Carroll Howard Johnson Environmental Park — Attraction in Fuquay-Varina

The trail map is horrible. There's no 'You are here' indicator, and good luck if you want to do a loop of a specific distance, but once you're on the trails it is an unexpectedly nice park. We had never heard of it, just happened to see it on Google maps after an early dinner at Viscous Fishes, and the weather was so nice.

There is a lot of variety in the habitats and trees, everything except the main sign is pretty well marked, there are benches and lookouts and a really nice shelter for groups. There's streams and ponds, huge red oak and pines. The trails all seem to converge eventually _ we had no clue where we were going and ended up doing a nice half mile. Nothing challenging, but the trails are just dirt, lots of tree roots, so wear good shoes.

Maybe a lot of folks know about it, but for us it was a hidden gem and...

The trails were well maintained and easy to navigate. I would almost go as far as consider the place relatively accessible to people who have limited mobility but can still walk around a bit, since there were lots of benches and the bridges had wooden handrails attached to them. The ground was relatively hard packed in most places.

The park is easily accessible by bicycle, but I did not notice any bike racks in the area or notice anything prohibiting cycling on the trails. However, the wide trails are great for hike-a-bike and I did that.

The Heritage Trail gave a good cross section of the endless battle against stream erosion and I recommend checking out the area before...

The nature trails are nice and you feel as though you are "away" while still not having to drive far away from Fuquay.

As other reviewers have stated, the trails are confusing and it's best to take a picture of the map before your nature walk. Be prepared to stop along the walk and use your picture of the map to assess where you are going. If you are someone who wants to keep a steady pace throughout your walk, this is probably not the trail for you (unless you take the time to familiarize yourself over a few walks).

The map doesn't list any distance measurements for the trails/loops. As a result, the trails on the map look longer than they...