Salt Marsh from Morse Mountain Overlook

Sunday started out to be a great day with blue skies and warm temperatures. Though we originally planned to do chores, we changed our minds and decided to visit Morse Mountain and have a picnic lunch on the beach after visiting the scenic overlook. Richard had been there before, but it would be my first time. The walk started out really nice, we had a wonderful view of the Sprague River salt marsh that you can see here. In colonial days they actually dug some of the ditches by hand to facilitate harvesting of the salt hay (seems like a lot of work!). The area is managed by the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservancy http://www.mainenaturalareas.org/docs/program_activities/links/Landtrust/MorseMountain.pdf#search= and they are doing a lot of research of the animal and plant life as well as gathering information on tides, salinity, temperature etc in the marsh itself. It's a pretty comfortable walk on mostly paved roads/trails if anyone is interested. The walk goes up to the scenic overlook and then drops down to the beach~ I think about 2 miles total each way according to the guide stationed at the trail head. No dogs allowed and there are no facilities available, but a very nice place to hear a lot of birds. We heard yellow warblers, black & white warblers, woodpeckers, chickadees to name a few. When we reached the beach, we noticed the sky was really dark and Richard suggested we might want to leave. That was the best advice of the day. We hiked a good pace out and barely reached the car before it started to rain. By the time we got into the car and out of the parking lot it started pouring. Yikes! That was good timing. Let us know if anyone reads this and decides to do this nice, easy walk. We are interested in learning more about salt marshes and the ditching that they've done in the past.