More Letterboxing - and Some Fall Color

Intrepid explorers.

And I'm behind on blogging! We did a bit more letterboxing - not this past weekend, but the weekend before... Found another box in Chelmsford, and it's really interesting how many little conservation areas there are in our town. Chelmsford is quite old for the U.S. (established in 1655, so it's one of the oldest in the Commonwealth - if not the country) - it's nice to see so much land has been set aside, here and there.

Pretty little stream - with a fun little plank bridge over it that the kids had fun crossing.

Stone wall where the box was hidden (not giving it away, though!). Old stone walls like this one thread through just about all of the woods in New England - hard to believe that this whole area was clear-cut 150 years ago or so, but it was.

Also hard to believe that people actually managed to farm here, it's so rocky! The glaciers just dumped tons of rocks and Glacial erratics (boulders) all over the place (check that link to Wikipedia for a picture of one of my favorite erratics - Doane Rock on Cape Cod, I've climbed up it many times!).

The fall color is almost gone by now! I got up one morning last week and our maple tree in the backyard went from green to yellow literally over night. And now it's pouring down leaves...


That's a peek at a maple in our neighbor's yard, actually. A bit more interesting than ours is at the moment.

This is what the backyard looks like, lol. Our maples in the back are actually Norweigan maples - a weed species, oh no!! They're pretty, but they don't change as spectacularly as sugar maples do... My mom's house has three gorgeous old sugar maples in the front yard, I miss their color - and the maple syrup we used to make!

Tail end of color over our other neighbor's house... I was lame and didn't manage to catch it at it's peak this year. Still, though, driving around this past week has been an absolute feast for the senses. Gorgeous, saturated color everywhere. I love fall!