Some dogs came by to visit us, and this Black Lab really loved to jump off the rock and go after a tennis ball thrown into the water!

After a snack or two near the pond, we made our way back onto the trail and were supposed to go around the reservoir and up to the tower at Bear Hill, but, well, we didn't quite make it around the reservoir but went back pretty much the same way we came out.  Yes, even with the GPS and the map.

Your Webmaster had not yet taken the new trail that connects the busy parking lot to the trail up Mt. Percival, but it was nice not to have to wander down the road as we'd done in the past.  In addition to some yummy blackberries, we encountered some amusing bits of fauna, one of them a fluorescent yellow caterpillar.

Kris lends a hand

Ya know, it would figure...

Kris found a geocache...without a GPS!

Lunch!

The Rattlesnakes and Squam Lake

After our brief (ummm...well, it was a nice day, so maybe it wasn't all that brief) stay for lunch, we walked over the ridge to Mt. Morgan where plenty of people and a few pups were milling around.

We found someone to grab a photo of us.  Thank you!

We reached the top of Cascade Falls, which drops off very steeply behind Kris in the picture below.

We made a good go at finding a geocache within a few feet of the top of the falls, but we came up empty.  So we continued on to the summit and plopped down for lunch, having earned a bit of a rest after reaching 3143'.

Along our way Kris and I found...

<-- Loads of these!

<-- A geocache!

Ironically at the other end of that section of the Wapack Trail from where we started in New Ipswich on June 29, there's Mt. Watatic with its short but steep front side climb, great views, and nice trail down the side of the old ski area.

A short walk along the trail from the parking lot is a huge split rock:

From there it's on up the front side of Mt. Watatic--munching blueberries along the way--to the summit, then over to the rocky outlook to laze out in the sun...

...which Your Webmaster does very well.

Feets.

Kris always has her ice tea!

...where you'll find a nice pool of water.

    
Deb and Your Webmaster along the trail

A ring of rocks near a stone wall...and not too far from there Kris found
a geocache in a HUGE ammo container

The views from the various hills are limited, but now and again
you get a peek at what's going on far away

We stopped for a while for lunch, trying to find any shade we could while trying to avoid the tons of ants that were trying to make off with our lunches.  We turned back for the car and struggled a little bit along the trail with the humidity (Your Webmaster does not do well when it's too humid out), but we made it off the trail before some really amazing thunderstorms blew in.

Discontinued...?

There's a very nice meadow at the start of the trail (the trail starts to the right of the dirt road...if you take the road, you miss this, so take the trail, not the road).

The Meadow

Randy, Pam, Melanie, and John went on ahead, and Kris and Your Webmaster caught up with them at the trail junction.

Kris has some cool patches to leave in the geocaches she finds.  We traded trinkets and put entries into the logbook and continued along the loop, hoping to get a second cache in the area (which would mean taking a different trail...if we could find it).

Kris picked up a hitchhiker

It wasn't long until we reached junction with the Summit Trail, and beyond that, along Nancy's Trail where we were heading, the Town of Francestown, NH has discontinued the trail!  We were able to do this trail last year, but this year it is closed off.  If you have information about this trail system and what is happening with it, please give a holler to Your Webmaster!

The storm done, we made our way back out toward the summit of Crotched Mt., although we didn't visit it.  There's a very nice view short of the summit, but it was rather cloudy and stormy in the Monadnock area, and we knew we had better head out.

<-- Kris and I snagged a few half blue blueberries...it's almost time!

Along the way we spotted these guys......which look like tremendously huge, terrifying monsters in the pictures...until you see how big they really are:

:-)  Red efts, as they are called, love to be out on the trail in the cooler, wetter weather, so keep an eye out for them on the trail so you don't step on the little buggers.  Oh, don't pick them up or touch them, as their skin does contain poison glands, although they're really quite harmless.

Not far from the trailhead is an open area where you can see around the valley.

More storms were heading in...

...including one right behind us!

Well, I guess it was time to head back out to the cars.

It was then that we discovered that Melanie and John's car was still there at the trailhead.  Given the time they left us and our lunch break, they should have been back at the car and long gone by then.  We were wondering what became of them!

John and Melanie are experienced hikers and had a GPS receiver with a waypoint to the trailhead, so we weren't overly concerned.  We figured that they went on a different trail (possibly the Bennington Trail) to try to grab another geocache or two in the area.

So instead of standing in the rain waiting, we decided to head out, and, sure enough, we spotted John and Melanie along the road.  They were just fine and were going to hoof it back to the car.

But what became of them?  How did they wind up far from the car?  Melanie said they came off of the summit and went straight down, but from their trail description (including mention of a four-way intersection which the trail we were on didn't have), they couldn't have taken the same trail we did.  So we had to solve the mystery!

In a GONewEngland first, we used highly advanced GPS technology and mapping software costing millions of dollars to unravel this mystery.  We downloaded data gathered from our GPS receivers to view the actual trails taken on a map, and Your Webmaster merged these trails using Google Earth.  Melanie and John went along the blue trail, while the rest of us went along the orange trail:

In the center of the picture about 1/4 of the way down, you can see a purple dot.  That's the official summit.  You can see the blue and orange lines below that dot, and the orange line heads down, but the blue line heads past the summit straight for a short distance then heads down.  Melanie and John (blue) turned right below the summit and followed a stone wall, then they turned left to head down.  Eventually they hooked up with the Bennington Trail and came out on a road leading to Route 31.  They followed Sawmill Road, grabbed a geocache, then went back up the road to the car.  Meanwhile the orange line went back the direct route to the cars from the summit.

For those who have Google Earth (or would like to download the free Google Earth software by clicking here), right click here and save locally for a Google Earth kml file where you can see our trails and view the area in 3D!