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Nineteen TrailBlazers under Peggy’s lead took the scenic drive on highway 22 to head to Mt. Magazine in search of fall color.  As we drove Highway 309 toward the park we saw beautiful color galore along the road.  Skies were a little gray but all of a sudden the sky was brighter and the sun came out!  Lots of times it is like a foggy cloud in the park.  We thought we were lucking out this time, but by the time we reached the Visitors Center it was gray and windy!  Later the winds died down and we felt warm hiking because of the humidity.

 

Nevertheless, even in the cloud we were able to see some beautiful fall color as we headed out on the North Rim Trail from the Visitors Center.  At the overlooks the views of the valley below were rather hazy.  The humidity was really high so the rocks and leaves on the trail were quite wet but nobody managed to land on their humpus rumpus, surely a good thing! Along the way Buffalo Bob and Stephen did some trail maintenance.  Stephen pulled down broken branches that were close to falling on hikers and Bob whipped out his pruners to clip endless greenbrier that was growing in abundance in several parts of the trail.

 

Eventually we took the side trail to Signal Hill, not only the highest point in Mt. Magazine State Park but also in the entire state!  One wonders how the highest point in the state is called Signal Hill when it is located in Mt. Magazine State Park!  Of course we took our group pic in front of the sign for bragging rights.  On the ground in front of it there are native stones laid out in the shape of the state of Arkansas with a concrete line across the state representing the Arkansas River.  We decided to eat our lunch at this spot.  Yours truly was starving at this point and was pleasantly surprised since she thought we would hike at least another 45 minutes before feeding time at the zoo was announced!

 

We continued trekking along on the Mossback Ridge Trail to complete a loop back to the Visitors Center.  Afterwards some of us drove over to the Lodge to look around and were able to see some hazy scenery from the terrace outside.  Fortunately we were able to see Blue Mountain Lake in spite of gray skies.

 

Please sign up on this site if you plan to hike at Petit Jean next Sat.

 

The pics are below.  Click on any pic to enlarge and then click on the arrows to the right to make a slide show.

 {gallery}2017-11-04-MtMag{/gallery}