WE MADE A NEW FRIEND

Who would of ever guessed that by the end of the exploring the woods we would of made a new friend, but more on that later.  The weather was perfect for staying inside and watching tv, the  wind was blowing, it was cold out, plus it spit rain now and than, but we gathered up the cameras and headed off into the park.  We walked along the Park Loop road headed for the new trail we found days ago, the Witch Hole Pond Trail.  We had hoped to see a deer or maybe a fox along the way no luck today.

abandoned witch hole pond trail - acadia national park

We entered the path and walked down it a short ways and decided to explore along one end of the marsh,   There was a hill of granite with a number of large boulders, and we were hoping to find a cave back there, again no luck, so we returned back to the trail.   About half way along the trail we decided to explore the woods on the hill to our right which overlooked the marsh.  On old maps it shows that there was once three or four houses up along that hill.  It took some searching but we finally did find a location where there appeared to be a sunken foundation.
The upside to the cold and the wind was that there was no blackflies at all, which was great.  At some point we made our way down the back side of that hill and discovered an old dirt road, and decided to follow it.  At first it was a nice clear road, but slowly more and more brush grew up in the road, but we pushed on.  The dirt road finally came out by a large marsh and continued on very close to the edge, close enough so water from the marsh was beginning to make the dirt road soggy and wet.  We turned back and followed the road in the other direction - it came out onto the carriage road just above where we had found the new trail.
We made our way toward Witch Hole Pond and as we were passing a sign post for the carriage roads we made another discovery, a third starting point for the abandoned Witch Hole Pond trail, right there next to the sign post.  This path was well worn and we wobdered how in the world we had missed it days ago.  Now I have to redo my mape I had made, oh well.
As it would turn out there was no ducks in either the marsh nor at Witch Hole Pond, so we began to make our way toward  the Duck Brook Bridge.  We didn't get far along when we came upon the new friend we made, sitting, or standing, on a granite block along one side of the carriage road.  We watched for some time as it hopped and flew from one stone to the next, clearly it enjoyed our company.

beaver lodge - acadia national park

The language of birds is still a bit of a mystery to me, so after a while we parted ways and soon reached Duck Brook Bridge.  I had one more thing I wanted to check out so we went down by the water behind that small building not far from the bridge and scanned the surface for beaver.  One had just gone under that water by the beaver lodge, so we waited for it  to show itself again - but it didn't, so I only got a photo of the beaver lodge.  Than out of no where two ducks made their way out of the tall grass and glided out onto the water, so I shot them, with my camera, of course.
It was a perfect way to end the day and we turned and headed for home.