Mint Hill, NC
This trail is listed in Alltrails as 3.7 miles. The trail is a mix of crushed rock, boards and dirt. This trail bends around immature maple and pine tree patches. Wild life is active on this trail. There are three geocaches located just off the trail and are some of the best I have found in Charlotte to date. Despite the parking lot having a good handful of cars I didn’t run into anyone else on the trail at all. This trail would be good for walking and trail running. Bikes are not permitted on the trail. I didn’t have time to visit the nature center but you could tell the building was new. While this trail doesn’t have a history lesson, It does give me a chance to showcase some geocaches (spoilers ahead) and picture perks of going on an early morning hike:
Geocaches
GC92K1Q Puzzle it out [traditional]
One of the things I love about geocaching is the creativity of the cache owners. This cache is so simple but literally made my day.
GC92M10 Leave No Trace #1: Plan Ahead and Prepare [multi-cache]
I have really bad habit of once I get near the marker on the GPS map I start bushwhacking (walking off the trail) to the cache. This one was right off the trail, had I just walked a little farther. this was the second unique cache out of three in the preserve. This cache has you look through a “scope” to see where the cache is at.
Sometimes the sun peeks through at just the right time.
| Carolina Thread Trail | https://www.carolinathreadtrailmap.org/trails/trail/mountain-island-park-trail |
| My trail bag | https://amzn.to/3h8lb0v |
| Geocaches near this stop | https://www.geocaching.com/play/map?lat=35.1362&lng=-80.6515&zoom=14&asc=true&sort=distance&st=35.136150%2C-80.651520&ct=2%2C9 |
| My Trail sandals | https://amzn.to/2UTH5Ny |