Talladega National Forest: Coleman Lake Loop 2 miler

Many miles on a dirt road, Chan says 'solid inch of dust on our car!!'

Parking is at the swim beach, but no one would actually swim-Canada Poose live here.

Really random wall!

Bonus find, sensitive briar

So cool!

Lots of poking, looooots of poking

I really thought these were barnacles for a minute.

The trail loops the lake, there's a minor hill climb to the above high point, then it goes back down to skirt the lake.  There are several small bridges.

We saw turtles and frogs and heard all kinds of frogs calling back and forth.

There is not good fishing in this lake due to having to let the lake drain to fix a problem.  They are going to close down all fishing until 2017 to allow the restocked population to get established.

Tiny turtle!

Fishing bridge!

I loved the ferns!

We left the campground and headed back out to the main road to make our way home.

Coming out of the mountain roads to this view below of sun shining through trees was extra pretty!

These pics are from an earth cache in White Plains we stopped to solve,

It's a pretty walk on a pretty lake, the campground has power and water and is along the Pinhoti Trail.  It's also remote and you have to go on gravel roads to get to it,  People had campers back there and in fact, there are no tent pads, just paved spots, not sure you even can tent camp.  But hauling a camper back there would be scary!

King's Chapel and Tom Bevill

 Matt and I did a 7 miler today, parking at Guntersville State Park at the Moonshine/King's Chapel trailhead in the park.  From there you can walk King's Chapel to the Terrel connector trail and across to the Tom Bevill trail.

I toddled right on down the Cave Trail at the Tom Bevill junction and we walked back up to the Terrel connector trail on a closed road, adding about a mile.  It WOULD have looked like a balloon on the map, but now it looks like a balloon with a deflated balloon beside it.

I hiked just the Tom Bevill trail with the kids 8 or 9 years ago.  It about killed me then and it about killed me today.  It's so up and down, I thought I might be a little hardier now, but uphill kicks my butt every time.  This has a LOT of uphill.

This guy was trying to impress me with his push-ups and flashing his blue bits.   I did not fall for it.

King's Chapel is a cemetery.  It's a lovely location up on the mountain with the lake in the distance.  I can't imagine HOW they got bodies up there, unless they just buried people who dropped dead from the climb.

Always carry some type of ID. 

See the lake off in the distance?

After poking around for a while, we got back to the plan for the day:

The lizard must be named Charles Darwin.  He totes carved our initials in a tree.  BAD LIZARD.

lichen on a rope 

These are on the Cave trail.  Yay!

We got back around to the Tom Bevill trail junction again and took off the right way.

By 3, I was hongry-hungry.  I had packed up some things while Matt ran Brit back and picked up Ben this morning.  Let's see WHAT I packed!

The little tin has a chocolate caramel mix that is SOOOO good.  The red twisty things are super spicy and turn your fingers bright red, next is some tortillas cut in 4ths.

Cheese sticks, tuna, technically baby food squeezers-but it's a great way to get some fruit on the trail!

That package by the spoon is Black Forest turkey.  So good I had to use that spoon to smack Matt in the knuckles before he ate my half!

We ended up not eating the tuna, so I put in on quinoa and collard greens tonight for dinner.  That was SO good.  YUM  The rest of that food is history, baby!

Our view of the lake off in the distance while we ate.

The April tornadoes wrecked a good bit of Guntersville, this trail was impassable.

I imagine it took a LOT of work to clear it and it will be years before it's back to normal.  The good thing is that you can see the lake for a LONG time while walking.  Out in the sun.  I saw a bald eagle from this part and that was cool.  I had my camera set on macro and that was not. It flew as soon as it felt our eyeballs.

Where the eagle was...

I found a hollow log and walked to the other end to take a picture.  Matt peers down, fully expecting to see a snake about to eat my hand.

I used photoshop to lighten one of the pictures I took to see what was ACTUALLY in that log:

aaaaaa!  Terrifying!

On the east side of the mountain (this is Ellenburg) there was minimal damage.

Tom Bevill is a power trail.  30 geocaches in 3 miles.  INSANE.
We found 6 of them.  That's too much stopping to hit them all.

The anole heard I was Charles 'the lizard' Darwin's girl and did not flash his goods.

The clue for this cache "under a rock"
Yeah

This trail goes up and up and up.  There's no way to show in a photo how steep a trail is. Trust me, it was steep.

I liked the way the sun shone on the trail ahead off into the distance.

Can you see the cache in this photo?  

I need bow biters, my laces come undone on my left shoe 20 times a day.  Matt finally tied them for me in some kind of Boy Scout thing.  That came undone in 5 minutes.

The spring!  I drank some of the water and Matt says I have brain worms now.

The very useful junction sign and you can see the cave trail clearly marked not anywhere near the direction of the Tom Bevill trail.

The less-useful sign

It was a great hike, I loved several things about it.  Views, near water, not TOO hard in spite of the climbs and my complaining and there was a variety of terrain and types of trees and rocks.  There were a couple muddy bits, for the most part they were made passable with the addition of boards to make a kind of floating bridge.
It was well marked, getting on the wrong trail was all me.  Matt was just gung ho about being outside and never mentioned it was the wrong way.  There are blazes the whole way.  The trail to the cemetery is blazed red, the Tom Bevill is blazed orange.  Connector trails are blazed white.