CLOUDLAND CABIN JOURNAL - MARCH 2005
Cloudland Cabin Cam, 3/28/05, 6:39am, frosty and sunny this morning | ||
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CLOUDLAND CABIN JOURNAL, updated 3/27/05 shooting under the umbrella 3/22/05 Not too much rain during the day yesterday, but we did get some great wet stuff to help out the parched landscape. Around 1:30ish this morning the cabin lit up and began to shake and the noise was quite loud - a monster storm was passing through. Within minutes we had a couple inches of rain, AND an inch or so of ICE! There were literally sheets of tiny hail balls coming down, but it was also still raining hard. Lightning made it look like daylight, and the thunder rumbled and cracked on and on and on. We all huddled under the covers until the storm passed, although I did manage to slip out to take a quick photo of the back deck with some of the ice that had piled up. Within 20 minutes it was all over, and all was dark and quiet once again. Later in the morning my young bride decided that we needed to get out and away and just enjoy an hour or two OUT without having to go to town. We found our way down into Boxley Valley and explored the old mill there, and a nearby barn. One of the students in the photo workshop the other day took a photo of this old barn - the very same scene that I had driven past hundreds of times and always wanted to stop and photograph. So today was the day, and low and behold, as soon as we pulled off the road the student was already there for another crack at this shot! We spent some time with the old barn and over at the mill, then moved on.
Next we hiked on up into Lost Valley. The creeks were all up and running so I figured that great waterfall would be too, but also hoped we could find a few wildflowers along the way. The latter turned out to be an understatement - there were literally thousands and thousands of wildflowers popping up all over the place in this lovely little valley next to Clark Creek. The first big batch we came too was a group of Ozark Wake Robins. I had only photographed them once before - a single pair I found over near Leatherwood Creek. But today they were everywhere. We spent some time getting a few closeup shots of them, then moved on. Trout lily plants covered the forest floor, although only a few yellow flowers were out here and there. Lots of other flowers though, including rue anemone, violets, and tons of bloodroots. The bloodroots were a little odd as they flowers were open but their wide and interesting-shaped leaves were not - they remained tightly curled up against the stalk of the plant. I spent some time down on my hands and knees taking photos, but mostly waiting for either the sun to come out or for the sun to go behind a cloud and for the wind to stop blowing. I eventually got everything I wanted. Also found a few other macro shots to work on.
Later on we arrived at Eden Falls, certainly one of the most beautiful of all the many waterfalls in the Buffalo River area, and it was running just about at the perfect water level. I quickly set up and shot a few photos, just as it began to rain. Out came the umbrella and I continued shooting. We probably spent an hour at the falls, and I would guess we saw more than 100 folks come through in that time - a popular spot in the springtime for sure!
It was kind of nice getting to stand back under that great overhang known as Cobb Cave there where everyone was warm and dry and watch it rain and rain just beyond our reach. I'm sure generations of Native Americans felt the same way.
Just as we packed up to head out the rain let up and then stopped. We stopped to take a few photos of Moss Falls on the way out, then shot a few more wildflower photos. Then we ran into a couple of famous folks - Neil Compton's daughter Ellen, and the one and only Buffalo River Ken Smith. They had not seen many wildflowers as of yet, and when I told Ellen there were hundreds of Ozark Wake Robins ahead she literally jumped for joy. Ken was not so happy, and I heard him grumbling about there not being many wildflowers out as he walked on by me.
We were thrilled to see all of the flowers and to have spent several fine hours out in the forest. I'm hoping for continued rains this week, along with a bit of sunshine here and there, and the wildflowers in the Ozarks will really take off. As I am writing this dusk is falling on the cabin. There are thick black clouds hovering around outside, although nothing is coming down at the moment. The Buffalo River is running muddy and up, but not really HIGH or anywhere near flood stage. We could sure use more rain - I guess you will be hearing a lot more of that this next month or two! 3/25/05 Bright sunshine dug deep into my eyelids this morning and woke me in a hurry. The very first tiny bit of that fireball of sun was just peaking up over the ridge to the east. Something was DIFFERENT this morning - the air had been scrubbed clean. I jumped up and ran downstairs - we had one of the classic Cloudland scenes here this morning - a sea of brand new clouds all tucked in tight down in the bottom of the canyon. I grabbed the snapshot camera and took a photo to post as the web cam. Then I got a warm cup of tea, propped my feet up on the railing, and sat there and just soaked in the entire show as the new day began. The main Buffalo canyon was filled with the sea of clouds, but only a single small cloud had ventured up into the Whitaker Creek canyon. As the sun rose all of the clouds began to move around - the main cloud bank headed downstream while that little one in Whitaker Creek headed upstream. The air was alive with the sound and motion of birds - gosh I had not heard this much chatter in a very long time - seemed like I could hear a dozen different types of birds, from the ones right around the cabin all the way out to Beagle Point and beyond. They were all thankful for the recent rain showers, and now for the bright sunshine and blue sky.
