I never knew about that trail. The ones I know of all run north/south like The Pacific Crest or Appalachian. I’m guessing your North Country trail was originally an aboriginal route.
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That is a great question. I bet you are right.
I also heard that the portion near us was part of the Underground Railroad. There is a Quaker family near here whose ancestors came here in the 1800s to help with that.
Nice photo of the hen party! Thank you
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Not exactly raw nature but the bulbs of Star Gazer lilies I planted a couple year or so ago finally managed to bloom this year.
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Those are certainly better than I’ve ever been able to get them to grow! Beautiful
Well I got 5 bulbs but only these two have ever put up flower stalks but they only ever bloomed his year. I do find them striking and they last a fair amount of time.
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The Seek app calls this flower in our front yard a “Swamp Rose Mallow.” By a short stretch of the imagination you could certainly change this in your mind to “Marshmallow!”
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I had been meaning to share some photos here from a recent trip my husband and I took.
Crabtree Falls, North Carolina
All of the rocks and debris are new as of two years ago. Hurricane Helene’s winds and rains dealt quite the blow to the Blueridge Parkway, and they’re still cleaning up. As of right now, there is no public way to access this path, so the youth hiking group of the campmeeting we attend was not able to visit the last two years (luckily for the two of us, our dear friend in the green shirt is a local and granted us access through a back way… so long as we didn’t tell anyone at the campmeeting 
). There used to be a bridge across the stream at the base of the waterfall that we would cross, as well as wooden stairs on the left leading to the bridge and stony stairs on the right leading up to the top. We found the remains downstream. Still, despite the splintered boards and upheaved rocks, the waterfall was as beautiful as ever.
We also found this little guy on the way back!
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Hawksbill Mountain, North Carolina
This is my favorite spot to hike when we visit this place—a bit strenuous, but the payoff is worth it.
Rhododendrons are everywhere!
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Deer love them.
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Marshmallows were made from the starchy roots.
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What–that’s neat! I had no idea. I’ll have to let my family know–we were talking about this, but did not know. Thank you.
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Althaea officinalis, native to Eurasia, is the original marsh mallow that supplied the gunk (now replaced by gelatin) for marshmallows. Muenchhusia moscheutos is an eastern North American native mallow, swamp rose mallow being among the common names. Both are mallows, but I’m not finding a phylogeny quickly.
The southern Appalachians have one of the highest diversities of land snails outside the tropics. The one in the photo is a large polygyrid, a family that is especially diverse in the eastern U.S. Possibly a Neohelix or Mesodon, but not easy for me to tell from that view. Where there’s a view in that direction, we can see the North Carolina Appalachians from here.
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