May 2nd
It’s a safe
bet you will not find any gold on this trail but you will find golden memories,
fantastic vistas, and perhaps a few friendly faces.
Even though we hiked the trail mid-week in early June we encountered two horsewomen with their mounts and a mother and son completing a home school project. For a lightly traveled trail this was a population explosion.
Kay and Eli |
The trail follows
the streams up, down, and around the mountain with beautiful vistas, shrubbery tunnels,
and heavy tree growth. Tunnels were the
theme of the day as you first walk through the tunnel at the end of The Road to Nowhere before starting the trail. Today's journey started downhill across outer edge of the tunnel before encountering
the stream.
There was
ample evidence of horse usage and as we proceeded it became clear we were
gaining on the horse traffic. Now, how
did we know? The horse cakes were becoming
fresher and the dung beetles were busy moving around balls of horse cakes. There
are three main types of dung beetles: rollers, tunnellers and dwellers. These appear to be the tunnellers and are an important part in the recycling animal feces.
Dung Beetle tumbling the Horse Cookie |
Continuing
down the path I find a lime green fruit, now I know it is not a lime but what
is it? Not certain, I set the lime green
‘puff ball’ aside and headed down the trail. Later I learned this was probably a may-pop
which is the edible berry of a passion fruit vine. The vine bears fruit May to October, yes this
is May and there were plenty of vines in the area. With this knowledge, I will keep the next
may-pop for a taste test.
May-Pop |
Back along
the trail we notice a few traps, probably bear traps, and elaborate schemes for
hanging food and supplies. The park
service provides these bear storage ropes and cables as a service to primitive
campers in the back country. Thankfully
we did not meet a bear.
The path
travels along the stream allowing us to pass through a tunnel of trees and
emerge into a meadow by the stream. On
closer look we find a chimney, house foundation, and a rusted wash tub. One can
imagine the family clearing the trees, building the house from the lumber and
stream rocks, creating an irrigation system using the two streams that bound
the property, plowing the fields, and harvesting the crops.
The trail
ends by climbing the ridge from the stream back to the tunnel and Road to
Nowhere. This is more than a dead end
road; it imparts a sense of the rustic mountain life that existed before 1940. You feel the solitude and harshness of life
in the backwoods where the nearest neighbor was 5-10 miles away and the trip was by foot or horse.
You appreciate the lives of the pioneers and native Americans.
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