June 7, 2009: Cave Mountain Lake

In a recurring theme, on the 7th, the Wine-Hiking Club intended to go to the Devil's Marbleyard with a later visit to the Fincastle Winery, but because the parking lot for the Devil's Marbleyard was full everytime we visited with warning signs not to park on the grass, we diverted to Cave Mountain Lake and ended up not making it to Fincastle Winery because we visited Escape from Dinosaur Kingdom which we had seen advertised at the the White Rock Winery on a previous hike.

Cave Mountain Lake is a man-made lake just off of 501, north of the Blue Ridge Parkway and south of Natural Bridge nestled in the Blue Ridge mountains. It's primarily used as a recreational area (there's a fee to enter) for swimming and fishing with lots of space for camping / RVing with several nature trails. We followed a loop trail around the lake which was a light, mostly level hike on a well-maintained trail about 1.5 miles long with lots of views of the lake. It appears that the trail had washed out below the dam so we had to ford a knee-deep creek at one point.

Cave Mountain Lake.

The following are pictures from the hike. Pictures from Escape from Dinosaur Kingdom are in this facebook gallery.

Beginning the hike around Cave Mountain Lake. It's primarily a recreational area.

A stream that flows into Cave Mountain Lake.

Vineet and Rekha examine the closest thing we had to a trail head. This was actually for a nature trail that launched off of the lake loop trail that we hiked.


A view of the lake from the loop trail.

It was a very well-maintained trail with bridges over the little streams that flowed into the lake.

Vineet and Van hiking up the trail.

A view of the lake from the lake side. At various points along the trail, there were short spurs down to the lake for fishing.

The lake has a beach area where local kids come to swim. The sand looks like it was trucked in. I assume the swim zones are there to keep the fishermen separated from the swimmers.

Rekha and Vinnet on one of the fishing jetties on the other side of the lake.

Some interesting mushrooms along the trail.

The lake was made by this dam at the far end of the lake. We had seen quite a bit of rain over the last few days, so water was flowing over the center spillway.

The bottom of the dam.

I don't know if the trail was washed out or if there was never a crossing, but we had to cross the stream from the dam outflow to continue on. At this point, Van, Rekha, and I had crossed and were waiting on Van.

Still waiting on Van.

Here he comes.

Another view of the lake from the trail.

After crossing the stream and climbing back up the hill, we made it to the other side of the dam.

There were a couple kids who swam in the lake right next to the spillway.

After visting the lake, we returned to the Devil's Marbleyard where the parking lot was again full. We then bailed on that hike and drove up the road (about 10 miles) to Natural Bridge with the intent of visiting Escape from Dinosaur Kingdom. Tickets had to be purchased in the Natural Bridge visitors center where this umm tasteful display was located.

It was a package deal - a dinosaur kingdom ticket comes with a ticket to the monster museum. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera ran out before the monster maze, so there were no pictures taken there.

A picture of an artist's rendition of the Natural Bridge on a T-shirt in the visitor's center. That's as close as we got to the actual bridge.

Wine wasn't completely a lost cause as the Natural Bridge visitor's center had a selection from a local winery. No tasting room though. :(

Close up of the bottles.

Rekha found a rather unique cork next to the display.

I didn't see anything else that looked like a bridge, so surely this must be the Natural Bridge. ;)

A dam on the James River that we saw along the way.