Mother's Day at Ledge Creek Forest

For Mother's Day, I took my mom for a short hike at Ledge Creek Forest Conservation Area, a recently-opened preserve owned by the Tar River Land Conservancy.  It's located between Butner and Creedmoor near the community of Stem.  After parking, we went left and followed the blue-blazed Ledge Creek Trail.  It started out through an open meadow where a few little flowers were growing and it looks like the conservancy is planting pine trees.  The trail then looped around through the woods, eventually heading down towards Ledge Creek.

It's a beautiful little creek and the steep bluffs along it are unexpected way out here in rural Granville County.  I climbed around on the rocks a bit while my mom and Alex waited up on the trail.

Then the trail climbed steeply up the bluffs and leveled off before intersecting the yellow-blazed Pond Trail.  We followed this trail passing by some pretty little farm ponds with a lot of algae growing on the surface.

Where the water was visible, it looked very dark and tannic.

On a little bridge, I got a picture of my mom with Alex, enjoying her Mother's Day hike.  We finished up the loop through another open area where it appears they are planting pine trees.  After our hike, we dropped Alex off and went to lunch.