Once again we hiked in the Great Dismal Swamp looking for a bear and the only thing we saw was bear scat. Ellis there are bears there in the swamp and if I live long enough someday I will show you one, but it would help if you were on the hike at the time. So much for bears, we did see 2 large birds that we thought were Immature Bald Eagles but some said they looked like Bald Buzzer, so much for the wildlife; we still had a great hike. That weatherman scared off 3 or 4 of the Tuesday Groupers but I still had 25 to show, it’s hard to keep the Tuesday Group down especially two weeks in a row. I told everyone there would be no movie on this hike, rain or shine we were going to hike and we did. I don’t think we had any rain at all, no sunshine and a little fog but who cares, we had great people and everyone wanted to get started.
Meeting at the George Washington Ditch Parking Lot, we were all there by 9:25 and circle up and everyone knew their own names and they went like this: Bruce, Sandra, Buck, Bill, Bob, Nancy, Margaret, Richard, Sharon, J P, Bill, Kenny, Bev. Patricia, Dottie, Richard, Bruce, Nancy, John, Steve, Judy, Melissa, Ed, Mark and Joe. We had two Bruce’s, two Nancy’s, two Bill’s and two Richard’s and only one Bob, what has happen to all the Bobs we once had about 5 or 6 Bobs. So much for the names let’s start hiking. We first hiked down the wooden boardwalk which was about 0.8 of a mile and back out onto George Washington Ditch Trail hiking about 1.0 mile till we got to the spillway or Dam which ever you want to call it. Here we turned east onto the Lynn Ditch Trail hiking 2.0 miles till we got to the Middle Ditch Trail. Turning south we hiked about 0.7 of a mile. The maintenance crew had came by this ditch and clean out all the Beaver Dams so the water could flow out to Lake Drummond but Mr. Beaver had different ideas and had already cut down 3 trees which 2 had fallen across the ditch to start another Dam. One of them was so tall it had fallen across the road and this is where we turn back and hiked towards the parking lot. The hike was 7.6 miles with no rain and everyone stayed dry and had a good time talking to one another.
The Hike was only half of the day; we then drove to Amicis Italian Rest. where everyone had something off of their great menu. Everyone praised the young girl that waited on us because she got our food in record time; we all left around 2 P.M. and headed home. This was another great Tuesday Group Hike and thanks to all that came out on a not so great day to hike with us. Bruce Julian
View Bill's photos by clicking on the link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/137344663@N04/sets/72157662714884663/