April 18–Middle Prong Trail

The forecast called for an OK morning with rain starting sometime in the afternoon. We got to the trailhead about 10 am and actually got a few hours of sun. By the time we got back to the car at 1 pm, it was kind of gloomy. The rain held off until 5 when it came down in buckets for about an hour.

What I would call the fork of a river or creek, they call a prong around where. Today we hiked alongside the middle prong of the Little River. Again I picked an easy trail for our first real hike of the year. It is a 4.8 mile round trip that only gains about 800 feet in elevation. The trail is an old railway bed so it is wide and not very steep.

The river is constantly cascading over rocks so this trail seems to be a photographer favourite. I would say that about 3/4 of the people on the trail had tripods.

The trail was in really good shape with only a few rocky spots that weren’t really very rocky.

Our arbitrary turn around point was the junction with another trail. If we had gone on for about another 1.8 miles there was supposed to be a nice waterfall but we will be seeing a huge number of waterfalls this year. By the time we got back to the car we were both glad we had turned around when we did.

Part way back we stopped for lunch. We didn’t stay long because the skies were darkening and Jennie didn’t have her rain gear.

You are allowed to ride horses on the trail but thankfully we only saw very few piles of you know what.

Parts of the trailside were just covered in magnolia bushes. It would have been great to see them in bloom.

The obligatory flora and fauna pictures.

It looked like this millipede was being attacked by the moths.

Back at the trailhead the lot was pretty busy and as we drove out there were still a lot of cars coming in. It didn’t really feel busy on the trail. We almost always had someone else in sight but that was mainly because the trail had some long straight stretches.

Back at the RV the we could see the line in the sky as the afternoon deluge approached.

The forecast for tomorrow is mostly rain so it will probably be an inside day.