Red Rock Trail

 

Yesterday's walk was a hike in the Mount Airy Trail Network. The Red Rock Trail, a joint effort of the the Mount Airy Resort, a Paradise Township Conservation Easement, and Monroe County, is a well-marked, forested, 1.6 mile trail with some ups and downs including a few rock steps and switchbacks. For us, just building some walking stamina, this trail was a definite step up from "easy" to "moderate." We just walked the main loop, but for later visits various spurs, including an out and back extension to Mount Sophia, would provide longer hikes and views in the fall as the trees lose their leaves.

Besides working a little harder on this hike, we also had a chance to use my iNaturalist app to identify some of the interesting forest features not identified by the trailside signage, reproduced in the brochure in the link. Seen in this photo, the app identified what we thought was a weird acorn as a gall formed by a gall wasp, specifically of the genus Amphibolips. 

The app also helped us identify a chestnut oak, Quercus montana, a native of eastern United States that grows along ridge tops. In addition to the distinctive leaves, with shallow lobes, this white oak has large acorns and dark, deep bark that appears almost block like.