Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway - Palmetto Trail

The Atlantic & Yadkin Greenway is a Rail-to-trail project. I started at Strawberry Road located at the north end of Brandt Lake and I went SE towards Lake Brandt. The Greenway starts at NC Highway 150, 1.7 miles the other direction across the road.

A cleverly designed sign marking the name of the greenway.

 About a third of a mile, Gypsy and I crossed over the north end of Lake Brandt on this footbridge.

The greenway passes by the Bur-Mill Park. Here you're looking at a bike repair station including an air pump.

This sign tells you all about the A&Y railway.

I took the Palmetto Trail in a counter-clockwise direction. This trail goes around the south end of Lake Brandt then turning left on the sidewalk along Old Battleground Road for a few hundred yards I headed back to the greenway via the Nat Green Trail.

A peaceful forest walk.

A walking bridge over the Horsepen Creek alongside the Old Battleground Road. It looks to me like an old railroad bridge.

 Heading back on the Nat Greene Trail, a rough estimate but this boardwalk was 180 steps and assuming I have the average man's stride of  2.5 feet, that would make this 450 feet long.

H. Michael Weaver Bridge over the south end of Lake Brandt. From here just a few hundred yards is where I entered the Palmetto Trail and I return the 1.8 miles retracing my same route back to my parked vehicle.

Uwharrie National Forest - Uwharrie National Recreation Trail (Yates Place Camp to NC 109 Trailhead)

 The 3-miles from Yates Place Camp to the NC 109 Trailhead was recommended by the author of 100 Classic Hikes in North Carolina as a good sampling of the more than 20-miles of hiking this trail offers. I could have coved a lot more mileage of this trail if I had a hiking partner that also drove a car, we could have placed our vehicles at each end of a trailhead. But instead, I had to do a hike in and back.

Yates Place Camp looks to be a nice secluded rustic campground off the narrow Secondary Road 1146 (Dusty Level Road).

The trail is 3-miles from trailhead to trailhead, but before you get to the actual trailhead from the campground it's a half-mile hike down this spur trail where the Duchman Creek Trail meets with the Uwharrie Trail.

The actual beginning of the Uwharrie Trail Trailhead from Yates Place, and as you can see I have 3-miles more to go and then back the same way I came. 

The first half-mile was an ugly, smelly hike. The U.S Forest Service had done a "control burn" of the forest floor. 

After leaving the control burn area the hike got much more interesting. There were several of these creek crossings. I was appreciative of the laid down rocks so that my feet could stay dry. Gypsy wasn't so worried about that and refreshed herself from the stream. Our hike started out with a temperature of 84 degrees, but due to a thunderstorm towards the end of our hike, the temperature dropped to 72.

The trail was well marked with a white blaze on the trees, and for the most part, the trail was easily visible but there were several false trails in which the white blaze came in useful for knowing which direction to travel.

Trail skirts around some boulders.

The Uwharrie National Recreation Trail is designed for backpacking and there are quite a few of these campsites along the trail. Almost always they located near a water source of a creek.

An old faded wooden sign letting me know I'm nearing my destination.

The parking area is adjacent to the left of where the trail crosses NC Highway 109. Hikers stating here going south from where I crossed the road might have a tough time seeing the trail but glancing to the right you will see the white blaze though the trail itself is somewhat abscured. Gypsy and I couldn't rest more than 10-minutes because we just had enough time to make it back to the Jeep before dark, and also unknown to me a thunderstorm was lurking in the distance. We just made it back just before the rain hit.