Pamet Trail is one of our favorite hikes in the Truro area on Cape Cod. There is so much diversity from scrubby bushes and trees to pine forests to sand dunes overlooking the ocean to cranberry bogs. (There are additional photos and a map at the end of the blog.)
There is a bit of an elevation gain, as you can see by the map, which is pretty cool here on Cape Cod and the views throughout the entire hike are just amazing!
Phil and I took a nice hike at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary a couple of days ago and were so surprised to see a yellow flower already blooming on a bush on the side of the trail. I had no idea what it was so I took some photographs and asked inside. It is “Witch Hazel” and blooms in February! Wow! (You can see all the little clusters in the photograph below.)
Witch Hazels are deciduous shrubs and are in the flowering plant family. Each flower has four slender 1/2″ strap-shaped petals which are dark yellow, orange, or red. The fruit is a two-part capsule containing a single 1⁄4 inch glossy black seed in each of the two parts.
This is really cool… “The capsule splits explosively at maturity in the autumn about 8 months after flowering, ejecting the seeds with sufficient force to fly for distances of up to 30 feet. That is amazing!
So cool to see a flower blooming in the middle of winter and one that I’ve never seen before!
Yesterday Phil and I were driving home from a walk on Nauset Beach when I saw something out of the corner of my eye as we passed over the bridge on Bridge Road. Stop the car! I jumped out!
There, swimming and fishing in Boat Meadow Creek was a beautiful Red-breasted Merganser. I’ve been trying to get a good photograph of one all winter, so this was a huge treat.
The ripples in the water made for such a unique photograph. Gorgeous bird, don’t you think? Love his red eye, orange bill and his messy hair look!
The dunes look huge on Coast Guard Beach, eaten away by the virulent winter storms the past few years. Phil took this photograph of me a few days ago. At first I thought… wow!
And then I looked back at a similar photograph that he took last year about this time and the dunes don’t look as bad as we thought… maybe a bit higher. Hopefully the spring and summer will bring back that much needed sand again.
It was such a pretty day with so many fluffy, white clouds in the blue, blue sky. First Encounter Beach, where the Native Americans first encountered the Pilgrims on Cape Cod, was just beautiful. The tide was low so you could see the flats go out for what looks like miles. You can even see Wellfleet way in the distance.
Have you ever seen the flats on Cape Cod Bay? So pretty, don’t you think?
