A nice aspect of Clinton State Park is that there are about 25 miles of hiking and biking trails between the state park and the neighboring Corps of Engineers Overlook Park. I walked on about 2.5 miles of the white and blue trails on the north shore of the lake. For the most part, the trails were maintained acceptable. We have seen better, but they were perfectly usable, except for the eagle observatory trail. Like the morning mist, the eagle observatory trail slowly vanishes into the woods.

The eagle observatory was supposed to be a “blind”, but it had no walls. I thought the point of a bird blind was to prevent the birds from seeing you. Maybe it is not an Eagle Observatory Blind. Maybe it is for Observing Blind Eagles? It was also in the middle of the woods, so you could not really see anything, least of all an eagle. Maybe the blind eagles were supposed to sit in your lap? Who knows. Maybe there was an eagle nest near the observatory, and the baby eagles grew up and left the nest.

The trail was not very scenic. Near the marina, you could see a little bit of the water and a peninsula, but most of the views were blocked by trees, rocks, or the hill.

There were not a lot of animals on this part of the trail. I saw the butt of a large brown bird. The wingspan might have been 2′ to 3′. I never saw the front, so I do not know if it was an owl, hawk, eagle, or vulture. Other than squirrels, I only saw one deer. I did not try to catch him because he was only worth four points.

The trail map showed a lot of connectors to the campground, but I could not find them. I ended up walking almost 3 miles instead of the 1 to 2 miles that I planned.

On the road headed back to camp, I thought I finally saw an eagle.

The trail reminded me a lot of Deep Creek (MD), Ohiopyle (PA), and Shenandoah (VA). There were flat packed dirt areas, but a lot of the trail was loose rock, roots, and/or rocks embedded in the ground. The elevation changes were not excessively long or steep, but there was enough elevation change to get some exercise. Between the distance, elevation changes, and tripping hazards, moderate difficulty is a fair assessment for the part of the trail that I hiked.