After visiting the Rock Maze, we drove back to our campsite where we settled in for the night and scarfed down some hot dogs for dinner. I’m a vegetarian and I absolutely love the brand Tofu Pups for occasions like these. They taste the exact same as the “real” thing and makes me feel like I’m breaking the rules haha.

I know I’ve mentioned this a few times now, but Sleepy Hollow Campground was such a great place and I feel so lucky that we randomly stumbled across it. This A-frame building was their honor-system camp store which had everything you could ever need for camping if you forgot it at home, plus a ton of other fun stuff.

The Cherry Creek Loop at Deep Creek Lake State Park is a 3-ish mile hike through the woods that leads through a tour of huge, randomly place boulders. And… unfortunately for us… about a million tiny worms hanging from webs that tortured us the entire time.

Also unfortunately for us, we didn’t realize how much of problem they were until we were already halfway through anyway. We ended up grabbing long sticks and waving them in front of us like light sabers, and it would literally make a rope at the end of webbing. Ike had a wide-brimmed hat on, and the rim had them hanging from it like pom-poms on a sombrero.

But before that fever dream began, I was pretty enamored with all of the stages of mountain laurel bloom around us. That pink is just so good.

See what I mean by random rock piles? There was a geocache near this one that gave us a reason to go off-trail and explore it a bit.

Rock hopscotch was basically the name of the game the entire trail.

There were a minimal amount of other people out there with us, and those we did see didn’t seem phased by the little hanging worms everywhere? Which confused me, but whatever I guess..?

Green and ferns and green and ferns and

We continued to follow the yellow blazes on the trees to this pile of boulders and… you guessed it… another geocache. I stayed back on the trail while Ike braved the area which (of course) was super webby and no thank you.

By this point, we’d been in the worm-web-hellscape and were pretty over it. For future reference, this was the end of May – so maybe avoid this trail on Memorial Day weekend-ish? I guess I would’ve been fine with a bug net over my head, but at the same time it would have been so gross to watch them accumulate. 😦 Bleh.

Hi, Mr. Snake. I’d rather him over the little wormies anyyyy day.

Deep Creek State Park’s visitor center is really cool and definitely worth a visit. I lowkey wish I would have bought this awesome blanket, not gonna lie. They have a huge amount of taxidermy (which has been ethically sourced, obviously), including classroom downstairs where you can interact with a bunch of pelts, a turkey, and a bear.

I thought the tiny hummingbird nests and preserved butterflies were awesome.

Next time we go, I can’t wait to get the full ~*Deep Creek*~ experience and do water-related stuff. Or even in the winter, be like everyone else and explore it in the snow.

Cherry Creek Loop via AllTrails:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/maryland/cherry-creek-loop

More about Deep Creek Lake:
https://dnr.maryland.gov/publiclands/pages/western/deepcreek.aspx