North Carolina: Boogerman Loop

Ah Boogerman Loop...a trail we all look back on with mixed feelings.

Before we left I discovered an app called Chimani that has different apps specific to individual National Parks. It made it easy to browse trails and each trail was clearly rated for difficulty, listed distances and approximate hike times, and had a description. For Boogerman Loop it said it was easy, about 3.8 miles long, and should take 1.5 hours. It specifically use the phrase "fairly level for the duration of the trail".  I thought even with that description, it would probably be the most challenging trail to take Irene along.  She is getting a little heavy to carry.

The bridge by the parking area - and I mean grass-free-space-by-the-road, not parking lot.

We arrived mid to late morning and decided that we would eat lunch afterwards.  I did take several granola bars and a package of sour patch kids.  The sour patch kids came in very handy.

The first surprise was the the trail head was not near the parking area.  You hiked a "fairly level" 0.8 miles to the trail head.

Boogerman Loop was actually not level at all, it led in a general rise through some nice big trees for a long way, maybe 2 miles, to the point that you felt like you were on top of a mountain, but with no clearing for a view.  Then it began descending in an up and down way.  At some point when we thought we had to be near the end, Rob suddenly got a wisp of cell reception and found our location and declared us about half way!

We met only two other groups of hikers and fortunately we met one of them near this huge hollow tree, which we wouldn't have noticed except they were taking pictures in it.  (the hollow faces away from the trail and at first I thought they were taking a potty break!)  You could see a pin point of sun at the top.

So in short the Boogerman Loop is not particularly spectacular, but it is peaceful and remote and not terribly steep or rocky.  However, it is not exactly easily accessible and not because of the 0.8 entry trail!

We did spot a few salamanders on this trail.

After we got to the end of Boogerman Loop, I expected it to be a circle (hence the name "loop"), we met up with the Caldwell Fork Trail - which would lead us back to the entry trail.  Caldwell Fork Trail goes straight across a meandering river with many bridges in many states of repair - ranging from non-existant:

To in need of repair:

A few bends before we got to this one, we met a couple hiking in the opposite direction who told us we'd need some team-building exercises to cross this one!

So we got back to the car after approximately 6 hours - out of granola bars and almost out of sour patch kids, which had been rationed out carefully to maintain morale.

We are glad we went, but had we known what we were getting into, we probably wouldn't have taken this one!  We found a nice brochure at the visitors center 2 days later that described the trail perfectly, so we didn't do enough homework.  The best part was crossing the rickety bridges and fording the stream.