Jones Creek Cove

Ok, so this post is in chronological order again. In early January, I decided I needed to do more car camping and fully explore Jones Creek Cove. I had lots of dotted lines on my map, and in 20+ years, I'd never just taken the time to see where they all go. No longer!

So, on the weekend of January 7th, I headed up there to see what I could see.

So, I keep calling it car camping, but it it really? Maybe car camping is when you still sleep in a tent, but you're able to drive your car to the campsite. If you sleep in your actual car, with no tent, maybe that's boondocking? IDK. I'm sure the internet knows, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

Luxury car camping, or luxury boondocking. Whatever it is...

...it's great.

I drove up Saturday evening, and camped in the spot that the equestrians had occupied the previous time. It was a cold night, but my gear kept me warm an comfortable. I watched Asteroid City on my phone before drifting off to sleep. So, apparently full frontal nudity can occur in a movie rated PG-13. Who knew? I was surprised.

The next morning, it was still cold, so I bundled up, and headed off in search of the Thomaston Street sign. I'd apparently noticed the trail years and years ago, and even marked it on my map, but never actually explored it. I started off on FS877, in the direction of the second ford...

...but fortunately, didn't have to actually cross it, which was nice, as it's difficult to get across on foot, and stay dry.

The trail followed an old roadbed for a while, diverging, at first, only to get around downed trees, but eventually diverging for good, to climb the mountain.

I got sidetracked a few times, on what I thought might be side trails, but it turned out that it was just difficult to follow the actual trail because of all the leaves. I eventually found the sign.

And eventually found the spot that the trail joins Saddleback/Bare Hare. It's actually kind-of marked.

From there I dropped back down to the car and kept exploring.

There was a bit of a fishing trail following Jones Creek, bwetween the campsites, and a couple of makeshift toilets back in the woods behind the final campsite.

One of the gates back there had gotten banged up by a fallen tree.

The tree was gone, but the gate was still smashed.

There's a trail that runs along upper Jones Creek, to a sliding falls, and at one point, I'd noticed a bench cut across the creek from it, so I made a point of exploring that as well. It was very overgrown, but there were various side trails, and I explored them all, as thouroughly as I was able. The creek itself had a couple of interesting shoals and chutes as well.

Of course, I wasn't the first person to wander around back there. The Rangers had definitely beat me to it.

I bet there isn't a square foot of mountain up there that they haven't wandered across at some point in the last 70 years.