Baxter State Park

Brandon was furloughed July 4th week, so I decided to take the week off too, pack the dogs off to their respective foster homes and head to Baxter State Park for some much needed R&R! We went to KP Dam Campsite, which is one of my favorite - a single campsite, 1/4 mile walk in (so basically car camping), and no trail running through it, so it's totally quite and serene. We saw moose (even had one walk through our campsite at 5am one morning!), lots of deer and unfortunately a few blackflies! 

Filtering water at our own personal stream. The weather was so nice that we swam in the river each afternoon to wash off the trail gunk! 

Making the first round of smores! 

Yum!

The blackflies were a real pain......

We were so glad we hiked in the large tent, because we then had an attached awning to hide in from the bugs! 

A visiting deer!

Day 1 hike to Ledge falls - a really pretty 2 mile hike! 

Ledge Falls. 

First day we also headed up to an overlook to get a good view of the mountains. 

And did usually one of my favorite hikes out to a chain of ponds. But we only got to the first one because the bugs were so bad. One of the rangers who'd worked there for 15 years said this was the worst year she'd seen! We've been here before in June and later in September, but July may be out for Baxter for us from now on! 

Day 2 - Horse Mountain and the East Spur Overlook! 

It was a super 90F that day, and humid! getting to the top, and into some wind, was a huge relief! 

The view of the Travellers - our intended third day hike, but we didn't end up doing it, because it meant two hours of hiking through bug territory before getting up high, and then another few hours on the way back. I was riddled with black fly bites by the end of day 2, and apparently i'm allergic to them, as they swelled up huge! 

So we drove around to some shorter hikes - like Stump Pond, where i've seen moose before, but not today!