Jordan Lake State Park, NC

As we venture north, we engage my vision of "spring" more fully. The trees are still pushing out leaves, the weather is crisp, yet sunny. The early flowering plants are beginning to make a show of it. All in all, a wonderful time of year.

Spring probably has less effect on us because we have not endured a hard (or even easy) northern winter, like those we had in Minnesota. Nonetheless, we still enjoy the newness of life emerging in the woods.

Our plan is to visit Raleigh, NC. When people asked why were we going there, we said that we had never been, and we would see what Raleigh brought forth for us to see. Finding places to stay was a bit more difficult in NC than we experienced elsewhere. While finding state parks was not too dificult, they only take reservations in person or by mail here, so we had some uncertainty as to whether there would be space or not. But it's early in the season, and we arrived on a Monday. We've heard that the park was full over easter weekend, but now we are sharing 65 campsites (just in our loop) with 5 other campers, one of them a camp host.

Jordan Lake is a body of water created by the Army Corps of Engineers building a dam (formerly called the New Hope Dam) on the Haw river near Raleigh. The lake encompasses 13,000 acres, and serves multiple purposes of recreation, flood control, water supply, water quality, and fish and wildlife conservation. North Carolina designated the surrounding lands to be state park. There are several campgrounds, and we first tried Vista Point, but were turned away as that area a group camp and is only available individually to visiting family for emergency needs (such as visiting in the hospital). We ended up in Poplar Point, perhaps even better, as we are parked with 100 feet of the water.

The park includes several well-marked hiking trails, one of which we traveled part of this morning. Here we are doing a poor job of trying to hide behind the same tree.






The dogwood trees are blooming throughout North Carolina, like white confections sprinkled through the woods. This one was adjacent to another campsite along the trail.






The fauna are enjoying spring, too. Here a monarch butterfly warms his wings in the sun on a budding tree.