We didn't get home until way late last night after a basketball game in Jasper. When we left town the sky above was heavy and dark, but as we drove on the edges of the horizon began to glow. And finally when we topped out up on Cave Mountain the clouds began to burn off and the bright, nearly-full moon shown through, backed by the brightest stars. I'm not sure if it happened while we were in town, or during the night, but we got about 1/2 of rain. YIPPIE! When I sat down at the computer at nearly 11pm I found out that a true Arkansas legend had passed away the day before - Carl Hunter. He had written and published what is probably the most widely read book pertaining to Arkansas of all - ARKANSAS WILDFLOWERS. My own hardbound copy from twenty years ago literally has the chew marks from three of my springer spaniels. I figured since my main subject this week has been wildflowers, I would put together a tiny tribute to Carl, so quickly looked through the several hundred shots I had taken during the day and processed four of them to post on the Journal. Carl was a great ambassador for the state and he will be missed. Speaking of yesterday, after spending many hours in the morning messing with business chores around the cabin, I headed out early afternoon to see if I could catch a bunch of yellow trout lilies in bloom back in Lost Valley. The sun had been playing tag with the clouds all morning, and the radar showed a good storm rolling in. Lost Valley was crowded as it probably is every day this spring. As soon as I stepped onto the trail I realized two things right away - one that the flowers were OPEN! And two, that the wind was blowing. My pace quickened as I headed for those yellow jewels. But I didn't get too far before I was forced to stop and get out the camera gear. For any of you who have ever hiked with me you know that I hike at a pretty good clip, and some have said that I walk right on by a lot of neat stuff by doing this. I tend to respectfully disagree with all of those naysayers - I have trained myself over the years to scan just about everything as I hike along, and will often see minute details that other hikers - some walking at a snail's pace - overlook. Case in point was this first photo I took today. It wasn't the beauty and delicate color of these toothworts that caught my eye - goodness there were THOUSANDS of them in bloom all along the trail - but rather the tiny spot of color within the bloom is what stopped me in my tracks. I quickly set up my camera and long macro lens, and waited. And waited. And waited. Several groups of hikers passed on by while I waited. And waited. The little lady was not the problem - although when photographing bugs you often have to wait a long time for them to feed their way into position. Nope, the lady was great, and in fact I think she was asleep because she hardly even moved. But it was the wind - the flower had to be ABSOLUTELY STILL for this photo, and I had to wait it out. Finally, after about ten or fifteen minutes, the wind stopped completely for just a few seconds, and I was all ready for it.
As I hiked along I noted the locations of many groups of flowers and individual flowers that I wanted to stop and photograph on my return trip out - I had those darn yellow trout lilies on my brain and I decided not to stop until I had reached them. And when I rounded the corner of the trail and peered down into this low area next to the stream, son of a gun, the flowers were all in bloom! Pam and I had spotted them a couple of days ago, but none were in bloom then, in fact there were not even any flowers up that we could see. But today they were just, well, perfect, like all wildflowers are. I set up my equipment and could not believe my eyes - the wind had STOPPED dead still! I fired off a few shots, still not believing I had such good luck. One of the unique things about this particular group of trout lilies is that they are growing at the base of the mighty tree that has such wonderful bark - it was the bark that I was attracted to. After shooting with the big macro lens I put on my little fisheye lens and got down and dirty - literally. I had to get almost down on my belly for a shot that was low enough, and in doing so quickly realized that I was in very wet and cold mud! Oh well, what the heck, anything for a photo.
