A beautiful winter hike to the Boisvert & Normand Nature Preserve with fellow Gay Outdoors members! Everyone had fun exploring the lesser-known trails and getting some insider knowledge. We hiked a bit under 3 miles in relatively flat terrain.  

The trails had a coating of about one inch of frozen granular with some ice hidden beneath the snow in some sections. We could bare boot the trails; Microspikes were not needed.  

Beautiful sunny afternoon with temperatures in the 20s and a bit of wind! We walked to the Grand Junction and turned right to check out the future location of the Pollinator Garden…thanks for all your suggestions regarding designing it. We then explored a couple of the logging roads and saw a number of deer tracks in the snow.  

This western section of the Nature Preserve would be great for cross country skiing except that the past couple years we’ve not received much natural snow. Fingers crossed that this trend will change in the future.

To change it up a bit, we did a short bushwhack to our 14-acre lot where a timber harvest is underway. We plan to build a trail to connect both parcels to add more land for cross-country skiing. The trees to be cut are marked in blue paint. At the other end of this lot, we saw cut trees ready for transport and evidence of the trees previously cut.    

We then followed the Soucook Sanctuary Trail down to the river that was certainly a highlight of the hike! It was peaceful in this medieval forest with towering old trees with the Soucook River on one side and Oxbow on the other…felt like we were on a peninsula. We reached the end at a sunny point remarking this being an ideal spot to take a dip on a hot summer day.

We returned back to our cars following the Esker Trail that brought us high above the Soucook River, passing by some vernal pools and climbing back up to a higher elevation. We reached a view of the marsh below where we are thinking of building an outdoor educational pavilion.  

We survived…LOL. The Nature Preserve is ideal for anybody no matter what their fitness level is. Most of us went to Mavris for a delicious meal. We were wondering if Noah our waiter was available for takeout!

It was a great day out; and thanks so much to everyone who joined us and who support us on our efforts!

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