 Summer is a great time to take a walk and the Portland Trails Summer Trek program is in full swing. Lesley McVane talked with the group's outreach manager Katie Brown about tours that can take you to some places you know and to some you've never knew about. Well Katie, Portland Trails has been through all kinds of transitions this past year but it hasn't slowed you down at all. Not a beat. No. You've got lots of things coming up. We have so many things coming up this summer and this fall too and this is the really exciting time because of course more people are out using the trails than any other time of the year. That said it's amazing how many people still use the trails for all kinds of purposes in the winter time but yes we have at least half a dozen activities planned for every month. Well and I think we just missed the first trail walk last week but you've got some exciting things coming up. One in particular I think it sounds wonderful is the Casco Bay early morning breakfast cruise. That's right. Tell me a little bit about that one. Sure so we're talking about the summer's discovery treks that Portland Trails puts on and these are scheduled for the second and fourth Fridays of every month through the end of September and as you mentioned the first one was actually last month the end of June. The next one is July 14th Friday. Normally our discovery treks are... I think it's the 13th. The 13th thank you. Not great with dates. Anyway they normally are Friday evenings starting at 5.30. This particular cruise one is actually a 5 a.m. event and it's a new one for us. We have several new discovery treks this summer but this one is the newest of the new and it will be a two and a half hour cruise of Casco Bay. What time should people be there for this cruise? Well the cruise leaves Casco Bay ferry terminal at 5.05 a.m. so we're asking folks to get there at 4.50 a.m. and it will be back in at 7.30. The Sun will be rising that morning I think around 5.25, 5.35 a.m. I forget but we will be seeing the sunrise while we're out in the bay and Jim Memminger is the historian who's going to be with us. He's on the board of the main historical society and he is also a former captain retired and even was a captain for the Casco Bay line some years back and he's just a wealth of information so he'll be talking about the history of Casco Bay while we're out there and we'll also have a marine biologist along with us who will be talking about the wildlife that we'll be seeing so early in the morning and so we anticipate seeing of course lots of seals but lots of water fowl that you don't normally see during the day and who knows what else that it could be a whole bunch of sea life that that you just don't normally see. Now some other exciting ones I'm coming up to that's not the only one tell us about a few more. Well annually we have also a local historian Herb Adams lead a walk a history walk and the last couple years he's led a very popular one along the Eastern Prom Trail and East End Trail and he's really talked about the history of the harbor and this year he's actually going to be leading the walk along the new Bayside Trail the Bayside Trail that that opened up last year and he'll be talking some about the history of the backhoe east Bayside Bayside and all that's happening in that and all that's happening in that area I mean there's a whole new garden down there that is nothing but native plants that's right and that's all part of this that's right that's right and there's a new connector that a lot of folks don't know about yet that runs sort of the end of Franklin Street under the 295 overpass to back Cove now before that was almost a mile stretch before you could get on to back Cove from the Portland Peninsula but now you can go in the middle so we'll take a little jaunt there and look at that yard-skeeping well there's there's really too much we've got to wrap this up okay too much to talk about a one visit you're gonna have to come back as we get into the summer because it's it's wonderful what you're doing you're opening up our city to people from all over not just the city people but people visiting here and if people want to find out more they can go to www.trails.org or to our Facebook page like our Facebook page and we post our announcements regularly and I do want to say that the Discovery Trek walks are free to our members they're five dollars for anybody else if somebody actually doesn't have five dollars we're not gonna tell them they can't join us but it would be it would be helpful yeah and that five dollars can go towards a membership as well well thank you Katie thank you can't wait to hear from you again okay great thanks Leslie