Uwharrie National Forrest Anniversary Excursion: The Uwharrie

If you visit the Uwharrie the first thing you will learn is that most of its trails main audience is horse back riders. Fortunately when we stopped by the ranger station on our way in we were informed that if we wanted to try hiking any of the trails that were for Horses, Bikes, and Hiking, that we would want to not do that on a weekend because they would be packed with horse riders and thus dangerous to hikers. Being that we were there over a long weekend we realized that we would not be on any of those trails until the Monday that we were leaving.

That ended up working perfectly for us. We spent the first day at Morrow Mt State Park and on the second day we visited one of the only hikers only trails, the Badin Lake trail.

It is a 5 mile loop trail and was a perfect second day hike. It was an easy hike that followed the lake for the majority of the time.

There were the beautiful pink/purple flowers along the shore line and Great Blue Herons and Cormorants everywhere.

I was able to catch this heron in mid flight with my 300mm.

I realized that my el-cheap-o Canon 75-300 is really a very bad lens. The shot above had to have some major work done on it in Camera Raw for it to be barely usable. In this case, the saying is true, you get what you pay for.

The next and final day of our trip we visited the Uwharrie River trail, which for us also included the Wren, part of the Tanager, and part of the Burl Tree Way trail. For a total of about 8-9 miles round trip. The majority of it was right along the river. I took the opportunity to set up the tripod and do some time lapse shots.

We also happened upon a huuuuge growth of fungus.

We finished the hike just as it started to rain. Perfect timing! The trip was awesome and I would definitely suggest a visit.