Once I “summited” Mt. Mitchell, I drove windy country roads for 120 miles to reach the Grayson Highlands State Park in Mouth of Wilson, VA. Mt Rogers (elev. 5729′) is located in the Mt. Rogers National Recreation Area of Jefferson National Forest. Of the three highpoints this weekend, this was the only one that really involved any type of effort. The 8.6 mile round trip trail was packed with families and many”thru” hikers as most of it is part of the Appalachian trail. Arriving close to noon at the parking lot I had to set a blistering pace as once I got off the summit, I had another 354 miles to drive back to the airport in Nashville.UGH

The trail was actually not the easy flat path that I had dreamed about – there was elevation gain, rock hopping, mud and water to negotiate and wet, mossy terrain near the top. But it was really a beautiful hike and worth the effort. The trail was varied – most of the lower trail was open pasture/grassland as it had been heavily logged off many years ago but the summit was 100% surrounded by trees and in a spruce and fir forest. The area gets a lot of rain and fog and had plants and flowers similar to the Pacific Northwest and there were even large groups of rhododendrons.

Another unique feature of the area is the herd of  “wild” ponies. Many years ago Shetland-type ponies were released in the area to keep the vegetation and grasses left from the logging in check. There is an association that looks out for the ponies and they keep the herd around 100 animals. Every year there is an auction to keep the numbers manageable. As you can see from the photos, they aren’t really “wild” and seemed to enjoy the humans.

Once again the impending thunderstorms held off until I was well on my way. If you are reading this and wonder why it has all the makings of a Joel Schenk marathon road trip, I guess I had a good teacher!