Saturday 3-27 Hiking Iron Mountain Blue Trail

 

Camping at Iron Mountain Campground

We had a very humid day with cloud covering. There wasn't any breeze so it made it warm.  Even so we had a great day of camping.

Larry thought there might have been a fishing tournament because he heard a lot of boats going down the lake at 7:00 am. When I got up around 8:00 I made breakfast. 

Afterwards we went on a hike, a bit more than 4 miles. We started out by taking the park road 1/2 mile to the trailhead. There was a nice sign in the parking at the trailhead that showed the hiking trails. We decided on the blue trail. We started the trail next to the sign and crossed the creek, then the trail disappeared. We walked through the bush and trees and found the trail. Larry had looked up the trail on a website called All Trails and found the blue trail. He wanted to make sure where to go. The trail took us over a creek multiple time, we had to cross it using rocks. The creek wasn't wide so it wasn't a problem. The trail took us gently up in elevation and through trees. There were rocks and tree roots so you had to be careful not to fall. Once we found the trail it was well marked with color dots on the pine trees. The trail wasn't wide and it was moderate in difficulty. The loop was 3 miles long. When we got back to the parking lot we found out that we started the trail at the wrong place. We started at the sign and we should have started at the other end of the parking lot. By the time we got back to the Minnie we were hot and tired. We had a super hike.

 

Iron Mountain Trail map 

Creek we crossed a few times

DeGray Lake from the hiking trail

 

Rocks along the trail

After resting a bit we had lunch. A little while later I went on a 40 minute walk around the campground to the other loop and boat ramp. When I started my walk I saw our neighbor walking her dog so I visited with her. Her dog is blind but gets around really well. I had a very nice walk. 

After cooling off I went over to the bathroom and took a shower. The bathrooms are setup with the showers separate from the rest of the bathroom. The showers had three stalls with knobs for both hot and cold water so you can adjust the temperature. The water pressure was good. The stalls are small but it has a small bench and a hook on the door to keep your clothes dry. It also has a sink. It was very nice and clean.

While relaxing in the Minnie I did my Daily Challenges and the Event: Medium Mayhem Mini of 15 games. It took me 42 minutes and put me in 13th place in my group. I did some Sudoku games. By the end of the day I ended up doing 26,500 steps, which put me in 4th place in my group. 

At 6:30 a rain storm came through with heavy rain. Larry was keeping an eye on it and thought maybe it would miss us but no such luck. We were under a tornado watch and there were reports of large hail. We were lucky we just got the rain.