OK, got my trout lily shot, now time to go look at the waterfall again. I set up and shot several different scenes of Eden Falls - I just can never get enough of this great beauty. At one point I wanted to illustrate the size of the falls, so set my camera to shoot a photo every ten seconds. Then I ran to get into place, then realized that I was in NO hurry since the camera would continue to shoot photos every ten seconds for a long time - always before I would have only ten seconds to run and get into the photo before the single photo was taken, and often the spot I wanted to stand in was out of range, or almost out of range. Anyway, I slowed down and sauntered on over and took my place up on too of a certain boulder and stuck up a classic pose. Just then a family with four kids appeared and began to run and climb all over the place. Looking at the images later on the computer it was funny to see how many different positions they all got into all around me while the camera quietly fired off shot after shot. I tried to not look like an idiot standing there posing, so I moved off of my rock and just hung around until they left, then climbed back up on the rock again. No need to post that photo here - you all know what the falls looks like with someone standing next to it - but I will file that photo away for another day when I need a good shot of the falls with a hiker standing next to it for scale. Just as I was about to leave, I realized there was a view of the falls from underneath a group of boulders - sort of a keyhole view of the falls. It took me about ten minutes to get set up for this shot, and I'm sure I must have looked like a real nut for anyone who happened by while I was shooting (and there were many folks who did), but the only way I could get this show was to lay down on my side, with most of my body back inside and under this group of boulders. My head was wedged back up against the very back of this tiny space, with my one open eye planted firmly up against the viewfinder of the camera - I was literally in between a rock and a hard place! Bang, bang, bang, I got the photo, then crawled out.
The giant overlook known as Cobb Cave at this falls is one incredible place, almost impossible to document the size of it on film. But I always like to try. So I spent a few minutes roaming around and trying out different camera angles and lenses. I finally settled on one shot form the very back of the cavern, and used a fisheye lens. If you look close you can see the little hiking trail - probably should have set the timer and ran over and stood on the trail for scale, but what the heck.
OK, I had taken care of the Eden Falls/Cobb Cave area - now it was time to head on back out and photograph all of the beautiful wildflowers I had noted on the way in. Two things I realized right away - the wind was COMPLETELY DEAD STILL! Hey man, I wanted to shoot that group of trout lilies again with this still air, just in case I missed it the first time. But when I got a first glimpse of the flower group, they were ALL closed up tight! I had photographed them just an hour before, all open and beaming. Could I have done something to these flowers that made them close up? Nope. As I looked around almost all of the other flowers in the area had closed up too - perhaps they could feel the approaching storm. So as I hiked on back out and down the lovely path that is the Lost Valley Trail I passed flower scene after flower scene without stopping - they were all closed up. Then I came upon a pair of really neat yellow flowers that were open, so I stopped and shot them. Then farther along the trail there were others still open to photograph. I spent another hour or so on my hands and knees and often on my belly - I just love doing all of this macro stuff! The very last shot I got was of two completely different-colored flowers that were leaning right into each other. By this time the storm above was brewing pretty good, and the wind was making the flowers on the forest floor thrash around quite a bit (perhaps that is why these two flowers were together like this, although they were coming out of the ground right next to each other so probably had many close encounters). Just in the nick of time, the wind stopped for about ten seconds, and I fired away. I was happy. As I hiked on back to the trailhead I kept humming "ebony and ivory"..
3/25/05 It is very late today, or is it tomorrow already? We got back from Amber's basketball game a little while ago, and I have been downloading images and picking a few for posting here ever since. I am rather worn out from a tough day in the woods, or should I say plum wore through from scrambling-sliding-falling-picking myself back up-climbing hand over fist trying to get to the next location, and doing all of that with a very heavy camera pack. I will make some notes of my exploration today into a side drainage of the Buffalo River at a later time, but for now I simply want to post a few images for you to look at from today... 3/26/05 It is late Saturday night, the girls just returned from Missouri and are off and away to bed, and outside it is raining, a nice soft, gentle rain that has been going on for a couple of hours - and is supposed to continue on through the night and into tomorrow. YIPPIE COYOTE! I slept hard last night, and got up early. It was cold and windy outside, with no rain in sight, and probably no wildflowers either. I decided to spend the day indoors - I had a new digital projector and a very large new color printer - both delivered in the past week. I needed to put both through their paces and test and see if they would be better than what I am using now. Both are on loan from dealer/manufacturer, and I only have a limited time to test each. You may have noticed a time or two over the years here when I will take a jab at windows computer users - I've been a Mac head for a long time, and would never look back. Well, today, just as I was beginning to get into the thick of things with these new photographic toys, err, I mean TOOLS, my Mac had was is called a Kernel Panic Attack, and shut down. Oops. This has only happened to me once before in many wonderful years of using the Mac, and to date I have never lost a single thing due to equipment or software failure ( I have thrown a few things away that I shouldn't have, but that was all me). And you Windows users might want to take note here - I am really almost totally computer illiterate, and just don't understand how any of it works, but within a very short period of time today I managed to get my computer back up and running again, isolate where and what the problem was, delete it, and get back on the road - all without looking in any stinking manual or calling for help! That is the way things are with Macs - you can tinker around with them and eventually figure it all out - even if you don't know a thing about computers, like me! Oh yes, I almost forgot, that in the middle of all this, all of our e-mail accounts went dead as well - there was something wrong with the server in Fayetteville. At one point today I had four different computers online and sending e-mails to each other trying to see if the system was working. Tonight I am happy to report that the server in town has been restarted and all is well once again. Yesterday began as a very foggy day, and I had to turn on the lights as I left the cabin in search of wildflowers and waterfalls. I stopped near the far end of Cave Mountain to FINALLY take a photo of this old cow skull that I have driven by hundreds of times - and each time I would glance over at it and ponder how I could photograph it. TODAY was the day, and I jumped out and shot about 35 photos of it, and I think I captured the mood of this critter just right. While I was over on the other side of the road working, I could hear a hissing noise coming from my truck - oh no, another tire going down! The third in as many weeks. So for the moment my plan for the day was foiled and I limped on down the hill and drove into Harrison to get it repaired.
