Day 24 - A Walk In The Woods—Or Two

The weather was good—no fog and some blue sky. It was too early to move to our new site at Terra Nova NP, so we went for a walk in the woods. Not far from the campground, by Speedy, is Sandy Pond. It has a day use area, a beach and a trail that circumnavigates the pond. The trail is an easy one but goes through several habitats. A good place to look for wildlife.

We stated the walk at the pond’s boat dock and we dudn’t even have to leave the dock for our first sighting, a Common Loon not far off the dock, the first of two we would see. The walk was a fairly quiet and pleasant walk in the woods, but we did see our share of birds, eight species including our first Black and White Warbler and Lincoln’s Sparrows of the trip.

On the way back to the campground, we stopped at the Headquarters Wharf. It is on Newman Sound and has a boat ramp, but no one was using it except a few folks fishing from the docks. 

We were back at the campground in time to move into our new site, Site 79, the same one we took last time. By the time we finished lunch, it had clouded over and was looking a bit like rain, but we decided to take another short hike, this time along the campground loop and coastal trails. The campground loop starts just across from our site and goes through the woods along the edges of the campground.

We only walked a part of it until it intersected with the coastal trail which runs along Newman Sound to the park’s main visitor center. From where it starts it is a 9.5 km round-trip hike. We didn’t do nearly that much. We only walked about a third of the way until the trail comes down to the water. We walked a fair amount of the beach there, tracking shorebirds. There were a fair number of Greater Yellowlegs along the shore and the flats off the beach.There were also several Spotted Sandpipers feeding along the edge of the shore. The highlight was offshore where we spotted our first flock of Canada Geese on the water and Red-breasted Merganser leading her brood of 13 ducklings across the sound.

As it was getting increasingly buggy and looked even more like rain, we headed back at this point taking a more direct route through the campground, stopping at the camp store for ice cream. After we got back to Speedy and settled in a bit, it did start raining, so wewe were glad we got the short hike in when we did.