MST Hickory Hill To Rolling View by Kenny & Kristen

Today we tackled another continuation of the MST through section 10 from Hickory Hill Boat Ramp to Rolling View State Recreation Area. This puts us about 42 miles in to section 10! ___ |Trail Stats | (According to my watch) | |---|:---:| |Milage | 12.36 | |Time | ~5 hours | | Start Parking | Yes | | Finish Parking | Yes | | Elevation Gain | ~3520| | Elevation Loss| ~3681| ___  This was our third day hiking on the MST through section 10 of the trail. Our goal was to do another 13 or so miles and finish off what what we learned was Rolling View State recreation area. We didn't look to far ahead on this one. We knew the lake was up from our previous hike, but we were expecting the water level to have dropped off at least some by this point... The trail started off quite nicely there were some nice paths going down the trail and the trail was smooth. and well maintained.  Some of the trail angels (Caretakers of the trail) had take some extremely good care of this section and let nice nice by several benches /"highlight" areas of the trail. These were spots where you could stop and take a sit and really enjoy the view and everything around you. Our favorite stop was probably the bench about a mile past Cheek Road. It overlooked the lake and back up to a nice empty field and the trees/growth did a great job at framing a beautiful view and allowing the sounds of the area to still get through. It was so good that we stopped at this point to enjoy a snack before lunch!  There was also a ton of wildlife on the way through this section. We saw a baby deer, loads of frogs and a couple of turtles!  There is also a cool section that has a side trail that goes straight down to the lake where you can swim - we saw a local take a surfboard out to paddle around to get some exercise and this is where we decided to enjoy our famous - classic KH^2 lunch! Enjoying the sounds of waves crashing on the shore.  We did have some hangups along the way: - Crossing Cheek Rode. (**~ 3 mi**) - When you pop out onto the road, it kinda seems like you need to follow a white blaze to the left. In reality, if you just glance to the right you will see another parking area which is where you'll want to continue the trail. - The boardwalk (**~ 7mi**) - This is the highlight of the section for sure - but if the lake is up about 5 feet (as was our case) the boardwalk is down ( aprox. 1.5 feet below the water!) We managed to get across this still be taking off our shoes and wading through the water a bit. We got to about waist level when we stopped to look around a bit - We got lucky to see the boardwalk barely sitting about 1.5 feet below the water. So we used a small stick that we grabbed prior to adventuring in the water to help guide us on the walk way as soon as we climbed up on it. This was also our favorite part of the hike!  This was an awesome hike and it made a real adventure when we had to make our way across the flooded boardwalk. There were also several entry points closer to the boardwalk if you wanted to make this a shorter stint of hiking to just enjoy the wildlife. 

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