A Short Swamp Walk

Last Sunday, before we left Goose Creek State Park in North Carolina, we took a short walk on a wooden walkway through a thick swamp.  Carlton and Libby had hiked this the day before and saw tree frogs and anole lizards.  It was a great place to slowly explore and look for critters, of which we saw a few - birds and reptiles and amphibians.  We walked for about 45 - 60 minutes, very slowly, probably only covering about a mile of walking.

The trail was called the Palmetto Trail, and it went right through the swamp.

This southern leopard frog was one of many that we saw.

Cattails in a marshy area.

This fungus is called witch's butter.  Does it look like something you would like to spread on your pancakes?  Not me!

This is a palmetto and you can see it has a bumper crop of berries, which are eaten by a wide variety of wildlife.

We studied this snake for a while.  We wondered if it were a cottonmouth, but a close up photo of its head that Carlton took did not reveal pits that vipers use to sense the heat of their prey.  The same photo, when compared to pictures, made us believe that it is a nonvenomous banded water snake.

Again, I am very glad we didn't risk it going out to Shackleford Banks and instead enjoyed camping out and exploring in Goose Creek State Park to salvage our trip.

When Plan A Fails, Go to Plan B!

Exactly a week ago, at this time (5:15AM) I got on the road to pick up my friend Carlton and his 10 year old daughter Libby.  We were headed to Beaufort, NC to do two nights of backpacking out on Shackleford Banks.  Because there is no fresh water there, we were carrying about 7 gallons of water between us.  We had greatly anticipated this trip for two months!  But we forgot to include Mother Nature in our plans!

We got to Beaufort just after noon, and just after that, the skies opened.  Thunder roared, lightening flashed, drenching rains poured.  We ducked into a restaurant for lunch, checking the radar app on our phones continually.  It showed a long line of thunderstorms headed right over the island stretching back to Savannah, GA!  After talking with the boat company, the National Park Service (Shackleford Banks is part of Cape Lookout National Seashore), and my spouse, we finally gave up our plan at about 2:45 and checked into a motel.  We got in a little hiking at Croatan National Forest, had dinner, and went to bed, getting up early to find - more thunderstorms!  It looked like steady rain there at least until the afternoon, and more storms coming in for the evening, overnight, and Sunday.

So using Google on my phone, we came up with a plan B - Goose Creek State Park about 60 miles to the north of where we had spent the night.  We headed there right away, hoping that maybe we could get a campsite, of which there are only 14.  And we were in luck, because there were still two sites open.  The map below shows the location - the red arrow shows our original destination, and the star shows where we ended up.  You can see the Outer Banks, including Cape Hatteras, to the east of Goose Creek.

It was a delightful park.  The campsites were spacious and also widely spaced, and in an open grove of tall longleaf pines.  The gravel pad was plenty big enough for our two tents, and we had a picnic table and fire pit.  There was a very nice outhouse nearby, and pumps for water (although we never needed it with all the water that we brought with us).  And the weather was generally good - warm and muggy, but dry, other than a couple hours of rain Saturday afternoon, and a thunderstorm in the night.

Here is Libby in front of their tent.  My tiny tent is behind this one:

We spent most of the day hiking and exploring.  We hiked a total of about eight miles - a short loop near the campground, and a longer loop through the rest of the park through forests, swamps, and by marshes and rivers.  The mosquitoes were fierce at times, but the birding was great.  The map below shows my track.  The campground is on the far left.    The arrows show the direction of travel - clockwise - for the longer hike.  Coming back in the steady rain, and Libby and Carlton having stopped hiking with me when Libby got tired, I ended up walking along the road when a section of the trail was totally flooded by deep water in a swamp.  There was no way around without wading.

Here are photos of the many sights along the way, starting with a pretty - but likely poisonous - mushroom.

Here is a view of Flatty Creek on our first short hike.

This bracket fungus reminded me of burnished wood.  I thought it was beautiful.

Carlton knows enough mushrooms that you are probably not going to die or go hungry if you follow his advice.  This one is called Hen of the Woods, and is a delicacy.

I can't remember if this one is edible or not.

The park has great interfaces between the forests and rivers.  I think that this is the Pamlico River.

I can't remember what this is, but Carlton said not to eat it.  However....

This one is the Old Man of the Woods, and is very good to eat.  Just cut off the gills.

