Falls Lake Camping
This past Friday night Jillian and I camped out at Falls Lake, just north of Raleigh, and had a very enjoyable time. I got off work early and we headed out there around 5:30. There are three different areas to camp out at Falls Lake, and we stayed at Shinleaf. It was good because it had a bathhouse and the conveniences of car camping, but you had to walk a little ways to get to the sites, instead of being able to pull your car right up to the site. A good transition between car camping and backpacking.
Here are some pictures from camping:
Our site was nice, shaded and looking down on the lake. I am guessing it was about a third of a mile from the bathouse. It was clear all evening, but the forecast said there was a chance of thunderstorms overnight so i had the fly on the tent.
This was my view when we woke up in the morning and poked our heads out of the tent. Perfectly sunny blue sky. We both slept in till around 9 or 9:30.
Here is the tent the next morning without its fly. It was 60s overnight and with the fly on it was hot in the tent, so around 2 we woke up and took it off, since by then we figured out it wasn’t going to rain.
This is the first time I have used this tent and it performed beautifully.
We had oatmeal and fruit cups for breakfast and lazed around a little, read a book together for devotions, and packed everything up. Packing up was surprisingly quick. By 10:30 we were back in the car and driving out to the eastern part of the lake to do a small section of the mountains to sea trail that runs through the Falls Lake park. The trail was nice, but would have been nice if it had spent more time down by the lake. A lot of times we would hike for a while without seeing the lake and then we would come back to it for a little stretch, then hike for a while without seeing it then come back to it. We enjoyed the walk though. Here are some pictures from our hike:
This is Jillian looking beautiful as usual.
In this one you can see we hiked through a section of the woods where they had controlled fires the week before to burn out some of the brush that builds up. It was so weird walking through it, it felt sort of like in the Lord of the Rings when Frodo and Sam were journeying through Mordor. As you can see all of the small stuff close to the ground is burned, but the bigger trees were not effected at all and still had their leaves and everything.
Another adventurous sighting was this snake. Although it looks like a black snake its tail was rattling, so neither of us were sure if it was a rattler or not. Does anyone know if black snakes rattle thier tails?
Finally here are some close-ups of some of the flora (corrected) that we saw.
Overall we had a very enjoyable time and would like to try camping there more in the future, though perhaps we will explore other areas to hike.
Warren Said,
April 18, 2006 @ 13:36
I think you meant flora…
bradlands Said,
April 18, 2006 @ 16:01
Thanks yes, that is what I meant. By the way after looking up info on black snakes I found out that they sometimes rattle their tail in dry leaves to simulate a rattle. Here is an article:
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/ReptilesAmphibians/Facts/FactSheets/Blackratsnake.cfm
Suzie Cheel Said,
April 11, 2008 @ 01:22
Huh… Slightly addled, but on the whole I like this post. You’ve got some fresh ideas. But please, write more lucid.