Sunday, January 14, was a really beautiful day. There were a lot of people out, enjoying the Croatan forest. Fred Bear and I took the trail dog out for a walk. I did not keep the trail dog on his leash, which means he was going to follow his nose and completely ignore me, like the hound dog that he is.
For a while, we managed to stay on or close to the trail, but trail dog eventually took us on the proverbial “wild goose chase”. We lost him somewhere between Hillfield Rd and the culvert. Trail dog has a tracking collar, so we let him go and we intercepted him near the culvert. He seemed happy to rejoin us and walk with us for a while.
Then we drove back to Hillfield Rd to reconnect with the Weetock. We barely got to the Weetock trail before trail dog took off on his own. I called for him to rejoin us, but he was following a scent and he was going into the thick, impassable growth near the cut down, so we didn’t try to follow him.
We hiked past the bridge, towards the sawdust pile on the recently blazed old Weetock trail, just to check the condition of the old trail. We followed the new trail back, once the two trails converged, about half way to the sawdust pile. I added some new blazes and replaced some barely visible ones on that trail section. After we passed the bridge, we encountered a section of trail where virtually every blaze had been torn off the trees. I picked up the old blazes and put up some new blazes. I am of the opinion that someone intentionally tore down the blazes on that section of the trail. Some blazes do fall off, but I picked up at least 15 blazes in a few hundred feet.
