Trail: Badin Lake Trail in the Uwharrie National Forest, near Asheboro.
Distance from home: 90 miles
Location and/or Map: Trail #90
Weather: 73 degrees and sunny
Hiking Friends: Rob and Eliza (no doggies this time)
How to get to the trailhead: Click here for a Google map of the general area.
We parked at the Kings Mountain Point Day Use Area, which is the most northern spot of this recreation area. We were greeted by a pit toilet that was clean and had toilet paper, which is good enough for us! We've seen much worse before - I remember a bathroom in the middle of the Croatan National Forest. It was literally just a hole in the ground. What happened to the toilet part that you sit on? :)
When we left our hotel room in Charlotte around noon, it was raining and thunderstorms were on the way. So we mulled around a bit, deciding what to do for fun instead of a hike, and we decided to go to a children's museum in Greensboro, since we'd be driving through G'boro on our drive home. But after a lazy lunch at Jack in the Box (they are rare out here in NC), we saw that the weather was perfect for a hike and there was no more rain in sight for the Uwharrie area. Hooray!
Rob and I have been to the Uwharrie a few times before for camping and mountain biking trips. So we're a little familiar with the area, but not so familiar that we know exactly where to hike and how to get there. So we just used our map and figured that we'd find a trail to hike by looking out for road signs that had the universal hiking symbol on it. You know the one I'm talking about.
this sign:
So we drove south on Highway 109 off of Highway 49. About 8 miles south of 49, we saw a sign with the hiking symbol, so off we went to find a trailhead. A few minutes later, we realize that this was leading us to the same exact area where we had camped back in 2005 at Arrowhead campground! We drove past the campground and started our hike at the Kings Mountain Day Use Area.
This hike is nice because it follows along the shore of Badin Lake, which is a popular area for fishing and boating. We found a baby praying mantis on our hike. It was so neat to watch him "pray" on my hand while Rob was busy saying "Cool!" and taking pictures of him.
We hiked and enjoyed our time together as an outdoorsy family on this hike. We hiked from Kings Mountain all the way down to the Cove Boat Ramp Area. At this point in the hike, we realized that we'd hiked too far! We didn't mean to go that far. We actually meant to cut over on another trail (Trail #702) in between Badin Lake Campground and Arrowhead Campground. But when we ended up at the Cove Boat Ramp, we were like, UH-OH! We realized we needed to get back to our car as soon as possible, because the time was nearing dinnertime, and we'd failed to prepare ourselves properly on this hike, meaning, we didn't pack a snack or juice box/sippy cup of milk for Eliza. And once a baby gets hungry, she's hungry and she'll let the whole world know it!
So Rob decided to run back to the car while I just continued hiking along the forest service road leading east from the boat ramp. Rob and I planned to meet up along the road somewhere north of Arrowhead campground along State Route 597. I had Eliza in the backpack, hence, I was not going to be the one running to go get the car! So Eliza and I enjoyed our solo portion of the hike. I sang silly kid songs to her and would tickle her feet to keep her happy, even though I'm sure her tummy was growling! She ended up falling asleep during the last 20 minutes of our hike along the forest service road. Once we were in the car, we gave Eliza a sippy cup of milk which she wolfed down quickly!
I'm tired tonight and I want to go to bed, so I'm just going to dump the pictures of the hike here in a slideshow format. I hope to come back to this area again in the near future to hike more trails.
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