Carl Sandburg Home, Flat Rock, NC

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
10/9/2021	5.7 miles	2 hours 45 minutes	761'	2.4	355.5

Map: Carl Sandburg Home

Parking: Little River Road, see map. If the lot is full there is alternate parking.

Carolina Mount Club Challenges:

• 100 Favorite Trails Challenge, hike #70

Directions: Several trails


Glen is still out of town, so Krummholz and I hiked by ourselves. This is an easy/moderate trail system. There is a visitor center and you can tour the house - but everything is closed due to covid. Well, the restrooms weren't closed (yeah!). There were a fair number of people and dogs on the trails. The trails are fairly wide - dirt/gravel. Even though we encountered lots more dogs than I like, it was easy to step off to the side of the trail and let them pass. 

I decided to try to hike most if not all of the trails, as long as the weather held out. There were printed trail maps at the start of the trail, next to the visitor center parking lot. From the visitor center parking lot, I headed down the walkway, and where the trail splits, I stayed left towards the "to trails" sign. From there I took the left most branch of the Memminger Trail Loop. The trails are very nicely marked, but its still helpful to have a map, as there are a number of trails on the property. At the top of the loop, I took the Glassy Mountain Trail to the top of Glassy Mountain, where there is an overgrown overlook. We stopped at the overlook and enjoyed sitting in the sun. From there, we headed back down, and then took the left branch of the Memminger Trail Loop. At the bottom of the trail, we headed over to the goat barn. It looks like they allow visitors into the pasture, but I had Krumm, so we just sat outside and watched the goats for a while. It looks like they have 3 varieties. From the goat barn we headed south and walked by a trail through 2 vegetable gardens. We then turned left on an unnamed trail, and at the end turned right. We walked around the main house (outside not inside) for a while. They have a chair behind the house where Carl Sandburg liked to sit and write. A beautiful setting. We then headed southbound again up the Little Grassy Mountain Trail. At the end, we turned left on the Memminger Trail Loop, repeating a section we had walked on before. We turned right at the end, and then left onto the Front Lake Trail, completing a loop around the lake. We passed the visitor center, and ended up back at the parking lot.