An Orgy of Bridges

Ahhh another lovely weekend outside on the books. Look at us go! Walking miles through nature! And no one is forcing us at gunpoint! Astonishing! 

I will say now though that this story ends with margaritas and chimichangas. Life is about balance after all.

Saturday was forecasted to be unseasonably warm and sunny so we felt that it was out of our hands, we had to get out there. We decided to make a day of it and head to southern New Hampshire to revisit an area filled with trails we had hiked before, Beaver Brook in Hollis. There's a whole network of trails so I left the map reading to M, as I have gotten lost in a parking garages. 

These particular trails are some of my favorites. They're labeled as moderate, not excessively strenuous but definitely a workout, and lots of interesting things to see. Some hikes are a boring slog through trees but this one had enough variation in terrain and views to be interesting.

For instance, there's a lot of bridges. As I've discussed before, bodies of water never fail to draw us in but you know what's even more exciting? Bridges. No idea why, but if I stumble across a narrow set of planks built up over some murky water in the middle of the woods, the trail suddenly becomes ten times more interesting to me and I spend a significant amount of time standing on them taking pictures and staring into to water looking for creatures.

Look! Another one! But with railings!

Also exciting was finding the most poorly hidden geocache ever. I've joined some people on searching for these before and they're a real search. Like, they don't make it easy. We stumbled across another poorly hidden stash but I failed to record that one. Someone dropped the ball here but I didn't have the heart to mess with it.

An orgy of bridges!!

What really got me was how truly beautiful the day was. I did such a photo dump here because I couldn't stop taking pictures of the lovely ways the bright sunlight caught the surroundings and reflected off the water.

We even made a new friend, this turtle. Yes, that is a turtle I promise, we saw him move and everything. It was a pretty big guy who looked like he's been through some serious battles but came out the other side ready to snap off any curious fingers. ...We left him alone.

We also spotted some wild chairs in their not-so-natural habitat. We did not stop and now I'm regretting it- I'm anxious as ever!

***

In total, M estimates that we dragged ourselves through about 7 miles of forest. I was sore for a couple days after but I was feeling pretty proud of myself for lasting that long without complaining, a real feat for me.

And yes, to refuel from the day of actual real-live physical activity, we went to get some chimichangas and a couple blood orange margaritas (mojitos for M). Totally worth it- they tasted even better after all that fresh air.