In keeping with the Halloween theme

there is this "Cousin It" (of Addams Family fame) that I saw on the trail today.  He is disguised as a dirty pine sapling but I can see an eye looking out at me as I walked on the trail.   I have let my imagination run away today as it was time for it to do so.   Hope it makes you smile!

The trail at Harbison State Forest where we were today is a trail that we hiked about 10 years ago...preBlipfoto.   It is really close to home (about 35 minutes) and has nurmerous trails.  Today we walked the Midland Mountain trail which was about 4 miles.   I liked the diversity of the trail..we started out in a hardwood/pine area, then walked through hardwoods only (with some huge trees) and then through a pine forest.  The trail was above the Broad River which we could see but there is not access as we were up on a bluff.   

This area is also a heavily used biking trail.  The bikers were nice enough to give a shout as they came in sight of us so we could move over.  Probably during the week would be a better time to walk which I plan to do.  They have a trail called Spiderwoman Trail which is rated strenuous/difficult so I think I will take myself over there to give it a try. 

In the extras is a collage of some of the trail area.  Not much color in these woods yet.  We saw a sign about a prescribed burn that had been done in 2009 and the trees are still black along the trunks but the vegetation has grown tremendously.   The area closer to the river was so green and lush compared to the pine tree area.     There is one view of the river in the middle of the collage.  We saw a huge black walnut tree that I had tried to get the height in a photo but as you can see in the collage it does not show the bottom of the tree.  The nuts were everywhere on the ground around the tree.     Not so much a mountain trail but probably as close to it as we would get here in the middle of SC. 

A good cool morning for a hike!