Backpacking in Wild River Wilderness

During memorial day weekend, we went 2 nights/3 days backpacking. I want to make sure to practice social distancing during this covid-19 outbreak, however, recently it is getting difficult to do so on trails. First of all, snow has almost melted in New Hampshire, meaning more hikers come hiking. Secondly, not many people are careful about social distancing.
To overcome this issue, we chose unpopular area to hike. What is unpopular? First, it is the area without 4000-footers. 4000-footers are the mountains higher than 4000 foot high. In New England, there is the list of 4000-footers, and the list persons do those >4000 feet peaks. Actually there are so many list people. It is surprising how little hikers are for the 3998 foot high peak. 4000 foot mountains without views are much more popular than 3999 foot mountains with great views in New England. We don't care the list (I know that Mr.N secretly records which mountains we hiked, though). Based on this observation we went backpacking in the Wild River Wilderness.
First day is the easiest. Only 3.3 miles. The trail is along with river all the way and several time needed to cross. There is no bridge. This is another reason the area was not popular. In fact, it seemed like this is much bigger facto to make this area isolated.
Since we were not hiking for the past 3-4 weeks due to outbreak and mostly we went kayaking, it was really nice feeling to be on a trail. The temperature was above 20C (probably above 70F) with full of sun. I felt like the summer suddenly came! Our last hike was snowshoeing actually. What a difference.
After snow is gone, there are pretty flowers. 

We saw at least two colors of trillium. White and red. 

The white one has nice pink/red color in the center. It is very nice to see flowers. 

Then I had a big moment in the 1st day morning. 

I saw a mother moose and a baby moose!!!!!

We were hiking quietly, I was on the first and Mr.N a little behind. I heard some noise in the forest and I stopped and looked around. Oh wow. There is animal! I stared at her and she stared at me for a few second. Then Mr.N came and said, "Moose!" Then we noticed a baby moose!!!

The mother moose was black, and the baby was brown. The baby was in a little lower place from mother. Mother must have signaled baby to come and baby had to climb the tiny hill. The baby struggled a little to climb it. Aww, cute! Then they disappeared deeper into the forest. 

I would say that this was my first time seeing moose. More precisely I had seen moose in Grand Teton, however, it was too far and I just spotted it as a black dot. I was on the top of mountain and looking down the bottom of valley. The valley was at least 1000 meters below, so moose was just like a dot. I wouldn't feel like I saw a moose. Thus this time was the first time! So happy I saw moose and a baby moose!

Meadow

The trail continued pleasantly: flat and sunny. 

Beaver's trace

Another finding a little later the encounter of moose was a lot of trees cut by beavers. There was a small creek. It looked like a river beavers really like. We saw trees fell by being eaten by beavers, and trees beavers half way and almost done to be cut. By making trees fell, beavers can eat upper portion. 

The left picture is the trace of beaver. The tree was cut by beaver and the tree has beaver's teeth  marks. Cute!

Many animals live in the forest. Fun!

River crossing

Last portion of the first day before reaching a campsite was river crossing. The river appears to be shallow, but it actually knee high (right picture). Also the water is just from melted snow, so it is very cold. 

our tent

Campfire

After crossing we reached the backcountry campsites. This is free, designated camp area in the backcountry.  Good thing is fire is allowed! Indeed there was already a fire ring. Moreover, logs are everywhere in the area. Immediately I arrived at the site, I started foraging. Dinner and campfire is the best combination for the night. Bonus was evening birds' calls. Those voices are nostalgic and beautiful. 

I had a nice sleep with river sounds whole night. Usually first night of backpacking I have a less deep sleep, but this time was perfect.
Next morning was beautiful. It was nice to wake up in the forest. Now morning birds' songs came. Now those are cheering and cute. Morning started with breakfast and, of course, campfire. 

River crossing

Eagle Crag

The second day had several river crossing again. One of them was especially scary, because just downstream we crossed was a little falls and upstream was also falls (left picture). It means deep and and power of stream is high. Due to large frequency of river crossings, many people don't choose this tracks. This means this area is really empty. Indeed, until we came to the point that can be accessed without river crossing we didn't see anyone at all. Solitude was nice. Mr.N said no bridge is like Montana wilderness. I love deep wilderness without humans. For safety-wise we have Derome Inreach (satellite device). 

Then we ascended to Eagle Crag which was the highest point of the backpacking and had lunch. Lunch was crackers and tuna. Delicious!

Morning forest

The second day night we had planned to camp at another designated backcountry camping area, but there were more than 4 tents already there when we arrived around 5 p.m. So we continued hiking another mile and found some good spot in the forest.  Dispersed camping is solitude and nice. Next morning we walked a few miles in the nice quiet forest and wrapped up the backpacking.  

Kayaking @ Tully Lake

Another kayaking!

Now snow is melted: trails in New Hampshire have more people. It is difficult to conduct social distancing on a narrow, steep trails. Compared to that, kayaking is much easier to have enough distance from other kayakers. Now our weekend activities are kayaking.

