Day 3 – Hiking The Beard’s Gap Trail

Today’s Blog Entry

On Wednesday Cindy and I ventured into Douthat State Park to explore this historic gem.

We drove to the main park office where we found the trailhead for the Beard’s Gap Trail. We followed this heavily-wooded trail up the hollow to a ridge where several trails met. We then followed the Mountain Top Trail along the ridge until we found the intersection with the Buck Hollow Trail. The Buck Hollow Trail took us back down to the shores of Douthat Lake.

We walked along the lakeshore enjoying the park’s vintage log structures and, of course, checking out the fishing options. The trail took us past the beautiful tiered spillway below the damn and then finally back to where we had parked.

It wasn’t an overly long hike due to the threatening weather but mostly because we needed to go find cell coverage for a FaceTime wedding ceremony at 12:30! I can’t say that we’ve ever attended a wedding in hiking clothes before, but welcome to the strange new virtual world that we live in. Congrats to my nephew Conrad Williams and his lovely bride Kayla!

Our other excitement for the day (besides the wedding) was a close encounter with one of Yogi’s brethren not long after we left the Beard’s Gap trailhead. It was larger than a cub would be at this time of year and was probably a yearling.

We froze and carefully scanned all around us (twice!) to check for Mama Bear before making enough noise to scare him away. He was up in the woods maybe 25 yards away from us and seemed far more curious than aggressive so we felt safe continuing our hike, but given the heavy woods along today’s trail we made sure to keep our eyes and ears open the rest of the way…

Today’s Map

Today’s Photos