A Thanksgiving Sandwiched

Sandwiched the holiday between paddles on two local rivers:

The Assabet River in Hudson, MA on Wednesday...

...after the storm that gave us our first layer of snow that was soon washed away by the subsequent rain with temps in the 40's F.  Paddled down to the dam at Gleasondale where paddlers don't want to get distracted as there's no warning sign or barrier at the dam...

  

This animal was seen swimming across the river above the dam.  Believe it's the same critter I've been running into of late on the Assabet...

I'm not sure if it's a mink or perhaps a small otter.  The tail appears to be bushy with some black coloring.  Each time encountered it quickly vanishes which isn't like other mink I've encountered.  Usually the mink I encounter re-appear to satisfy their curiosity.

Then post-holiday, on Friday, when my wetsuit was definitely a bit harder to zip up I got out on the Nashua River in Harvard, MA...

  

Just before reaching the boat lunch at Oxbow N.W.R. I came across another CSX freight train (426?) parked...this one just west of the Still River Depot Rd....

As I unloaded and prepped my boat the train slowly started moving and resumed its journey through the Nashua River valley on it's way to Maine.  At Ayer it would leave the Nashua and instead follow Stony Brook to the Merrimack River in N. Chelmsford.  My boat and I got to the bridge just after the train's tail end cleared it, and quiet took hold again in the valley...

Kind of unusual to not hear any gunfire from the Fort Devens shooting ranges on a weekday.

Small deer appeared alongside the river in many places.  I counted 8 of them in groups of 2 and 4.  Without the plant vegetation to conceal them they appear like ghosts...

All were in their dark winter coloring except for one that was still wearing its summer coat.  Perhaps the soon-to-be full moon had them moving about mid-day.

On Wednesday the Assabet seemed to be challenging the Nashua for the presence of miniature alcohol bottles (aka "nips") with 37 of them collected...

Then on Friday the Nashua reasserted its role as the king of the miniatures with a count of 111...

...and still plenty more where they came from...

Sort of a 'horn of plenty' in a twisted way.