When we want to hike without seeing other people, we head to the Cranberry Wilderness.

Location: Cranberry Wilderness
Trail: Middle Fork Trail (partial)
Distance: 4.2 miles
Elevation: 2494 – 2664 ft (177 ft)

We’ve hiked eastern portions of this trail before, so we decided to find the western trail head and start there.

The trail starts with a creek crossing.

Then quickly goes to another creek crossing.

The trail runs beside (in) the creek for awhile.

Then we finally reached a crossing that was deeper than we capable of crossing while keeping our feet dry.

If it were warmer, I would have taken off my boots to cross, but it was a little too chilly for that, so we headed back.

So, we’ll go back when it hasn’t been raining for a month (and have water shoes, for the deepest crossings).

We then went to a different spot and were attacked by approximately ten billion flies, so we quickly gave up.

Despite rearranging our masks to cover not just our mouths but also our ears, and wearing glasses, the flies were just too irritating to deal with, when most of our walk was going to be along a creek.

But the views on the brief walk were pretty!