Ok, so today I decided that since I’ve been talking so much about how nice it is to live near all the parks and trails, I should probably go out and actually get on one of them. This afternoon was spend on the Nat Greene trail, part of the Greensboro Watershed Trails. For living in a city like Greensboro, it’s amazing that there are still so many places that you can get just a little off the main roads and you’d never even know you were in a major city. One this particular trail, one of the first things you notice is that once you get over to the trail itself, you’re not on the ground. When it’s been raining (something that hasn’t happened around here too much lately) the are that the trail starts out in can get pretty soggy, so when the trail was built, they decided that they’d start out with a nice boardwalk section.
From there, you head into the forest, or at least, it feels like being in the forest. It’s really a nice trail, following the outline of Lake Brandt. When I started out on the trail in the middle of the afternoon, I had just gotten off the boardwalk area when I heard a really loud crashing sound and looked back up just in time to see a trio of deer take off across the trail and up the hill. I wish I had my camera ready in time to catch the young fawn glance back at me before it disappeared into the brush. That’s what makes this network of hiking and biking trails special. That’s the real magic of this place and these trails. They provide everyone who’s stuck in the middle of a big city the opportunity to get out and just spend time in the middle of the woods without having to travel a long time, or a long distance. These trails are also served by a wonderful network of Greenways, which provide non-motorized vehicles the equivalent of a highway without the worry of dealing with traffic or getting hit by that driver that just can’t put the phone down.
Even at this time of year, there were still some small plants that had flowers on them. Overall, the opportunity for observing wildlife is amazing. The one drawback is that you aren’t alone on these trails, and they are getting more and more popular as people look closer to home for their vacations, but that’s easily set aside by the friendly nature of almost everyone I encountered on 
this little hike of mine, even getting to talk to one lady who was walking her dog, and we got into a small discussion about the lack of rain, that picture there on the right, well, not too long ago, that would have been all water. There was no grass growing there, like you see here. Seeing this makes me think even more about how important it is that we learn to practice conservation even more lest all our drinking water supplies begin to look like this. The good point is that Lake Brandt is really the first of the three reservoirs and while this one may be very low, there is still water in the other two to help us make it through until the rain gets here.
Next weekend, I hope to hit one of the other watershed trails in the Greensboro Watershed Trail system and hopefully will even remember to charge my batteries for the camera so I can post even more pictures of those trips. Until then, I’ll leave it with this and post more as I get out more.
