As the seasons have changed much more compared to my last visit to Rock Point, the foliage and overall forest has changed a lot. One of the most visible and obvious changes is the lack of any leaves on any trees, with the exception being the Northern White Cedar trees. Apart from those, all of the surrounding maple trees as well as any other smaller understory trees and bushes are all but sticks now.
As you can see from these photos, there isn’t much left in terms of vegetation or foliage in Rock Point. It may be hard to see from these pictures, but one other thing I noticed while back here was that although the leaf litter was roughly the same as last time, it was a lot more compact. I didn’t hear myself crunching on leaves as much as I did last time because it felt that the ground was a lot colder, which in turn made the leaf litter frozen and compact.
This leads me to my next picture and next point, being the dirt and ground in certain places was actually already frozen over. It usually happened in areas where water accumulated enough to where the ground around it was very moist and muddy. One thing about these ice patches I noticed was that they seemed to be on or near the main trail, which I thought was interesting. This is probably because the trail itself much flatter compared to the surrounding forest, and the trail is more susceptible to being packed and stepped on, causing water to accumulate around the flatter parts of the trail.
As the last Phenology Post of this blog, I have to look back and consider what this spot means to me, and what I like most about it. I think my most favorite part of Rock Point is the view I can get of the sunset setting over Lake Champlain. The day I visited Rock Point for the last time, I managed to get a really good view and picture of this sunset. Seeing the beautiful, orange sun set over the lake, with the quiet, stoic mountains in the background made me really grateful to have chosen this as my Phenology spot.
