Lady's Slippers at Williamson Preserve

Saturday I headed to check out a new trail off the Neuse River.  I parked at the Mial Plantation Trailhead for Neuse River Trail and took that towards Johnston County.  After crossing the line, the trail became Claytons River Walk and I turned onto Bootleggers' Loop to enter Williamson Preserve.

The trail crossed a small creek on a footbridge and then came to some old barrels right off the trail, presumably from moonshine production.

There were some atamasco lilies blooming around here.

The trail soon came to a split and I went right to hike the loop portion.  After finishing up the trail, I went back in the preserve on Neuse River Connector and hiked the Salamander Loop.  In about a mile, I spotted a pink lady's slipper.

I've never seen one in the Piedmont, just a couple times in the mountains.  Continuing on, I spotted another patch a little further.

There were a lot of these beautiful orchids all along the northern half of Salamander.  I was really excited to see so many.

After finishing up the loop, I hiked back to Neuse River Trail to head back to the car.

Williamson Preserve

Sunday, we took Alex for a hike at Triangle Land Conservancy's recently opened Williamson Preserve.  The past few weekends had been rainy and the trails were closed, so we were excited to finally visit.  And Alex has visited the rest of TLC's nature preserves for the #hikeTLC challenge, so wanted to visit this one too.

We got there right after sunrise to avoid the crowds.  The open fields were beautiful in the early morning light.

There was a little church next to the parking area, but not part of the preserve.

We took Walnut Hill Way out to the trail and started on Pine Warbler Trail to Little Falls Loop.  The trail winds around a small tributary and it looks like there would be a little waterfall here after a heavy rain, but the trails would likely be closed.

We then took Longleaf Pine Loop to Salamander Loop and hiked the spur out to Neuse River Greenway.

On the hike back, we spotted a whole bunch of Indian pipes along the trail.

I've never seen such large patches of them.

There were also a lot of mushrooms along the trail.

Heading back, we started to see more bikers and then hiked near the trailhead.  We took Two Pond Loop, a hiking only trail around the two small farm ponds.

They were very scenic.

By the time we got back to the parking lot, it was completely full with plenty of cars illegally parked.

Glad we got here early.  It was such a nice day, on the way home, I stopped at Forest Ridge Park for a short hike on Falls Lake.  I took the Ridgeline Trail up to a ridge over the lake.

There was a spot to go down to the lake.  Just a hint of fall color at this point.  Then I took Rocky Point Trail, which led to another nice view of the lake.

I then took Old 98 Trail and made a loop with the peninsula trail heading back.