Walking in September’s Only Rain
September 14: The old restrooms building at the Mill Mountain Campground, long-since abandoned, is a sad sight to behold.
September 2: Tinker Creek Greenway from Plantation Road to Carvins Cove and back. 4.8 miles
At lunch beside the reservoir, we looked upon a band of tan along the shoreline, something we hadn’t seen for many months, and evidence of the dryness of the summer, which has only gotten more acute over the ensuing month-plus.
September 7: Appalachian Trail from Black Horse Gap to Wilson Creek and back. 6.2 miles
September 7: The AT section from Black Horse Gap to Wilson creek includes a good section of rhododendron tunnel.
This easy walk includes the sign marking the end of the AT section maintained by the Natural Bridge Trail Club and the start of that kept by the Roanoke Appalachian Trail Club (and of course the other way around when you head back to Black Horse Gap), and thus the opportunity to thank the hard-working members of the both clubs. I was reading some history of the cutting of the trail through the Shenandoah National Park region in the 1930s, and the text was filled with laments about how you could clear a trail section in April, and it would be invisible by August. Certainly the huge increase in trail traffic since then has contributed to the trail staying more open, but we walk in debt to the trail club members who assure that it does.
September 14: Chestnut Ridge Loop Trail. 5.4 miles
We tried to have lunch near the mid-point, as we have several times over the years, up on a knob where the dead restroom building for the old Roanoke Mountain Campground sits, with several picnic tables down the hill from the abandoned building. In testament to both the tragedy of a lost park property and to the relentlessness of vegetation, I wondered aloud to The Day Hiker if the concrete table we often sit at had somehow been removed. She initially agreed, and then pointed at a clump of small trees and big bushes and wondered if the table was still there, buried in vegetation. It is.
September 19: Full walk of downtown Charleston, SC. 7 miles
This was on a pretty day before a fine evening with Mr. Keb’ Mo’ at the fancy new Gaillard Center in Charleston. We walked along the water, through the market, all over this walkable town. The time it too indicated about 7 miles; The Day Hiker’s wrist device said like 12.2 or something like that . . . but then it’s always overstating how far we walk.
September 28: On Roanoke’s Mill Mountain, Star Trail, Ridgeline Trail and Woodthrush Trail loop. 5 miles
When we walk over Mill Mountain, it’s usually to lunch at South Roanoke’s Fork in the Alley. On this day, toting The Day Hiker’s fabulous chicken salad sandwiches, we paused at the top of the mountain, eating a leisurely lunch and occasionally commenting on the darkening clouds to the west, having been conditioned my a month of no rain to perceive no real threat from them. We had come up the shorter way—the Star Trail—and thus faced the longer way back. Not to far down past the zoo, drops began, and then we walked for about half an hour through drilling, drenching rain. The Greatest Day Hiker Of Them All did not complain at all after the first onslaught, instead looking forward to her hope that the rain was widespread enough to water her plantings back home. Back home, soaked, we found that it had indeed. We’d walked through the only real rain that Roanoke had for the month.