Scary Trails at West Creek with Roxy (Part 2)

 

 

Boy, this was a bit scary!  We went to explore a new trail--the Grassroots Gorge Overlook Loop.  At first, I thought we were already on it but that was just the trail leading up to it.  There were signs at the beginning of the trail and a upper and a lower one.  I saw "Enter" with a big green arrow on the top trail and a big red "Wrong Way" sign on the bottom trail, so we went on the top trail.  As we were moving along nicely, we passed another walker coming in our direction so I told her she was going the wrong way, that there were signs at the beginning of the trail.  A bit later, two more ladies were coming toward us and when I told them they were going the wrong way, they said I was going the wrong way!  Oops.  They told us that the top trail was for the bikes and the bottom one was for the hikers.  I was really all one trail that made a loop.  The path was pretty narrow so it was already hard to keep the 6 ft. distance when passing someone.  I thought, wow, bikes come on this path!  That thought really scared me because some places were very narrow and there wasn't much space to move off the path, the hill was right there!  When we finished the loop, I checked those signs again and sure enough, there was a bike at the bottom of them.  The bike on the red wrong way sign had a line through it and a bit farther down, a sign read "Hiking only in this direction."

The next day, I wanted to go back and go the right way, so we did.  We went early on a Saturday morning and it was more crowded.  We saw a biker with a dog running along with him enter the loop so we waited for him to come out before going in.  I hate to think of what would happen if we were walking that loop with Roxy and the guy on the bike and his dog came at us from the other direction--very scary!  I can't even believe he would do that with his dog on such a narrow trail!  Anyhow, after they came out, we went in and did pass one biker coming at us.  There wasn't much space to go off the trail to let him through, but we managed.  It was a nice loop but we won't be doing that one again, at least not with Roxy.  

Then we continued on a path across from the Grassroots Gorge entrance and found the Little Loop (picture above).  At least there was no bike on that sign, just a one way directional sign so that's the way we went.  The trail went through the woods and was very narrow--not enough room to pass anyone so I was glad it was only one way and no one else came when we were on it.  There were quite steep drops on the sides and I was glad Roxy didn't pull me too much.  We saw a couple raccoons chasing each other about midway down the hill and fortunately, Roxy did not go after them!  In the picture it doesn't look too bad, but at some places, the hill was steep on both sides of the trail.

I was relieved when we went back down to the flat circle area.  We did take a little detour to do a little loop on flat ground through the tall flowers/grass.  Some of the grass was taller than Gerard!  Roxy liked it a lot though. 

We still have more trails to explore, but those are for another day!  

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