Title: Beaver Lodge
Date: Summer 2012
Location: Back Woods Pond- Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y.
Habitat: Pond

Habitat: Snow-packed trail along the Raquette River. Mixed wood forest, but the spider's actual den was undetectable.

Habitat: The core of a softwood tree that was chain-sawed on the trail.

Habitat Description: Freshwater river, eddy below waterfall (40 foot drop), shore of a hardwood forest.

As our day at the sugar bush continued we clambered on hay bales, some of us jumping from bale to bale like Indiana Jones, and then made our way into the steamy sugar house where we learned how maple syrup is made. We got to look through a refractometer to see the sugar content of the sap we had collected. At the end of the day we all got the chance to taste-test the thick gooey goodness of local maple syrup drizzled over homemade cornbread. Yummmmmm!

This picture was also taken near Higley Flow state park around Stone Valley. The striped maple sometimes referred to as moose maple or moosewood is a member of the maple family and is found mostly from eastern North America and southern Ontario all the way to Nova Scotia in the east and Wisconsin in the west. The striped maple is even found on high elevations of the Appalachian Trail. Striped maple being shade tolerant thrives mostly below the tree line in the under story along sloped areas.

This picture was taken at Paul Smith's College Visitor Interpretive Center (VIC). The VIC is located within the Adirondack state Park borders. The Adirondack State park is the largest state park in the United States at 6.1 Million square miles. That’s larger than many of the most infamous national parks our country has to offer such as Yellowstone and the grand canyon to name a few. A good portion of the land that is currently in the Adirondack state park boundaries was part of the Mohawk first nations until the early 1700’s.

We went snowshoeing as a class at Stone Valley. I took a photograph of an American Beech tree. Its scientific name is Fagus Grandifolia. It is native to eastern North America. The fruit is a small, sharply-angled nut, borne in pairs in a soft-spined, four-lobed husk. The American beech is a shade-tolerant species. It is commonly associated with Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch, and Eastern Hemlock.

I've never seen a porcupine so close before. It was very interesting to be able to get that close up view.

As a class we went to Paul Smith's to do some cross-country skiing. This was my first time cross-country skiing ever, so it was very exciting for me.

Paul Smith's is a very popular place of tourism. It was named after Paul Smith's hotel, founded in 1859 as one of the first wilderness resorts in the Adirondack's.

Habitat: snow, forest

What I found interesting: the entire time we were cross country skiing, I was thinking to myself how beautiful it was back here in the woods.