterday and delayed us for about half an hour while we blew the whistle and called "Pixie....".  Fortunately, we got her back, though through no effort of hers.  Here she is on the Concord River walk.  In the first picture (left) she hears "Pixie, wait".  In the second, she turns to wait for us to catch up.  Most of the time she's well-behaved like that.  Hopefully, she just needs a bit more training.