tta Plantation Nature Preserve at 8am on Sunday May 22, 2011. Actually, Linda showed up on Saturday too. I suppose she really really wanted to hike this trail (wink, wink hahaha!) Sorry Linda, but I have to tell the story. She thought the hike was on Saturday. So she showed up, waited and waited, and finally decided that since she was already there, she might as well hike the park. It wasn't til she got home that she realized the hike was on Sunday. But to her credit, she came back out this Sunday morning and hiked some more! Now that's a Dame!
After hellos and a quick briefing on what trails we were going to hike, we started out on our 3 mile hike. The plan was to hike the Hill trail to Split Rock trail and if we felt up to it, hop on the Cove trail for an extra mile.
Well, everything started out as planned. By 8:15am we were
taking off up the orange marked Hill trail. It was an open gravely
road with a steady gradual climb up to our turn off onto the red Split Rock trail. The Split Rock Trail was a nice rolling section of trail that weaved in and out of the forest. We were making good time and decided we all felt we could add another mile, so we turned off on the green Cove trail. Well, we walked and walked and some how we missed our turn off.
We climbed a bit and realized we were almost in a residential area, so we doubled back and walked down towards the lake. We came to an intersection that split off into 4 paths, but none of them were marked. I checked and double checked the map for our location and guessed at which was the best trail to take. The trail led us to the lake, where we took a nice water break and my chocolate lab got a good swim in before we decided to turn back around and find our lost trail.
After a .33 miles, we found our trail intersection and a nice picnic table to take a quick water break. Soon, we were chatting down the trail and that's when we ran into the the ranger that was collecting trash along the trail. We stopped to talk to him for a bit and when he asked us if we had any issues with the trail system or map, that's when Linda let it rip. haha! She told him about the bad trail markings and the lack of markers at the confusing intersection. We all laughed and cheered her on. The ranger actually took our suggestions seriously and let us know they were working on updating the park with new and correct mileage markers. We thanked him for his time and off we hiked. When we got back to the parking lot, Linda, who was wearing her pedometer, informed us we all actually hiked 5.3 miles. 5 miles!! I was so proud of all the Dames!! To reward ourselves, we drove down to the local Mickey D's for a cool drink.
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