Standard Loop

This was 6.8 miles, Washburn (w) > Notch (b) > Brook (r) > Cornish.   It started misty and humid.

bright orange fungi among the lichen

And then there was a bit of a splutter of rain, so I put my fancy camera back in its ziploc bag (even though I figured it'd peter out soon enough).  And the sputter soon became a drizzle.  Which became a long, steady shower!!!  I had not brought any rain gear, but the summer rain was refreshing rather than hypothermia-inducing.  So I just kept trudging along, watching my footing carefully, as every inch of me got thoroughly soaked cap-a-pie.  

My reward, perhaps, was seeing a red eft - the juvenile Eastern Newt!  It was beautiful, and utterly fearless as I leaned in ever closer with my phone.  The blurriness is at least partly from water on the face of the phone and/or the rain which continued to fall.  And partly because my phone's camera is not particularly good.

Red Eft 

Later, things cleared up enough for this photo (again, bringing the camera super-close):

The turtle and frog were too far away for my phone's camera to handle, but I wanted to document this very active turtle.  While the frog just sat there, the turtle started to come out of its shell...

And then made its getaway!

(Although as I recall, it actually decided to jump in on the far side of the log!  Despite appearances, it was not yet committed in the photo above.)

So I decided not to try to talk my sopping way onto a restaurant's patio, but instead went straight to the station.  On the train, the eagle-eyed conductor addressed a group of hikers on the other side of the aisle ("Wow, you really got wet!") and I let them explain this mysterious phenomenon while I relaxed and let Welcome to Nightvale wash over me.