Pink Flip-flop, Center Hill Preserve, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

The mystery of the pink flip-flop. How does one forget to wear his/her shoe back from the beach? Didn't the person notice that one was missing? It was a pretty good sized foot - not a small child. Why didn't he/she go back for it? Where is the other shoe?

No sign of it............



Center Hill Preserve, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

Center Hill Preserve is a Conservation area of the Town of Plymouth and offers both beach and inland wooded walking trails.

I am always pleasantly surprised by a freshwater pond right next to the ocean - it seems they each have their own color scheme. Massachusetts has about 3000 lakes and ponds. In Massachusetts, sunlight reaches the bottom in ponds, not so in lakes, and a pond larger than 10 acres is a Great Pond - now you know.

Center Hill Preserve has a delightful short trail to the beach.

Here are some fun facts about lakes and ponds according to the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation. :

• There are approximately five million lakes in the world.

• In terms of volume, Lake Baikal, located in Siberia, Russia, is the largest freshwater lake in the world. 20% of the Earth's freshwater, the same amount as the all five Great Lakes combined, is stored in Lake Baikal. At 5346 feet deep (1620 m), it is also the deepest lake in the world.

• In terms of surface area, the largest freshwater lake is the world is Lake Superior, with a surface area
of 31,700 mi2 (82,103 km2).
• The world's largest saltwater lake in surface area is the Caspian Sea. The Caspian Sea is 143,200 mi2
(370,886 km2).
• Lying 1,300 feet beneath sea level, the Dead Sea in Jordan and Israel is the lowest lake on earth. The Dead Sea is also the saltiest waterbody on earth, having about ten times the salinity of the ocean
• Lake Titicaca in Peru is the highest navigable lake in the world. It is located 12,500 feet above sea level.
• The deepest lake in the United States is the 1932 foot deep Crater Lake in Oregon.
• Walden Pond is the deepest pond in Massachusetts. In 1846 Henry David Thoreau measured it at its maximum depth of 102 feet. The depth of 102 feet was confirmed in a 1995 report prepared for the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
• Quabbin Reservoir (24,704 acres) and Wachusett Reservoir (4,160 acres) are the largest manmade
lakes in Massachusetts.
• Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg (otherwise thankfully known as
Lake Webster), is the longest lake name in Massachusetts. It means “you fish on your side, I’ll fish on my side and nobody will fish in the middle.”

Center Hill Preserve, Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

The Town of Plymouth participates in the state's Community Preservation Act and through that participation over the past decade has acquired almost 850 acres of public land for the use of all. About 90 of those acres are at the Center Hill Preserve in southern Plymouth near Ellisville. Follow this link to see a map. 

Although not without controversy surrounding the small tax to pay for it, communities that participate are securing a long term benefit for their citizens by ensuring natural spaces in perpetuity.  I'm glad I live in a town that values public nature preserves as an important quality of life.

Fresh water Center Hill Pond in the foreground with Cape Cod Bay in the background.

I don't know who did it or how but, this is not a trick or a fake - that top rock is barely touching the one underneath yet remained balanced. It is not attached - I removed it and placed it back just to see - it seemed so impossible to stay balanced.