Snow’s Cove Preserve, Sedgwick

At Snow’s Cove Preserve, you’ll walk through different forest types, and by what feels at times like an ancient, frozen river of glacial erratics*, to the edges of the wide, shallow Bagaduce River. The Blue Hill Heritage Trust says this area is an important breeding ground for horseshoe crabs.

The main trail is called Fern Rock Trail, named I presume after the many boulders strewn across the forest-scape that are growing healthy heads of ferns. The walking is mostly flat and easy, starting out on a ~0.4-mile leg that brings you to a roughly 1.1-mile loop, if you do the long version. You can shave off a half-mile from your walk by taking the center trail. There’s a couple of good places to access the river — one of them is down a very short spur trail.

*I believe the technical term for this is a moraine! And Snow’s Cove Preserve might “contain the biggest collection of very large glacial boulders associated with glacial end moraines in Maine.”

Directions: A small parking lot and the trailhead are located on the west side of Route 15/Snow’s Cove Road, approximately 1.3 miles south of the junction of Route 15/Mines Road and Route 176/Southern Bay Road. The lot was paved during a recent February visit.