Here is what it looks like cut open in a cross-section.  It's hard to see, but the color is changing and it is turning black.

Lots of open pine forests in this area.

Here is another view of the river.

Southern leopard frog, which we saw all over the place.

Edible or not?  I don't know, but it didn't look that appealing.

More of the pine forest that once was a huge industry for naval stores (pitch, pine tar).

A short boardwalk got me over this swamp, covered with duck weed.  I heard a very large animal crashing and splashing through one of these swamps, likely a deer or bear.

Here is a pretty wild flower.

I got though this section of widely flooded trail with dry feet by walking carefully along the slippery logs.  Later, there was a section that was so deeply flooded that there was no getting around it.

No idea if this one is edible or not.  The bad thing about mushroom identification is that there is a very high penalty for being wrong if you eat them.

We sat out the rest of the rain storm back in camp, ate dinner, and got a fire going.  As it turned dark, we got a real treat - three different screech owls calling in the night, and a male and female great horned owl calling back and forth.  The owls called for about 20 minutes, and we were enthralled as we listened to them.  In the morning, we did a little walking - here is a sunrise view at Flatty Creek -

and here you can see the contrail from a jet reflected in the creek.

Then we ate breakfast, packed up, and did one last hike on the way out.  Because this post is so long, I will create a separate post for that hike.

Well, Plan A didn't work out, and that was very disappointing.  But we were able to come up with a great plan B to visit a really cool place with amazing birding and habitats, and comfortable camping.  So, no complaints!

Shackleford Banks Trip - Overview

I had a marvelous time backpacking three days on Shackleford Banks, part of Cape Lookout National Seashore in North Carolina.  I'll be writing a number of posts about the trip, and have something like 200 photos to comb through, but I'll make this overview my first post.

My two compadres and I drove down Friday evening, going right through Tropical Storm Andrea, and finding a motel in New Bern.  It took us nearly an hour to find a hotel.  We wanted two beds plus a rollaway or a pull-out sofa, and the best we could do was a king and a pull-out.  What would women do?  I bet most of them would sleep two in the big bed and the third would take the pull-out, but men just are not going to do that.  Just about the time we had resigned ourselves to one of us sleeping on the floor, we found a great place at a reasonable price with the two beds and the sleeper sofa.  Hurrah!

We drove to Beaufort, NC in the morning and took the 10:00 boat over.  My pack weighed about 55 pounds: roughly 7.5 pounds for the pack and empty water containers, 14.5 pounds of camping gear like my tent and sleeping pad, 28 pounds of water and Gatorade, and 5 pounds of food.  I needed help just to put the pack on my back!  But the good news was, that after the boat dropped us off on the west end of the nine mile long island, we would only hike 3-4 miles with the full pack weight before making camp.  And when Chris suggested making camp at 3 miles about one mile in, he got no arguments from Carlton or me.

Shackleford Banks is a truly beautiful and interesting island.  No one lives there, and there is no drinking water - unless you can desalinate it.  There seemed to be four major zones moving from south to north: a beautiful and wild nine mile Atlantic Ocean beach with a pronounced dune system,

a broad area of undulating dunes and hummocks covered in coarse grasses, with occasional flat grassy areas,

a dense maritime forest,

and a wetland fringe with some beach at times bordering on the sound.

So, what did we do for the two full days and one partial morning that we were on this amazing island?  We explored, hiked, beach combed, fished, searched for wild horses, relaxed a little, and looked for wildlife.  There is no shade - the forest would be very shady but loaded with ticks - and the sun was oppressive at times.  My clothing was continually damp, either from sweat, the humidity in the air, or both.  It never got below about 75, with very high humidity, and so I am glad I didn't bother with a sleeping bag.  Day time highs - in the shade if there had been shade - would have been about 86, but it was much hotter than that in the sun.  I wore long sleeves, long pants, and my Tilly hat, and although these may have been warm, they gave me good sun protection.  I also applied sunscreen to my exposed skin about 3 times a day, and did not get burned despite continually being out in the sun.

I walked and walked and walked, and then, I walked some more.  On Saturday and Sunday alone, I took over 84,000 steps according to my pedometer.  Assuming 2,300 steps per mile for an average, that would translate to nearly 37 miles in the two days.  A lot of those miles was looking for great seashells, and did I find some good ones!

