The weekend of February 3rd, I still wasn't satisfied with how extensively I'd explored Jones Creek Cove, and the surrounding area. There was still stuff back on Jones, and there were bits over by Turner Creek that had caught my attention. So much left to do!
As such, I drove back up and got right to it. This time though, rather than parking in one spot and just walking around all over, I drove to a spot that I wanted to explore, ransacked it, and drove somewhere else. This wouldn't have been too effective on previous trips, but given that the spots I wanted to explore this time were pretty spread out, it worked pretty well.
First up was the food plot most of the way up Winding Stair Gap Road. I'd passed it a million times, but I was almost always creeping up the climb or bombing down it on the bike. The few times I'd been in a car, I had places to go. I figured there was a decent chance that there were camp sites back in there, and that a trail might lead down into the cove from one of them. There were, in fact, campsites, but I couldn't find a trail of any kind. I did run into a somewhat inebriated guy, pulling into camp, as I was about to drive out. We joked a bit about all the traffic on FS77 that day. There were just so many cars going up and down, some of them were going really slow, and he was sick of it: "Good they're getting out [of the house, and into the woods], but [all of them] at the same time!? Fuck 'em!"
Next up was some exploring in the Turner Creek area. A side road turned out to lead to a food plot, with an antenna in the middle of it.
An old roadbed led from there down to, and across the Turner Creek Trail, to the former route of that trail, which I'd hiked years before, but didn't fully explore. Well, I did that day, and I can see why it was rerouted. Somebody thought that it was a good idea to run the road directly up a draw.
At a point, I ended up on the Turner Creek Trail itself, and notices some of Stan's signature handiwork.
There were, of course, balloons, too... everywhere.
I eventually ended up exploring a couple of clearings north of FS28A, beneath Little Sal Mountain. I'd been back in there once before, eons ago, but I didn't look around too hard. The clearings were a lot less clear than they had been way back, but still recognizable as having once been clear.
An old map I have shows a homestead back in there, so I was looking for a chimney, but I didn't find anything. At the back of the westernmost clearing, an old road let up past a small waterfall.
And, between the two clearings, along a little bench cut spur, there were half a dozen little pits.
I felt certain they were old moonshine barrel pits, but I didn't find the remains of any actual barrels.
Next up was the food plot off of FS77 that I'd found that leveled area below last time. I basically just hiked down the somewhat overgrown road that led to it, made a circle around it, looking for whatever I could find, and hiked back out. The only interesting thing that I found was this pile of rocks.
IDK. "Organized rocks" of some kind. No obvious former purpose.
I ended up, eventually, pulling in to Campsite 1...
...and getting settled in for the evening.
There were weird chunks of concrete with sawed off pipes sticking out of them, discarded nearby.
Maybe concrete footers for an old sign? The pipes holding up the sign got sawed off? Somebody dug up the footers and chucked them here? Who knows...
I cooked and feasted on more mango chicken.
It's funny though... I remember wondering whether, if I cooked at home, or ate out near my house, if I ate that much food each night. Was I just running off into the woods and pigging out? I kind-of felt like I was. I'd have to keep an eye on that.
That night, I watched Saltburn and the Cable Guy. Liz had inadvertantly recommended both. Good Lord, Saltburn was weird. Kinda brilliant, but as weird as the day is long. I really needed the idiotic humor of The Cable Guy to drag me back to reality, and I was fortunate to have had it.
The next morning I made eggs and hot chocolate, as usual, and once again, hit the trail.
Almost immediately, I discovered the kind of thing that I'd been looking for up there for 20 years. I'd always heard that the Bull Mountain area was once fairly thouroughly inhabited. I have old maps that show the exact locations of old roads, many of which I've explored, and the exact locations of homes and other structures. I've never found so much as a pile of rocks that could reliably be construted as the ruins of a chimney, though. I mean, I found a pile of rocks earlier that day, and a few boards lying in a creek recently, and a cable, too. But, any of those could be from dumping or logging. Nothing definitively old. Nothing that cries out: "people lived and worked here".
But, then I found something!
Quite a bit, in fact!
Those had to be the ruins of an old sawmill. Those are footings, and mounts for machinery. There were even remains of footings in the creek.
