Bay Tree Lake

For the holiday weekend, we took Alex out to the Bladen Lakes area for a weekend of hiking and camping around the Carolina Bays.  Our first stop was at Harmony Hall Plantation in White Oak for hike #28, Old Cape Fear Countryside, on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail 40 Hike Challenge with Alex.

Harmony Hall is one of the oldest residences in North Carolina, built before the Revolutionary War.

The house itself is only open limited hours, but there are several other historical old buildings on the property.

The chapel and small bell tower were particularly pretty.

Most of these buildings were from elsewhere in the area and moved here to be incorporated in the historical site.  The Brisson-Guyton Cabin looked like it had seen better days.

The last building as we got to the road was the General Store, also only open with limited hours.

At this point, we turned right to hike down River Road going east.  At NC-53, we turned left.

Out turnaround point was at the White Oak Post Office at Gum Spring Road.

Mountains-to-Sea Trail continues along this road towards Suggs Mill Pond, but this was the end of the Old Cape Fear Countryside hike.

From here, we drove to Bay Tree Lake State Natural Area, a satellite of Singletary Lake State Park.  A small parking area was along NC-41 and there were several miles of trails around the preserve.

There's no map available, but the trails make a big loop around the park.  I realized about half way through that the trails would not lead out to the lake.  So we followed a sandy 4WD road down to a spot going out to the lake, though it was partly flooded.

I bushwhacked to find a view of the lake but it wasn't the greatest.

We continued on the sandy roads a little further and found a much nicer spot with a little beach.

There were great views of the lake and it made a perfect spot to have lunch.

After a break, we headed back to the trails and continued hiking through the pine forest.

Near the end was a split and we went right.  This was just a connector and bisected the loop trail, so we took the 4WD road back to the trailhead.

From here, we headed into Elizabethtown and got carryout dinner from China Hibachi and headed to Jones Lake State Park.  We had dinner and set up camp then went for a short evening hike.  Access to the fishing pier was difficult due to flooding by I found a way.

There were nice views of the lake and I figured this would make a nice spot for sunset.

We continued along Bay Trail for a while and had to maneuver around a couple flooded spots.  In about a mile, the Mountains-to-Sea Trail split to the left into Bladen Lakes State Forest along JC Butler Trail.

We went a short ways then made our way back.  Right at sunset I went back out on the fishing pier for a sunset view over the lake.

Then we headed back to camp.

It was a beautiful but chilly evening.

We made a big fire to stay warm and then went to bed.