Badin Lake

Location: Uwharrie National Forest, North Carolina

This was our first hiking trip in a very long time.  A very very long time, actually.  My husband, Dan, grew up hiking in the mountains of Wyoming.  I grew up camping (the rough kind, thanks), in some of those same mountains. 

We moved to North Carolina back in 1999, and we haven't done much exploring.  Then we decided that we needed to get more exercise, and we needed to get outside more.  Hiking seemed like a great way to accomplish both of these things.

So I did some research online and found the Badin Lake Loop.  It starts at the Arrowhead Campground, and the path is paved for a very short distance.  Once you leave the pavement, though, you are on your own.  In a lot of ways.

We were probably a quarter of the way along the trail when we discovered that the trail was marked - more or less - with white blazes painted on the occasional tree.  This would probably be more effective if it weren't for the white lichen that covers a fair number of those trees.  The blaze blends.  And that's assuming the tree that was marked hasn't fallen down...which a few had.

Still, the first part of the hike was gorgeous.  Fall in North Carolina is amazing and colorful.

And loud.

Seriously.  All those deciduous trees dropping big leaves everywhere makes for a VERY leafy walk.  The noise pretty much rendered our "Bear Bell" obsolete, since any bear sticking around after hearing us shuush our way through nearly-knee-high leaves would have to be deaf!

Very quickly, we decided to download a hiking app on my phone.  The print map we had was...well it was useless, to be honest.  There were no reference points, and no landmarks to help you figure out where you were.  I also suspect that it was not to scale.

So we downloaded an app called AlpineQuest.  I loved this app!  It showed us exactly where we were on the trail.  OK, it showed us MOSTLY exactly where we were on the trail - there was some very tiny variation that I'm blaming on GPS randomness.  It was extremely helpful when we had to leave the trail to avoid some obstacles.

Yeah, the obstacles.

The trail hadn't been groomed in a while.  There were a LOT of fallen trees and near the lake there were some problems with the trail having fallen into the lake somewhere.  We'd taken our dog, Ella.

She may never forgive us for that.

She was totally cool with the hiking bit, but the obstacle course aspect was less well received.  At first, she threw herself over fallen trees with abandon.  Then she started sighing heavily before she jumped a tree.  Then, she started sighing heavily, shooting me a significant look, and then searching for a way around or under the tree.  She was not amused.  On the trip home, she stretched out across the back seat, pushed our son into the corner, and fell asleep.

She snored all the way home.

So did Dan.

It was a good trip!