Cruise Down the Mountain (Part III).

I was going to post some stuff about the forests through which I hiked on the way down Middle Mountain. But I decided that most of it was just boring crap, so I'm going to can that part.

And, truly, the remaining part of the hike was just a steady cruise downhill all the way until I trudged back into the campground at White Oak. I do have to mention, though, that I had grossly miscalculated the length of the hike which only occurred to me when I encountered a sign on the way down. Initially, trying to cobble the numbers together on the admittedly crappy trail map from the state park, I had figured a round trip of about five or six miles. But when I saw a sign informing me at one point that I had 5.8 miles remaining just to get back to the campground, I knew I'd made some major errors in simple addition. So I sat down and totaled it up and realized that I had put together a loop hike consisting of parts of five different trails that covered a tad over 13 miles of hiking.

But that's okay. Because I was on vacation and I could do as I pleased and do it at my own pace.

This tree was dancing.

A young hemlock tree, so far ignorant of the hemlock wolly adelgid.

Strangely, this part of Virginia was experiencing a minor drought. Many of the creeks and streams were just about completely dry.

The last directional sign I saw before reaching our campground.