The Forestry Forum

We took a trip this weekend and went to a small family reunion in NC. Mom picked a park near one of my greats aunts and pretty centrally located to the rest of us, Morrow Mt State Park. The mountain range is located in the southern piedmont of NC. Part of the Uwharrie mountain chain, named for a local native tribe, Morrow is the highest peak at 936 feet. It and several other peaks are what remains of a chain that may be the oldest on the continent. They are the worn down remnants of an ancient group of volcanic islands. A chain of lakes occupies part of the valley floor now.

One thing that caught my eye was the stonework alongside the entrance road, the stone shelters and bathrooms. I asked the ranger about it. He said the stone came from the valleys and was metamorphic seabed, for years it has been marketed as Carolina Bluestone and thought of as slate, it is ardulite, I think a little harder than slate. We were picnicing at the peak, he proceeded to show us the igneous basalt and rhyolite that comprise the summit.
This is a bluestone chimney in a picnic shelter there. I liked the roof structure of the shelter, a queen post truss?
(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/drp_shelter_roof.jpg)
This is a link to their website:
http://www.ils.unc.edu/parkproject/visit/momo/home.html

(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/drp_uwharrie_mts.jpg)

I love to visit those places.  Think I'll have to seek that one out.

Me and Mary too!  One of the places near the top of our list but we didn't make it this spring.  Went south instead. Still it was great to get away and see new places and faces.

It seems that you never appreciate what is in your own backyard.  I have lived in NC all my life and have never visited Morrow Mountain Park.  I really should go sometime.  Interesting information on the geology of the Uwharrie Mountains you give.  I remember someone telling me that when the lakes were constructed at the Boy Scout camp in Moore County, about 40 miles east of Morrow Mountain, they found large round chunks of rock that were in fact lava bombs, thrown by the Uwharrie Mountains when they were being formed. :)

Lewis

Thunder eggs, Geodes?  8)
Did you ever bust any open?
This one is from out west that has some small crystals inside.(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/drp_geode.jpg)
If I remember right we found petrified wood around Albemarle while tree planting some years back, have no idea how that fits in.
America's first gold rush happened in that neighborhood too.

Here's another shot of the stonework on the park buildings
(https://forestryforum.com/images/04_01_03/drp_bluestone_bath.jpg)