[Journal entry for August 24, 2016; Bates Morse Mountain Conservation Area]. I hiked at the Bates Morse Mountain Conservation Area, at the end of Morse Mountain Road, south of Bath Maine. It is a rectangular tract of land, bordered by the Sprague and Morse Rivers to the west and east, respectively, and by Seawall Beach to the south. The road beyond the gated entrance seconds as a pedestrian thoroughfare. I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of beautiful terrain. I first passed a broad salt marsh, vegetated mostly with Spartina alternaflora, which is part of the flood plain of the Sprague River. I ascended up onto Morse Mountain, which is really more of a hill, and visited a wide granite ledge that commands a great view of the Sprague River as it flows through the salt marsh and out to sea. The vegetation on the hill is mostly White Pine and other conifers. I visited several clearings full of Blueberry bushes growing around bare granite ledges. The land on the south side of the hill is pretty damp, with lots of standing fresh water and fern, and one small swamp. The road leads past low dunes, mostly covered with grasses, to the sands of Seawall Beach. Many granite knobs decorate the landscape. Some in the upland part of the beach function as bluffs, others out beyond the breaking waves, as islands. I walked by the granite bluffs, which are in places coarsely crystalline enough to be called pegmatite. They intrude mica schist. Slivers of the schist are embedded in the granite as xenoliths. The beach is fine sand, mostly white, but in places red or black where garnet and magnetite crystals have accumulated. The surface of the sand has many ripples and channels. I followed the beach east to where it wraps around north in the mouth of the Morse River. This river, shallow enough that several bathers waded across as I watched, separates Seawall beach from Popham Beach State Park. I walked the river bank as far as a granite knob and then headed back along the water’s edge, watching Sandpipers dart to and fro and gulls soar above the breaking waves, before the foaming surf, and visiting one barnacle-encrusted granite island. I walked the road back to the car but did not stop much, for I had seen most everything on the way in. 3:00.