Seminole State Forest

A great couple of days hiking, and probably the warmest we have had so far on the eastern corridor. It was a couple of very contrasting days. The first, along nice level bicycle/horse trail and some beautifully manicured trail through Seminole State Forest. We came across a ranger out looking for invasive plants, and spent a very pleasant hour chatting with him, and then I inadvertently added a mile or so of hiking by chasing down a blue blaze for a spring. I eventually gave up, and the extra miles don’t count anyway. The afternoon was back into deep forest and a refreshing change from all the paved walking recently. It made us both look forward to getting into the northern forests next month.


The second day though, was when it all went downhill! Towards the middle of the day we passed through recently burned area, where there was also storm damage from a tornado last spring. Someone had re-blazed the trail with orange tape since the fire. It was a little confusing to follow in places where the taping did not quite match the few unburned blazes, but was followable. Unfortunately, when we reached the storm damaged area it had been marked for logging out the damaged trees, and every tree over about 6 inches diameter which was not to be logged was also marked with orange tape!. That made for an impossible to follow trail. Eventually, after wandering around in circles for an hour or so we just decided on a north and west course until eventually we bumped into the blazed trail beyond the damaged area.

We didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, but saw lots of good prints: bears and a small cat in two different areas, and several areas where flocks of wither turkeys or cranes had spent some time walking the trail.

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