Dolly Sods Wilderness Area

 During the summer trails in the parks of Missouri were scenic with the wildflowers in bloom, but by the end of August most of that beauty was gone.  So it was a complete surprise for John and I to see how pretty the ground was at Dolly Sods.  This area is the highest plateau of its type east of the Mississippi with an altitude ranging from around 4,000 at the top of a mountain ridge on the Allegheny Ridge to about 2,700 feet at creek level.  It is a part of the Monongahela National Forest.   Dolly Sods got its name from the Dalhe family who expanded the sods (grass patches) of this area for sheep grazing.   This wilderness area has open grassy fields, upland bogs, extensive rocky plains as well as open mountain vistas.  There are 8 trails to discover all the beauty of this area.

The above picture should give you an idea of how beautiful the ground was, which we could see from a boardwalk over the bog.  Mosses in a variety of color were all over the bog- from light green to dark green and white to creamy in color.  Cranberries could be seen in the mix, and  had we been there during the summer we would have seen such insect-eating plants as the sun dew; we did see a few dried up ones.

 This is another one of the very scenic sights of Dolly Sods.  In the foreground is the white of the cotton grass mixed with the red of the huckleberry plants.  This area had a lot of devastation to it in the early 1900s with a logging boom, fire also ravaged it.  In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps planted thousands of red pine and spruce.  Congress further protected it by designating it a wilderness area in 1975.  The picture below should also give you an idea of the rocky terrain we also encountered.

 

 The second hike we took at Dolly Sods was one that led us down to Red Creek.  It was a far piece to walk after already hiking around the bog, but we were determined to find the creek.  We got close enough to the creek to get only a small glimpse of it.  And we were rewarded for our persistence; as we were pleasantly surprised to see a beaver dam off in the distance in the creek. It was a fairly large dam with about 3 feet long logs jutting out of the creek and leaning over a large  mass of wood.  As we started to leave the creek,  Amanda pointed out some tree trunks that had to have been gnawed by the beavers building that dam.

Below is scenic overlook which gave us a sweeping view to the east of the Potomac River Valley and of the mountain ridges which extend into Virginia.