New Brunswick Trip - Day 15, Sam Orr Pond Trail, other wise known as Fungi Trail

 The morning was spent in laundry and cleaning. The house has also been infested with lady bugs so Rick spent a lot of time up on chairs vacuuming them off the ceiling. We decided we had time to try another hike from the book Jen left and set off after lunch.

We must have driven past this half a dozen times and never noticed it. We parked one side of the road and walked the section on the other side, around Sam Orr pond.

The pond is fed by a couple of streams and is tidal but a couple of rock sills that act as dams mean that it is less saline than other estuary's in the area and supports a different variety of marine life

We went through a section where the moss was growing in little mounds, like cushions.

In her note to us, Jen had recommended this trail but stated that it was "challenging". We agreed; rocks and roots hidden by fallen leaves

and logs over boggy patches meant that we were spending most of our time looking down,

watching our feet and commenting on

the huge variety

of fungi.

Some as large as my hand

others as small as my little finger nail.

We got to this point and understood where all those boulders littering the path had come from.

The constant climb upwards gave us a lookout.

I heard an unusual bird call and looking up, there was a bald eagle circling over head.

That one circled away and this one came into view. While Rick was getting his camera focused on this one, the other circled back directly overhead. (Photo by Rick). We sat for a while and watched them.

Then a large white, husky type, dog appeared, ran up to us, shook wet, seaweedy smelling water all over us and sat down between us to get stroked. He was followed by a young woman with a baby in a backpack carrier and a toddler. She told us they had disturbed the two eagles from their pine tree just down the trail. I couldn't believe they were going to traverse the "challenging" trail we had just come up.

This was in bedded into the rock at the lookout point. An internet search resulted in the info that he died in Texas from wounds received in a terrorist attack 2 weeks earlier in Saudi Arabia and was from Fredericton.

Down hill and we were to the pond again and could see one of the rock sills that dam the pond.

As the tide was out, water was flowing down in waterfalls and rapids, from the pond to the ocean.

Way down, where the stream met the ocean, we could see a fair sized ketch, at anchor.

There were clam shells in the shallows, sea snails on the rocks and

crabs had been stranded in the marsh grass.

I was OK with this passage across as my hiking boots are waterproof but Rick got a "soaker".

We kept hoping that the eagle pair would return for a picture taking opportunity but the only bird life was this cormorant, drying its wings.

This side of the pond was an easier walk

with occasional views.

I don't know how far we walked but it took us a little over 2 hours.

Got home and it rained for the first time since we drove into New Brunswick.

While I was scrolling through Ricks camera card, looking for the eagle picture, I pilfered a couple of his other photos:

A couple of cormorants preening.

Me doing what I do a lot of (today was a low photo day and I still had 50 to sort through to do this blog)