Once again it was easy to fill up our van with enthusiastic hikers. Because of its close proximity and its year around appropriateness I choose the Eel Lake Trail located in Tugman State Park. We started out at the Day Use Area, stopping first at the fish trap at the lakes outlet.

I expected to see lots of birds along the lake shore as we have seen lots on past hikes, but on today's hike mushrooms provided the most distraction with lots of varieties and the further we progressed along the trail the more mushroom we saw.

I had a hard time selecting a turn around point, and according to Jeanette's pedometer, my 5-mile advertised hike ended up to being 7 miles.