On Conservation Road in Dupont State Recreational Forest, on the way back, I take a side trip to Lake Julia. Camp Summit Rd. leads to Lake Julia, a lake built for Camp Summit, a summer camp (1969-1986). The girls were housed in the only building still standing here. The inside is filled with upended furniture. Maybe the NC Forest Service is using it for storage.

When I first walked to Lake Julia in 2001, this area had three buildings – the girls lodge, still standing, another house in the middle which was already deteriorating, and the palatial girls’ dining room. I don’t know when the middle house was taken down.

The first couple of times I went to Lake Julia, probably in 2001, you could still walk up the steps into the girls dining room. The developer, who owned this section of the Dupont land for a little while, had improved the building.

Rumors was it was going to be a club house for the upscale development. When I last peeked in, I saw a can of paint with a paintbrush on the floor. After the condemnation decision came out, I can picture the crew boss yelling,

“OK, guys. We lost the case. So, let’s get out of here.” And the painters put down their paintbrushes, get into their trucks, and leave Dupont.

I have searched and searched for the photo with the paint can but no luck. I took the photo before I switched over to digital photography. Though I kept all the photo albums, that picture never made it in the scrap books, I guess.

The Forest Service removed the girls dining room in 2013. A stone water fountain stands on the right, the only artifact still left from the girls dining room.

I eat my sandwich with my back to Lake Julia, facing into the void that was the heart of Camp Summit. Weeds have taken over the site. The building was such an icon to my understanding of Dupont State Forest that the area looks like a tooth is missing.

Things change. Soon bushes will grow into trees. Newcomers won’t even know a building was here.

Yesterday I went to Dupont State Recreational Forest again to hike a trail from start to finish and back again. I’ve been to Dupont countless times but this time I’m trying to see it with new eyes.

I park at the High Falls Parking Lot, the main lot where the visitor center is located. Even at 9:30 am on a Friday, almost three-quarters of the spaces are already taken. I walk the Buck Forest Rd. through the gate and make a right on Conservation Rd. This trail heads south and ends on Reasoner Rd., close to the Fawn Lake entrance.

The first part of Conservation Rd. – and it is a road – is well known and well traveled because it leads to the Lake Julia spillway, and the turn to Bridal Veil Falls. A few hikers and mountain bikers seem to be heading to the falls. A couple of Forest Service trucks pass me.

But after the turn to Bridal Veil Falls, the character of the road changes abruptly. Commercial vans advertising paddle boarding and yoga head to Lake Julia. More construction vehicles are going to the maintenance yard.

The maintenance building, on Airstrip Trail, used to be the hangar for Camp Summit, a summer camp active from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. Ben Cart, the owner, built it for himself and his guests. Now it’s used by the NC National Guard and Forest Service helicopters. The airstrip blacktop is breaking up.

“It’s not much good for fixed wing planes,” a maintenance man tells me. He thinks that the Forest Service was going to let nature take its course on the Airstrip Trail and not blacktop it.

The rest of Conservation Rd. is quiet, with a distinctive array of road flowers such as daisies and white milkweed. I put a picture of milkweed on Facebook and someone identified it for me.

On the way back, I take a side trip to Lake Julia – another blog post, maybe.

I’m on my way to do all the trails in Dupont Forest.

It’s not the ambitious project that the Smokies 900M was because there is only a little over 80 miles of trails here. But almost all need to be done there and back. And there’s so much to see and understand. This is living wilderness – wilderness created only a couple of decades ago.

Look at the top picture of the maintenance yard. You expected another picture of the waterfalls maybe?