Falls Lake Trail in Blue Jay Point County Park

Last March, I visited the portion of the Falls Lake Trail in Blue Jay Point County Park, north of Raleigh in Wake County.

A brief description from their website states:

Blue Jay Point County Park is a 236-acre park located on
the shores of Falls Lake in northern Wake County. Blue Jay Point's mission is to
offer environmental education programming in a natural setting

I was very impressed with this relatively new trail, and with this park in general. We spent around an hour wandering the park, with beatiful views of the lake, as well as wildlife.

I am unsure when I will be in the Falls Lake area again, but I am looking forward to seeing more of this trail someday.

My hat is off to the Friends of the Mountains to Sea Trail and to all who helped build this gem of a trail just north of the capital city.

Stay tuned as over the next 3 weeks I will be discussing in great detail my weeklong trek on the Cape Hatteras Beach trail.

Follow these links for more information:

Blue Jay Point County Park: http://www.wakegov.com/parks/bluejay/default.htm
Falls Lake Trail: http://steinbeiser.com/FLT_map/index.html
Friends of the Mountains to Sea Trail: http://www.ncmst.org/

Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things

329 days.

That is how long I’ve been silent on this blog. You could call it blog fade. I call it super busyness, followed by not thinking about it.

Following my last post in February, my semester in school became a little more intense, and I no longer had time to dream of mountain trails. The MST was not completely off my mind though, because I did plan and execute my trip on the Cape Hatteras Beach Trail, as well as hiking a portion of the Falls Lake Trail. I suppose I will use my next couple of posts to talk about these trips.

I’m not sure what it is about early spring that makes me think about trip planning. I’m guessing it’s the weather and the fact that I’m caught up at school with nowhere to go.

So I am postponing my trip. I still plan on going and hiking the MST, it just may be later than I planned. It won’t be this summer, it probably wont be 2011; however, 2012 is a likely candidate.

Why? Three reasons. School, money, and time. I don’t need to waste anyone’s time talking about the problems posed with each of these things, but they are obviously all factors for the delay.

I am also considering hiking in sections, or biking the roads, rather than a thru-hike attempt. We hiked 14-17 miles a day on the outer banks this spring, and it was tough. I would imagine that it’s something that you would get used to, but it was certainly all day, everyday, and the terrain was flat! I can’t imagine doing 20 miles in the smokies, where I’ve never done more than 12 miles. Anyway, if anyone who has attempted or completed a thru-hike could weigh in on this I would really appreciate it.

Hopefully this first post will get me back into the swing of things and I will update once a week. I am looking forward to telling the internet world about my previous trips, and my dream of the MST.