Weymouth Woods, House in the Horseshoe and meeting a blogger…

We made sure in our last few days here to squeeze in a few other sights that we wanted to see. One of these sites was visiting the Weymouth Woods. Weymouth Woods is a Sandhills Nature Preserve near the town of Southern Pines that is being managed for both the Longleaf Pine and the red-cockaded woodpecker. Also benefiting from this management are the pine barrens tree frog and the bog spicebush.

                      

Weymouth Woods is a a great place to see the impacts of prescribed burning to manage understory brush in the pine forests. The photos above show what fire does to understory species when properly carried out. Of course although this may benefit the many targeted species it does sometimes negatively impact some of those that are not targeted for preservation… kind of a double edged sword.

Weymouth Woods is a great place to get in a good walk and take in a little nature. Another interesting nearby place we had yet to visit was the House in the Horseshoe. This is one of the North Carolina Historical Sites found between the towns of Sanford and Carthage NC. “The house (ca. 1770) was owned by Philip Alston, whose band of colonists seeking independence from Britain was attacked here in 1781 during the American Revolution by British loyalists led by David Fanning.”

The house sits atop of a small hill overlooking vast valleys below that have been planted in mostly corn as they were in the day… This little white house is still riddled with bullet holes from the muskets of the attackers of the Alston home. Besides the Alston House with it’s four furnished rooms there is also a reconstructed loom house with a working loom in it (there is a blogger out there that may be interest in this – you know who you are Karen). I took a picture of the loom room through a very old window as seen above. There is also a corn crib, and a well house on the premises giving a feel for what life may have been like for the Alston’s and their nine children.

   

Another neat thing we did was meet up with another blogger that I have been following – Dawn and Jeff of Dawn’s Bloggy Blog. Dawn is quite the birder as her blog will attest to and Jeff is a fellow that has much in common with me. As usual, for us bloggers, it seemed as if we already knew each other and we had a great time at a local foodie spot known for its hickory smoked bar-b-que in North Carolina – the Pik-n Pig in Cathage. Located by a small runway it is frequented by pilots passing through the area. One small plane was leaving at the same time as we were. We really enjoyed meeting up with Jeff and Dawn and certainly hope our paths cross again in the future…