Eastport 2026

On September 4^th, we headed up to Eastport for a mini-vacation. Friends of ours had rented an RV campsite and had mentioned that there were also cabins on site, so we had rented one of the cabins for the weekend. I’d like to say it was a lovely drive up north, but alas, we were accompanied by a more than moderate rainfall. Now, I never was a happy traveler. Within about 15 minutes of our drive, the truck decided on its own that the heat should be on, and motion sickness set in for the duration of the journey. It was a long 4 hour drive, even with the air condition turned on the rest of the way.

Once we arrived and I settled down, we had a bite to eat before exploring the cabin. It was rather small. The kitchen basically had a 2-burner stove with a tiny refrigerator underneath. There was a small table for 2 people and a couch next to the table. To drive home the point that this was a cabin for 2, we found that the kitchen was equipped with 2 forks, 2 knifes, 2 glasses and 2 mugs. In fact, when our friends joined us for dinner the next night, they had to bring their own utensils and glasses.

Although the rain had stopped by the next morning, it was a bit foggy. Still, I stepped outside to see if I could get some photos of things covered in water droplets. My leaf pictures were a bust, but the spider webs were pretty impressive and they were everywhere. I would like to say they all came out beautifully, but the one here was the best of the lot.

While we were cleaning up after breakfast, I looked out the window and saw, what looked like a person on the foggy beach below taking pictures. It seemed like they would bend their head to look through the camera, straighten up and bend down again. I went outside to get a better look. As the fog dissipated a bit, I realized that what I thought was a person was actually an osprey sitting on a piling. You can just about make it out in the second picture above.

Since we weren’t meeting up with our friends until 9:30, we decided to explore the campground a bit. There was a trail that went from the campground to a spit of land nearby. It was a very short path, ending at a grassy area with a bench looking out towards the water and Deer Island, Canada. There was a woman with 2 dogs, sitting on the bench watching the fog. I wanted to get a picture of the bench and the fog over the island, but the woman was enjoying the view. I finally took the picture anyway. I don’t know who she was, but I liked the composition of the photo.

We returned back to the cabin briefly, before heading out to our next adventure.

History Trail

I had read in the local paper recently, that there was a guided walk exploring the history of the Camden Hills State Park. This particular program called “the other side of the park”, would reveal the history of the Sagamore Section (the shoreline section across Route 1), and its construction by the Civil Conservation Corps and the landscape architect Hans Heisted. Just from the description I had already learned that this side of the park had a name. I had heard of Sagamore Farm which was just south of this location but did not know that the name also referred to the park itself.

On August 19^th, my husband and I arrived at the ranger booth and joined 5 others for the tour and a history lesson. While we were waiting for our guide, I noticed a small sign across from the booth that indicated a trail I hadn’t seen before. I believe it was called the History Trail. We generally came to this side to walk along the Shoreline Trail, which I thought was the only path here, sit at the tables along this avenue and enjoyed our coffee with excellent water views.

What I did learn was that Heisted, who worked with the Olmsteads for a bit, eventually became the landscape architect for the Camden Hills State Park. The History Trail showed his vision for getting people into nature. The path curved around so that visitors experienced many different aspects of nature, some of which had to be imagined today. I believed this trail was rehabilitated by the most recent trail manager of the park.

Our first stop was at a large beech tree. I counted six trunk sections that expanded in different directions. The tree was not in very good shape and I wondered how much longer it would stand. The photo I took did not capture the grandeur of this tree. It was one of those stops where we had to imagine a single tree in a meadow. Over time the meadow turned back to forest.

As we continued along, we discovered the remnants of stone dams that created pools and cascading water in a different time. We also made a stop at a picnic area with the remnants of several stone stoves or ovens. Opposite this was another stone structure with a faucet, so there was access to a fully equipped cooking area.

Continuing on towards the Shoreline Trail, our guide pointed out how Heisted incorporated natural material in order to encourage people to sit and enjoy nature for a while. We didn’t notice until our narrator pointed out stones that were meant to be flat tables with rocks around them for chairs. Once these areas had been pointed out, we saw them in several areas throughout the tour.

Eventually, we reached a section of the Shoreline Trail that had stone steps heading down to the shore. The steps looked pretty uneven and it was a long way down. With images of falling down those stone steps I decided discretion was the better part of valor and declined to make the descent. One other person in our group felt the same way, so we sat on a bench with an excellent water view while the others went down. I instructed my husband to take a picture, so the credit for that photo goes to him.

We finished our tour at an enclosed picnic area with views of a single massive tree and the water behind it. It was a great way to end our tour.

Tanglewood Again 2026

Even though I had only visited the Tanglewood Preserve back in May, I decided to explore it again on August 15^th. My primary reason for this visit was to see if any progress had been made on the Forest Loop Trail. I had read so much about adding bog bridges and replacing old ones, but I had not seen any progress on the river side of the Forest Loop closest to the parking area and the River Trail. The last time I was here was the height of mud season and there were long stretches of the trail that needed attention.

Once we arrived, I decided we would take the Forest Loop to the camp and then return on the road so that the going would be easier when I was tired. I had found since my surgery 8 months ago that fatigue had been a problem, even on trails I have hiked many times.

Hiking the Forest Loop in August meant that mud wouldn’t be as much of a problem. We could certainly see where there was mud during the wet season and noted that no bog bridging had taken place yet. In some areas, where logs had been placed log ago to get across the mud, these logs were almost completely reclaimed by nature. They had replaced a rotting snow mobile bridge across a stream, but that was it.

