This is a view of the trail looking north, just north of where it crosses FR 2274. I spotted a chipmunk on the trail a few minutes earlier, but it ran off too quickly for me to get a picture. That’s a shame because I very rarely get to see chipmunks. Look carefully, and you can see the trail in front of me taking a right into the hollow. You can make out its line behind the trees as it winds back out again. FR 2265 (aka Floyd Tower Road) is on top of the ridge, so it’s very close.

I crossed FR 2265 around midday. I’d just checked my ECG and it was fine. I met two cyclists at the crossing. One of them quizzed me on my Bedrock sandals. Before we could continue chatting, seven cyclists came up the trail behind me. I left them to it and carried on. A few minutes later, the seven cyclists overtook me.

In this section of the trail, there has been some significant thinning/harvesting of the trees, which explains all the blazes I saw on the trees back in 2020. It makes the forest look very ‘thin.’ Another thing I’d noticed, was, like all the other Ozark trails I’ve been on this year, there was a huge number of trees down. The difference on the Berryman Trail is that nearly all the trees that fell across the trail have been cleared. I only saw one tree across the trail in the entire twenty-seven-plus miles.

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