Tuesday April 23 2024

 Tuesday April 23

Woke up to sun streaming through the trees at Watoga State Park. Our mission today was to explore the park, first up was a hike up Arrowhead trail to the “Ann Bailey Lookout”. The elevation change on the climb was about 300 meters and the trail was in excellent shape, dry, wide with very few rocks. We met one person with her dog on our way up, otherwise we were alone.

The tower was surprise, a log structure with two levels and big openings in the western walls for catching a view. We were expecting a fire tower! We continued along a ridge trail from the tower with nice views of the surrounding countryside on both sides. We turned around after ½ km as we wanted to checkout other areas of the park.

Our next stop was park headquarters, about 10km from our campsite. They have a nice park store with lots of supplies and souvenirs – we picked up some firewood and a jar of red pepper jelly (we couldn’t resist). Once the wood was loaded, we noticed a road that led up to an overlook – time to investigate. The road climbed to the top of the park (over 1000 meters) and we were able to enjoy a peaceful scenic overlook from a couple of benches. There was no wind and the sun was beaming down – it felt good after the chilliness we experienced in northern West Virginia.

Our final stop for the day was the park arboretum which we passed on the way to park headquarters. We both imagined it would be a big well managed forest with lots of trees identified and maybe some gardens…wrong! It was really some trails though the forest, no different than what we had hiked in the morning. We continued up a steep path and ascended another 300 meters – almost as high as our morning hike! It was enjoyable though and the trees were large and mostly Oaks.

After the hike we returned to the campsite and enjoyed a little downtime before supper. Later we had a great campfire and hit the sack early.