Sunny day

Today we went kayaking on river and Tully lake. We had emailed before if it is open and allowed to kayak. They said yes. The reason why we checked in advance was that the launching area was closed a week before. This time we made sure it was open and also we planned a back up place. Luckily it turned out to be a sunny warm day.

blue bird

Today we kayaked 6.6 miles, out and back, consisted of river portion and lake portion.
The highlight are animals.
First we saw a blue bird. The bird's silhouette is cute. Also without seeing their bodies we heard many birds' songs. 

red-winged blackbird

The next bird was red-winged blackbird. It was on the branch and calling a lot. Nice to see that. 

heron

Lastly we saw a heron. I took a picture it just left the rock.  It was big. 

Observing birds are relaxing and nice. Also just floating on a kayak  adds extra relaxing feeling. 

Birds are exciting, however, today's highlight of the highlights is a beaver!!!! It was my first time seeing a beaver. I have seen many beaver dams and beaver lodges but beavers themselves never came out and showed up. This time we spotted a beaver on the shore eating something! (right picture). 

A minute later he went into the water (the left picture), and started swimming. Since beavers can't breath inside the water, the head was out, but sometimes all the body was under the water. For example, there was log floating on his way, he went under the water to pass it. He swam very well! We kept a distance with him and continued observing. He swim fast!!

After I checked the recording of our kayaking, he swam 0.2 mile and disappeared, probably he landed somewhere.
He looked like he knew where he was going and had a very solid plan. Very cute and exciting!

Hope I will see a beaver again!

Kayaking @ Sudbury River

As I wrote in a previous entry, we got a new part for our broken kayak. Meaning we can go kayaking again. We chose this time Sudbury river, which is only 30 minute drive from Boston. 

First we went to the launching area we planned. We found more than 5 cars there and a group of 5 people was launching a boat. It looked like they might need more time. We didn't like the crowded launching area during this pandemic, so we went to another launching area. Another one was only 7 minute drive from there and there were only a couple of cars. We looked nearby and we found a place where we could launch around 100 meters away from the normal launching area. That way it was possible not to contact with any other strangers! Why not did that?!

Swan

First animal we saw was a swan. The entire 6 miles of kayaking there was only one swan. Maybe he needed solitude, or social distancing. Swans look like aristocrats. They can swim as if nothing is going on. They paddle hard under water, but no facial expression change, which is a real aristocrat.

Muskrat

Then next animal we saw was a muskrat. He was on the log floating on the river. It seemed that he was eating plants. Realizing a kayak coming, he swam to his home! So cute. I had never known about muskrats until I started kayaking, but now I see many and I like them. 

The next animal we saw was Canada geese. There were a lot of them. Cute. Then the next was turtles. They like to be on the log in a long line. Cuties. Sometimes small turtles are on  big ones. What funny about turtles is sometimes a big turtle is on a smaller turtle. Poor small ones!

Bird

Finally, we saw some birds, but heard a lot of birds. Here the area is Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge. Therefore many birds live there. It was nice to hear the birds. The left picture is one of the birds I could see. Can you see a bird?

Kayak with pump

As I wrote before here, we had air leaking problem. This time a good thing is that our new tube worked well. It was nice to paddle all the way without leaking air. Just in case we carried air pump on the kayak, as you can see on the right picture. 

While we were packing up our kayak to the car, we saw two kayaks went by the river. Hmmm? Two kayaks were tied. The second kayak was just pulled by the first one. Parents were paddling on the first one and the kids were on the second one and was pulled by the first one. Wow. Spoiled. 

Kayaking @ Nashua River

Kayaking is a great activity in the COVID-19 outbreak. Kayaking is much easier to comply with social distancing practices. Hiking is also good outdoor activity, however, as snow melt in New England, more people come out for hikes and now it is hard to have enough distances from others on narrow trails. 

Thus we went kayaking on Nashua river. We started in the city of Pepperell, which is 50 minute drive from Boston. This time we kayaked out and back, total 7 miles. 

Launching area

I was a little worried about launching might have other cars. Luckily there was no cars. The right picture is the launching area. The sign of river was funny. Between "NASHUA" and "RIVER" there was blue line. I first thought that somebody's vandalism. Then I realized that it was a drawing for river😆

Swan

We saw swans and geese. Actually I had never seen swans in California, but here in New England there are many opportunities to see them. 

Tree reflecting on the river

On the way kayaking was smooth and enjoyed a lot. Water was calm and trees on the shore was reflecting on the river. The hard part was the latter half coming back to the launching area. Why?  Because the air was leaking from the kayak! Our kayak is an inflatable one. Every time we start, we pump it up. Our pump has a gage of pressure and we always have air at an ideal pressure (1-2 psi). Luckily the holes were very little, so we didn't sink. However, even with little leak, less air makes kayak move forward much less. To make kayak move ahead, we needed to paddle much harder. Mr.N had a harder time, because his section (rear) sunk more than my area (front) due to his weight is heavier than mine. 

Upon coming home we found some holes and patched, but there was still leak. We called the company and sent pictures. They tried to argue that we didn't pump the air at the right pressure and asked if we used the pump with gauge to measure pressure. We sent our pump with a gauge. Actually our pump is their brand! So they couldn't argue more and they sent a new part of kayak. Yay the squeaky wheel gets the oil. We can go kayaking again with new part we got.