Cape Cod Wildlife Areas

Do you know how much my wife loves me?  So much that she not only agreed to drive 500 miles roundtrip so we could visit Acadia National Park on our vacation, she also chose a place for us to stay on Cape Cod that was just minutes away from not one but two nature preserves -- Mass Audubon's Ashumet Holly Wildlife Sanctuary and the Frances A. Crane Wildlife Management Area.

Yeah, I'm pretty spoiled. :)

I decided to visit them both in one morning while Danelle and the kids slept.  First up was Ashumet Holly, where I found a pretty good spot on the shore of Grassy Pond to shoot the sunrise.

The low light through the trees along the Grassy Pond Trail cast dramatic shadows.

Mist is something we don't get a lot of in a semi-arid state like Colorado.  So I found it fascinating to try and capture.

The lush vegetation looked like something out of a fairy tale.  Sadly, no wood nymphs presented themselves.

From Ashumet Holly I went back to our bed & breakfast to pick up my mom's husband Michael, who thought a photo hike sounded pretty good but sunrise not so much.  Then it was on to Frances A. Crane, where the signs warning of deer ticks made me wish I hadn't worn shorts.  But the bumblebees on the butterfly weed were a nice distraction.

The snails here weren't as big as the slugs in Alaska, but still pretty photogenic.

Back to Ashumet Holly again -- that's how close the two areas are.  For most of our walk around Grassy Pond a dead branch was the most interesting thing to see.

Then we started to get better at spotting bullfrogs in the water, and our standards changed.

A good piece of advice I got early on about shooting wildlife: If the eye isn't in sharp focus, nothing else matters.  Frog eyes are especially cool.

I was out for about four hours in all between the two spots, with no real destination in mind at either place.  It was just a matter of wandering around seeing what pictures were waiting to be taken.  And I love my wife for making sure I got that opportunity. :)