If you are looking for an easy stroll in a beautiful section of the forest, this is a hike you should consider. My guess is that 99% of the people that pass this trail head never take it. Parking for the Holly Rd trail is the Hooker Falls access area. The trail begins on the gated road on the right just before you get into the upper parking area. To be honest, I've never noticed it in all the times I've parked in this lot. It just looks like a service road.
Begin the hike just beyond the green gate and in a very short distance, come to the Moore Cemetery Rd trail on the left. This trail is only 0.2 miles and ends at the old Moore Cemetery. It looks like this section of the forest hasn't been disturbed in years and there were several very large white pines along the way and near the cemetery. As you can see from the photo, many of the head stones are just slabs of rock marking the graves. A few were etched with the names and dates which were from the late 1800's.
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| Moore Cemetery |
I had decided not to bring my tripod along on this hike thinking there wouldn't be that much to shoot - big mistake! After we got back on Holly Rd, we came to a stacked pile of logs in an open area and on these logs were a wide variety of mushrooms. Mushrooms, mosses, lichens, and the such are another favorite photo subject of ours.
You can see some of the ones I've shot over the past years in my gallery here. We spent quite a bit of time searching the logs for the unfamiliar and found quite a few that we didn't think we had seen before. Below are a few.
From here the trail heads back into the forest and the trail is wooded for the remainder of the hike. Along the way are several interpretive signs making this a good hike for you and the kids to learn along the way. The trail passes through several forest communities and a nice section where the ground is covered in running cedar, ferns, and mosses. This is where I really wish I had brought my tripod. It was an overcast day, light was low, and my ability to hand hold at slower shutter speeds is shaky at best.
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| along Holly Rd |
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| Christmas fern, running cedar, and moss |
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| Partridge berry, running cedar and moss |
On a recent hike, I took a picture of a lone Puttyroot Orchid leaf and posted the image. The Cranefly Orchid has a similar single leaf that overwinters before the plants blooms in July or August. I was on the look out for these leaves and spotted several. The purple underneath of this leaf is a dead giveaway.
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| Cranefly orchid leaf |
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| the purple under side of the leaf |
Holly Rd is 1.3 miles long and ends on DuPont Rd very near the Lake Imaging parking lot. You can begin the hike here by walking up to the road from the parking lot and looking to the right. There's a trail sign a short distance up on the opposite side of the road.
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