Raven Rock State Park
We visited Raven Rock State Park on June 20th.
The park is about an hour south of Raleigh near Lillington, NC. The June trip was our second attempt at a visit. Nathaniel and I had tried to get there in May. We made it to the upper end of the park, which only has bridle trails. There weren’t any signs directing us to the other end of the park, and unfortunately, we hadn’t printed enough maps from google to get us to the other side of the park. We tried to hike the bridle trails, but they were too muddy. After giving up on the bridle trails, we stopped at the local gas station hoping to find a map and get directions. The clerk swore that Raven Rock only had bridle trails, and the station didn’t sell maps. We also stopped at a nearby house to ask for directions. The local also swore that Raven Rock only had bridle trails and that the entrance down the road was the only one. We went home defeated.
On our second attempt we were well-prepared. We made it to the southern side of the park without any problems. The Southern-side trails were all people-trails and weren’t muddy at all. We spent about 3-4 hours hiking the different trails with our nephew, Avery, and our friend, Nicole. First we hiked down the trail to see Raven Rock. It is a nice rock, but not all that impressive if you are from the mountains. I guess it’s an unusual geographical feature in central NC. The highlight of our hikings was definitely the Cape Fear river. There is a trail that takes you right down to the river bank. We had a lot of fun hoping around on the rocks in the river and watching the water roll by. The water seemed a little dirty, so I’m not sure how great it would be for wading/fishing. We didn’t do either. I did stick my feet in though.
You can see pictures of our trip at picasa.
Highlights:
- The Cape Fear River- The river was very big and scenic, and it was fun to jump around on the rocks or to just sit and watch the water (and others jumping around on the rocks.)
- Raven Rock-The rock was nice and pretty…a good place for photos.
- The bathrooms-State park bathrooms are notoriously nasty, but not these! They were very clean.
Lowlights:
- Boy Scouts- We happened to be visiting the park at the same time as a noisy horde of boy scouts. They were noisy, whiny, and overall pretty obnoxious. We tried to get either ahead of them or behind them on the trail, but we always seemed to be catching up with each other. We did get a good laugh at the one scout running around with a battery-powered fan blowing in his face the whole time. Maybe he was so hot because he was hauling around an extra five pounds of batteries to support the fan.
- Trash- In addition to the usual plastic bottles and coke cans, we found some old, nasty fishing bait sitting in plastic containers on the river bank. It was really rank
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