NC Mountains 2014 - Days 23 & 24

Day 23 - Saturday 8/30/14 It rained during the night so the air was nice and crisp this morning for our walk. After breakfast I walked the trail from the campground through the woods over to the Brinegar Cabin. The two room cabin with loft was built about 1880 and used until the 1930’s. The homestead included the cabin, spring house, shed and garden. A ranger was onsite today discussing mountain life and also demonstrating spinning sheep wool. My hike was 3 miles roundtrip, even though the sign at the campground showed it a 1.0 mile trip each way. We relaxed and did some reading for the remainder of the day. The ranger stopped to say hello in the afternoon and I asked her to identify a tree on our site. It was a Tulip Popular and drops a seed pod full of bright orange seeds. I am talking some home to see if I get them to sprout. Then we discussed the need to have a bathhouse for the park campground, especially for the tent loops. She said they got a new superintendent last October and he was looking for suggestions to improve the park. She also said that the park service was thinking about closing Doughton Park last year until the new superintendent came on the job and he was able to keep it open. She said she had more campers this weekend that she normally has. Most of the sites were used all weekend. It would be a shame to close this park.

Day 24 - Sunday 8/31/14 It rained again this morning until about 8AM and was really foggy until 9AM when the sun finally came out for awhile. It stayed overcast most of the day. We walked later after breakfast. Today was just reading and relaxing. This is a quite campground except for the traffic on the parkway during the day. Lots of motorcycles coming by with their loud exhaust pipes. The campground does not have any hookups or bathouses only a comfort station. There is a place to fill the fresh water tank and a dump station.