A Hike up Blueberry Hill

The rain has caused us to get later starts to our hiking days this week, but we are still chipping away at the list of best hikes that our campground neighbor, Marge, gave to us. Today's hike was actually the closest to our camping site at Lake Toxaway--just north in an area called Panthertown Valley. She suggested hiking about 4.5 miles to School House Falls and back. It's an easy hike, and it was strange that the trail was almost level. We have found that waterfall trails are usually straight up or straight down.

Mark bush-whacked around the tannin-stained pond in front of School House Falls for the picture above. We were the only ones there, and we love waterfalls that you can walk behind. Once he cleared the path, Denisa followed behind him.

Because we were alone, we had to take the rare selfie of the two of us behind the falls.

Once again, Marge gave us great advice on another classic hike in our new home county.

There's a tent camp site right on the edge of the pond. It's a well-used site with a level spot for a tent, camp fire, and furniture designed by the Flintstones.

When we studied the national forest map, we determined that we could turn this into a loop hike by hiking over Little Green Mountain. So after we visited the falls, we headed down a narrow path with such thick foliage that it reminded us of our hikes in Costa Rica. It looks like few people take this circular trail we have proposed.

When we got close to the top of Little Green Mountain, we came to a natural granite pathway that left an opening among the trees. But the real find were the blueberry bushes in this clearing.

Denisa is one happy hiker when she is surrounded by sweet and juicy blueberries!

The berries aren't very big, but they are vine-ripened and super sweet. After the morning showers, they were rain-washed and ready to eat. It was hard to get Denisa to move on from this special place on the trail.

On our hikes we have noticed these curious-shaped leaves on a few trees. Denisa had looked it up, and found this to be a young sassafras tree.

Sassafrass root is used to make root beer. We wish we had smell-a-blog capabilities, because that little sapling root smelled just like root beer.

We made it to the Little Green Mountain summit, with its granite cap. We noticed that all the pictures at the summit have Denisa with her hand cupped and full of blueberries. She was delighted to find even more blueberry bushes at the top!

These bushes are full of bigger berries, and Denisa is thinking of moving to the top of Little Green Mountain permanently. She has also renamed it "Blueberry Hill." Knowing that bears love berries, we wouldn't have been surprised to find one here. If we had, Denisa would have just made him move over and share all those berries. By this time, Denisa has eaten so many blueberries that she hopes there aren't some digestive repercussions later.

Mark isn't a huge blueberry fan, but even he is enjoying the harvest as well. For now, he is just enjoying the view.

The picture above was taken right before he stepped down that rain-slickened piece of granite and found himself sliding down the mountain on his belly. Denisa did make sure he was all right before she snapped the picture below. He was lucky to land in a patch of grass, which gave him some traction from sliding further down the mountain and softened his fall.

Now we are stepping more carefully on that wet granite summit, because some of the sections are quite steep. Between the berries and views, we have wanderred into another of His wonders today.

The problem with wandering around this big granite summit, is that now we must determine which direction will take us back to the parking lot on this circular hike. There are huge forests of trees and more of the Appalachian mountains on every side of us, and it is quite confusing.

With a supply of the larger berries from the summit in hand, we start searching for a trail that leads in the right direction. Without trees on top, there are no more of the trail blaze markers we normally find on the trees to guide us.

That's when we realized there are light green painted circles on some of the granite boulders to indicate the trail.

The only problem with this system, is that the paint has faded and is hard to find. We also think it is comical that it has faded to a color and shape almost identical to the lichen circles that are naturally adorning all those granite rocks.

Is it a painted circle, or a natural lichen circle? Will Mark and Denisa ever find their way off Blueberry Hill? Will they both be sick from all the blueberries they consumed? Join us again tomorrow for another adventure of "Wandering His Wonders" to find out.