There had been a wheeel in that creek. The backslope nearby had terraces cut into it. There must have been a mill house there at some point. And the location made sense, too. Just up the backslope was the original route of Winding Stair Gap Road - the same road that led from Randa to Stock Hill, that I'd explored end-to-end back in 2017.
Ha ha! Finally. A sign of industry, and definitively old.
Ironically, the fire ring of the campsite in front of the ruins, campsite 3...
...was composed entirely of bricks, from the ruins themselves.
They're what got my attention that day. I guess every other time I'd ridden or driven by, I was either too busy to notice, or someone had been using the site.
When I got home, I dug around on the internet for any information I could find about the mill, but nothing came up immediately. There are various, active Jones Creek sawmills, but I guess Jones Creek is such a common name, that it's not going to be easy to find info on anything on this specific Jones Creek.
At the back of the camp site there was this weird rope thing.
Up on the backslope where the mill house might have been, I found this weird wreckage.
A tool box, maybe?
Tough to say how old it is.
Across the road there was a network of old roads climbing the backslope and winding around in the flats. Some of them were marked with purple blazes.
It looked like, at one point, there might have been a clearing surrounding one of the bigger trees, but it's hard to say now.
After that discovery, I turned my attention to the area near a feeder of Jones Creek, closer to FS77. From the road, you can kind-of see, and definitely hear the roar of a waterfall, and I've always wanted to check it out.
It turned out that there was a bit of a trail leading down to it, and the Forest Service had been busy innoculating hemlocks along that trail, some time ago.
The trail led to a pretty impressive set of cascades.
There was a braided network of overgrown old routes, reroutes, and former routes leading from FS77A down to the base of the falls, and the flats below them. They were all badly rutted and deeply below grade, but it would seem that at some point, in the distant past, you probably could have driven down there and camped.
It almost goes without saying that there were balloons.
I also explored some old logging roads on the other side of FS77A, and at one point, a guy with some dogs drove up and let his dogs loose. I watched them as they almost perfectly followed the routes that I had taken earlier. I ended up dropping down to the road and talking to the guy for a bit: "Oh, that must have been you that they caught wind of." No doubt. Both dogs eventually found each other, dropped down to the road where I had earlier, and jumped back in the truck.
Next up... If you turn onto FS77A, there's a big clearing, almost immediately to the left. There's a big tree in the clearing, and an old map of mine shows that there was once a structure there. These days people shoot skeet there, and generally dump and burn stuff.
But, who knows? Maybe if I looked hard enough I could find something interesting.
I didn't find any ruins or anything, but I did find an old road leading out of the back of the clearing. The first hundred yards or so was horribly overgrown with thorns, but with enough effort, I was able to get around them and follow it down into a draw, which eventually led to Jones Creek itself.
The old road followed the east side of the creek, crossed it near some cliffs...
...then eventually crossed back again and continued along the east side into some flats. If it ever continued past that point, it was beyond my abilities to keep following it.
Some of the trees down in there were pretty big.
And there was a lot of debris down in there, too.
I wasn't quite to the head of the lake yet, but I imagine those flats get flooded pretty badly when it rains.
After searching, fruitlessly, for any sign of where the road might emerge, I gave up and headed back. On the way back, I noticed that a beaver had made the weakest attempt ever to dam the creek.
I guess they just follow their instincts. No actual critical thought involved.
As I approached the clearing, I could hear people up on Jones Creek Ridge, having a conversation. I assumed they were riding up there, but I never saw them, and I couldn't make out what they were saying.
I also explored the road leading up the knob to the west of the clearing, but it didn't go anywhere other than the top, and I didn't see anything old and overgrown leading away from the top.
When I finally got back to the car, I was absolutely freezing. The temperature seemed to have dropped significantly over the past hour or so, and I was shivering to death, but when I started the car, it was 54 degrees outside. 20 minutes later, I was warm and comfortable. I can't really account for it. Previous outings had been much colder. No idea.
That was the last of my Jones Creek outings, this year. My map still has plenty of dotted lines on it, but most of them can't possibly go anywhere especially interesting. All, in all, I was satisifed enough with what I'd found, and satisfied enough with car camping to move on to other things for a while. There are always new places to explore, though. When the weather turns cooler, and the leaves fall, I may be back out there again, later this year.
