Yesterday we drove over to Waterford, made a quick stop to pick up lunch at Melby's Market & Eatery (Italian sandwiches, of course!) and went to Kezar Falls Gorge for a treasure hunt and picnic lunch. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were horrendous! The gorge/waterfall are amazing though, but tough to photograph properly. I wish that I could have spent more time there with the camera, but the bugs drove us out.
We made the short drive back up to the unnamed portion of the 5 Kezar Ponds. We launched the canoe and kayaks and we started paddling around while the boys fished. A short while later, we saw a loon and started to get closer for photos. All of a sudden another loon appeared and started chasing the first one! They went all over the pond and then into to Middle Pond!! It was bizarre!! And 'loony'!! (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) We followed them under a cute little bridge to Middle Pond.
Almost immediately, Dad caught a pickerel! Smaller than the one that he caught on Moose Pond, but good sized. He released it and we continued onward to Back Pond, again traveling under a little bridge.
On the other side of this bridge, we could see the bankings underneath us as the water went from really shallow to really, really deep, very suddenly. Dad watched a little fish chase his lure, until he pulled it into the deep water and the little fish decided he wasn't brave enough to go into those waters!
On Back Pond we discovered a mother loon & her baby. And truly, this young one looked to be about a week or so older than the one we saw on Shagg Pond! It was really cool to see how it was developing and growing. On its belly, it is starting to grow the white feathers, and the head is getting elongated. I would love to go back to Shagg Pond and see how big that baby loon is getting...
On the back-side of the pond, Grammie, Grampa & the boys disembarked for a quick swim and some more kayak practice time for the boys. Dad stayed in the canoe to do a bit more fishing and caught a couple of baby bass & a sunfish. He could see some good-sized trout looking at his lure, but for some reason they just wouldn't bite it - smart fish! ;-)
After a while we started to head back towards Middle Pond, where we spent a bit of time near the bridge as Dad caught another baby bass. This time, after getting into the unnamed pond, we paddled left, away from the boat launch, and into the Mud Pond Fen. We saw quite a few turtles, (One baby that couldn't have been much more than a couple of inches long!) a Great Blue Heron and the boys had several bites, but nothing that would stay on the line long enough for them to get it into the boat. The leaves are just starting to turn red on the maples, so it was very pretty.
Here is a definition that I found online: There are two kinds of peatlands in Maine. A fen is one where water flows through, bringing precious nutrients and carrying out undesirable acids. A bog is an isolated system with no flow-through stream, where nutrients come in intermittently via wind and rainfall.
The end of a great day...
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