Twice, we were able to find wild horses, of which there are over 100 on the island.  These animals are descendants of Spanish horses that survived shipwrecks in the 1600's.  They are wild animals but also will tolerate humans as long as you don't approach them directly.

And when you are camping at the beach, is there anything better than sitting out in the (relative) coolness of the evening as the sun sets, listening to the rhythm of the pounding surf?

Well, that is a summary of my little adventure.  If it whetted your appetite for more, more will be coming over the next week, because I have a lot more to share with you.

Currituck Beach Lighthouse and Corolla Village

We spent several days in North Carolina, along the Outer Banks, and I walked many, many miles.  Some of it was around Currituck Beach Light and the area around it, including historic Corolla Village.  It was interesting to see this area.  I started by climbing Currituck Beach Lighthouse for some great views at the top.

Some of the 200+ steps one needs to climb to get to the top.

Here is a panorama looking south and west from the platform near the top of the lighthouse.  The wind was roaring at a steady 30 knots.

Here is a bird's eye view of some of the buildings on the property from the lighthouse.

There are great views from all directions.  This one looks west towards Currituck Sound.

And this is the view to the north.  Far away, but within view, is Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge.  It has been nearly three months since I took my "final" hike there.  I definitely miss that place!

After touring the light, we headed around Corolla Village.  It must have been an isolated and difficult way of life when this village was the main town in this area.  Some of the buildings were built in the 1880's.  The schoolhouse, recently used for education once again, was built in the 1890's.

I would have loved to go in the chapel, but it was closed and locked up.  It had a lovely stained glass window featuring a pelican and her chicks.

While walking along, we came upon this turtle.  She started digging a nest with her hind feet a few moments later, and we left her in peace.

Even when the eggs hatch, baby turtles face a difficult life.  I found this dead one a little while later in a parking lot.  He reached a curve, which would be as insurmountable as a mountain to a baby turtle.  According to my field guide, this is a baby slider, but the map does not show them in this part of North Carolina.

We walked along a nature trail through wetlands,

visited the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education, and then, we toured the beautifully restored Whalehead Club, built in 1922.  At was the winter home of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Knight.

Funny story - this extremely wealthy couple, unmarried at the time, both loved to duck hunt.  Duck, goose, and swan hunting was the rage among many wealthy people, and this part of North Carolina was the place to come for it.  At one point, the waterfowl were so thick that people called them "smoke."  So the Knights petitioned to join one of the many duck hunting clubs.  They were denied.  First, they were unmarried yet traveling together.  Second, the club members didn't want a woman in their midst.  So Mr. Knight didn't get mad, he got even.  He bought the 2,000 acres that the club leased for hunting, and evicted them.  Then, they built their beautiful home - something like 20,000 square feet, I think - on a prime spot on the acreage.  It is well worth a tour, and the Art Nouveau architecture and furnishings are very interesting.

We ended our three hour visit by walking past the restored boathouse for the Whalehead Club, with a nice view of the lighthouse in the background.

Craggy Gardens

I decided to visit my son in Asheville, North Carolina for the weekend, both to see him for his birthday and to help him out with some things. So I got in the car after work Friday, loaded the CD player with music to keep me going during the long drive, and headed south. I drove until I was tired, spent the night in Hickory, and got there in the morning. After visiting for a while, we took a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and ended up doing a short (0.7 mile up and 0.7 mile down) hike to the top of Craggy Gardens.

This has gorgeous views for minimal effort. It felt great to be back in the mountains! Here are some photos from this short hike - towards the end, there is a picture of something I've never seen on a hike before.

Rhododendron in Team in Training colors! Very appropriate, since I would be meeting the TNT Virginia cycle team the next day and cheering them on in the 100 mile Fletcher Flyer race. The next three shots show views from the top:
Aren't the Blue Ridge Mountains gorgeous?

Here is a shot of me with my turtle hiking staff that my sister gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago.

Looking north up the Blue Ridge Parkway from the top, it looked like a storm coming in.

View of the mountains from the lower overlook.

Close up of rhododendron bloom - so pretty!

The trail at times resembled a tunnel

This twisted tree made a nice "picture frame" for a large rock in the background

On my hikes through the hills I’ve trekked many a mile
Seen lots of wonderful things, and this one made me smile
For I’d never before seen a pretty bride-yet-to-be
Dressed in her white gown sitting high in a tree

View of Craggy Dome (elevation 6,085) from the trailhead parking lot (elevation 5,640)