Lewis Falls

Before leaving the Big Meadow area, we took one last hike from the picnic area to Lewis Falls, a 3.3 mile loop.

Trail Posts & Flowers

The trail posts are pretty clear. There is a metal band around them stamped with trail places, direction arrows and mileage. Tony is using the CalTopa app (he highly recommends for serious hikers) and these trail posts show up as white circles on his maps.

And, of course, I take pictures of flowers and fungi still to be found in the fall season.

Big Meadows is uh, a big meadow

The Big Meadows area has been maintained for ages as a meadow, and current park staff do have to mow and burn to keep the forest from taking over.

South River Falls

After lunch back at the picnic area, we headed down Skyline Drive to the South River picnic and parking area for a 3.3 mile hike down to a stone-walled observation point. One helpful hiker complimented our van then warned us of a hornet’s nest along the return AT trail in this area.

After arriving at the rock observation wall, another helpful hiker said to keep going and the trail down to the bottom of these falls was marked on a trail post just ahead. So that would add about 1.5 miles to the hike, but what the heck. The view of the falls from the wall wasn’t very good and maybe the bottom view would be better. It sure was!

And because we knew about the hornets nest on the AT we were able to hike quickly and safely past it shortly before reaching the parking lot.

Loft Mountain Campground

Once again, we had to be vigilant and on the lookout for deer on our drive to the campground. Adding to our hike left us a little late getting to Loft Mountain and the check-in station was closed. We wanted showers, but drove to find our site first while we still had some daylight to find it. It was dark when we returned to our site from the shower house.