Buffalo Mountain Park: Hike to Tip Top

The weather this time of year is just superb. Fall is definitely the best time of the year for hiking! The Grunwalds took advantage of another beautiful day by heading up to Johnson City to hike in Buffalo Mountain Park, a city park with a real wilderness feel.

After eating lunch at Five Guys we headed to Buffalo Mountain. Thanks to the GPS on Noelle's phone we had little difficulty finding it. We parked in the lower parking area and hit the trail.

The temperature was perfect. We hiked through the dark, shady woods on the lower sections of trail. As we ascended though we headed into some areas of forest that had burned not too long ago.

We arrived at the landmark known as the Cascades. At this time of the year a better name to describe the site would be the "Trickle". I'll bet it looks lovely after a good rain though.

After the Cascades we headed higher still. A majority of the area we hiked through had burned which offered some great views of Johnson City, the East Tennessee State University campus, and the surrounding mountains.

We veered off the main trail to take the last steep section of trail up to Tip Top. The views on Tip Top were wonderful!

There was a picnic table up there along with a bench facing a nice view down to Johnson City.

Sierra ate a snack up there and we relaxed a bit before retracing our steps back to the car.

We saw quite a few people making their way up the mountain as we headed down. I guess it was the after-work and after-class crowd getting in a little outdoors time.