As we continued towards the River Trail I stopped for a second, then ducked as I stepped forward and warned my husband about the spider web. It was a beautiful web, stretched across the path. After taking some pictures, we headed towards the river. There were bare spots near the falls, indicating that we had not had enough rain this year for the falls to really flow. We did spot some Cardinal Flowers in some of these areas, but could not get close enough for pictures.

We made our way from the River Trail back towards the Forest Loop. Here we started to see new bridges, stream crossings and planking. As I suspected most of the work had been done closer to camp. Along this section, I found clusters of Dewdrops and some very large polypores in the middle of the path.

The trail got a bit wider as we approached the camp. Once there, we found a picnic table and enjoyed a snack, while I rested a bit. I was tired and glad that we decided to return to the parking lot via the dirt road.

Cameron Mountain 2026

As I started to get back into the woods after my surgery, I decided that my first hiking goal for the year would be to Cameron Mountain in the Camden Hills State Park. Given my trepidation on relatively flat, easy trails, I felt this was a reasonable goal. It consisted of two wide, multi-use roads with a bit of terrain difficulty near the summit. The hardest part would be the duration of the 4+ miles round trip. It had been a long time since I had taken a long walk in the woods.

On July 27^th, my husband and I set out for the Multi-use trailhead on the Lincolnville side of the park. This 5-mile road went from the main entrance of the park in Camden to Lincolnville. Most of the trails in the park branched off from the Multi-use Trail.

It took us about 40 minutes or more to make it up the 1.2 mile steady incline of the Multi-use Trail to the Cameron Mountain Trail. Of course, we made the usual breathing stops along the way. During this time of year, the Spring flowers were done and the Summer ones were not yet in bloom, so there were no long stops to study the vegetation.

The Cameron Trail was fairly flat, with only a few hilly sections. We failed to stop at the bridge and admire the stream near the path, only because we couldn’t hear the water running. On our return trip, we made a point to look for it and discovered that the stream bed was completely dry. Hence there was no babbling brook.

We strolled along this path for another mile, until we reached the spur that led to the Cameron Mountain summit. Before making this last push, we paused to identify the Steeple Bush and Fireweed flowers. This Fireweed or Chamerion Angustifolium was the one with the red flower, which I don’t see that often. I only recently discovered that the yellow flower that looks like a very tall dandelion and was also called Fireweed or Erechtites Hieraciicolius, was also known as Burnweed.

While I was making these discoveries, my husband was eating the blueberries growing in the field. Once we were finished with our tasks, we headed up the hill. This last section gets quite steep and is covered with loose stones, so I was quite a bit nervous as I maneuvered through the scree, but I made it. Goal accomplished! We found a boulder to sit on for a long rest and a bite to eat.

On the way down, I did slip a bit on the loose stones which caused me to freeze for a minute. I took a few deep breaths to try and dispel the fear of falling that I had developed over the past year, before gingerly working my way down this short, problematic section. We finished our journey without further incident, but I was exhausted. I decided the next day would be a day of rest.

Bretzfelder Memorial Park

Since we had bailed on the hike at the summit of the ski area early on the afternoon of July 13^th, we were looking at a long afternoon before we could go out for dinner. My husband was not one for hanging around, so he suggested we drive to Littleton and walk around before our planned dinner in Bethlehem. Ever the researcher, I hunted around for any trails very near the Bethlehem area and discovered Bretzfelder Memorial Park.

The Bretzfelder Park was one of several protected by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. In fact, I had put another property, called The Rocks, owned by this society on my list of possible places to visit while planning out this trip. I always added way more things than we could possibly accomplish when mapping out a trip, so that there were plenty of options.

The Bretzfelder property’s claim to fame was a white pine that was estimated to be over 200 years old, but it also included almost 2 miles of trails. The park was pretty easy to find. We headed west for maybe 20 minutes and turned right near the middle of town. Just a few more miles and we were at the parking lot. We studied the trail map and noticed that there was a tree ID trail and a system of trails where we could create a loop around 2 wet areas. We opted for the loop.

The only part of this trail system where I was a little bit nervous was near the beginning when we had to make a 180-degree turn on a decline, and it seemed like the path was a bit narrow here. I had visions of slipping off the side and sliding down the hill. I managed this tiny bout of nerves, and the rest of the walk went without incident.

After our descent into the forest, we very shortly crossed a bridge over a small stream. From there we soon found one of the ponds. There was a grassy area around this basin, and several picnic tables were located nearby. I took a few reflection pictures as we walked around. It really was a lovely area to sit by the water and just take in the soothing vibes of nature. After strolling around the area for a bit, we re-entered the woods and continued our journey. In some spots the woods were covered with moss or ferns. We also found several different types of mushrooms along the way. The best was the tiny red-capped specimen.

We never did find that second body of water. I suspect that it was just a wetland because there was an area where we encountered a lot of biting insects. Once we got past that, we were on the return side of the loop. We were beginning to lose some light in the woods as we made our way back towards the entrance. Between that and the fact that it was our third walk of the day, I started to scuff the rocks and roots under my feet. I did remain upright though, so that was a plus.

Back at the kiosk, I commented that we never did find that White Pine. Right next to the kiosk, I saw the Tree ID Trail and walked a few yards down the path. There in front of me was that massive tree. We could actually see the darn thing from the car! Satisfied with our exploration, we headed off to dinner.