Hiked 18 miles of the 22-mile Shockaloe NRT yesterday. Actually, four miles of that was adjacent rural road to avoid massive miles of bog. This trail was primarily made for equestrian use and is the second oldest NRT ever designated…and since its designation I don’t think anything has been done to fix drainage issues. The trail was easy when I started on an extremely cold morning. Temps in the low 20s meant the trail was frozen and firm. As the day progressed, the ground warmed, and by mile 13 I was fighting through constant sucking mud. Reached a point where I couldn’t continue without losing my shoes and bailed through some thorns to a nearby road. Took the local roads back to my car while fending off aggressive neighborhood dogs with a fallen tree branch (I had forgotten both my air horn and my Dog Dazer). My lower back let me know last night that I need to keep my mileage under 15 for a while longer as it did not appreciate the excursion. Type Two fun, yay.
This morning I tried to find Bienville Pines NNL, one of Mississippi’s largest remaining stands of old-growth loblolly pines. A 1995 hiking guide claims there is parking and numbered info signs throughout the area. Thirty years later, that ain’t the case. There is a wide dirt road that is closed to motor vehicles and gated on one end. I walked this road from the non-gated side and took photos into the general NNL area. Near the end of this road, toward the gate, stand some very rural-looking homes with, guess what, more dogs. Only heard them instead of seeing them this time though.
Harrell Prairie Hill is just down the forest road from Bienville Pines and is a rare Mississippi temperate grassland ecoregion. There’s a place to pull off the road, a sign, and hooray, no neighborhood dogs. Since this is January, the prairie isn’t exactly green and flowery at the moment, but this weird nature-lover still enjoyed seeing it.