When I returned to the Buffalo River area the fog was no more, but it remained overcast and didn't look like we were going to get any rain, and the temp was about 60 degrees. Since I got the skull photo already, I decided to make an effort to explore and photograph something else I have been meaning to do for a good long while. I had actually been up this particular drainage a couple of times before, and never was satisfied with what I found. But so many people have continued to tell me I really need to get up there and shoot, that I decided to give it one more try. I parked the truck, shouldered my heavy camera pack, and headed out into the wilderness. The first hour or so was a pleasant hike through thick forest along this rushing creek. I stopped and photographed an old chimney that was covered with bright green moss - looked pretty neat. As I was shooting I stopped to look around and try to figure out just exactly why some pioneer of long ago decided to build a cabin on this spot - it was located on a very narrow bench - and not too level either - right next to the creek. As I turned around to look behind me I saw one good reason why - there was a pretty nice waterfall tumbling off of the hillside just across the creek - a man who builds a cabin at the base of a waterfall has pretty good sense it seems to me. The more I pushed up into this drainage the more wildflowers I saw - dozens of them, then hundreds, then thousands. They covered the steep hillsides, not in large groups, but in ones and two and threes. There was a pretty stiff breeze blowing and all of the flowers were dancing so much I could not photograph them. But it was nice to see so many colorful dots all over the place. As I hiked farther the terrain got tougher to negotiate, and I had to cross the creek many times to avoid some severe areas. Of course, generally with more difficult terrain comes more beautiful scenery! I remembered a lot of the country, but when I came upon a really nice waterfall with a long overhang on one side and moss-covered boulders on the other, I was a bit puzzled - this certainly was worthy of the rough trip up into this place, but why had I not returned sooner? Actually I really was not sure if I had made it in this far before, although I must have - I remembered take a few photos there, I think? No matter, it was quite nice on this day, so I set up and shot a number of different views, and ended up spending more than an hour in this one spot. I seem to be attracted to these overhangs of late - guess I always have been - but I think there are more and more of them and they are getting more colorful all the time. When I backed up to take a fisheye photo from behind this one falls, I noticed that the ground was covered with colorful rocks - especially greens and reds in the rocks. Quite unusual coloration I thought. So there was another composition. When I finally exited the waterfall and climbed up and around to the head of the falls, I found a really neat but small tub of sorts that had been drilled into the stone, and it had this tiny waterfall pouring into it. I was not able to get into proper position to shoot it, but I decided to fire off one or two shots anyway, and one of them works really nice as a black and white. Funny thing about my mind set these days after my visit and workshop in Santa Fe - I actually have to think in both color and black and white when I am looking for composition. I normally am drawn to a scene by color, but now that I know how to create some nice black and white images out of those colors, I have to be thinking about that as well. Thank goodness there is no difference in the way each is shot - in fact it is the very same shot done in color, with the black and white extraction done later in the computer. But I do THINK about the black and white scene a lot more these days, and shoot some images specifically for it. I hope to put up an online gallery of some of my favorites soon. OK, now the terrain began to get really rough, and the beauty and colors got richer. I had a tough time just making my way through some of this because I kept looking all around me at how gorgeous it all was instead of watching my step. Not to worry - I had already fallen into the creek several times so my shoes and clothes were soaked and another splash or two would be OK. I stopped and setup and shot several other scenes, each one seeming to be better than the last. All the while I kept hearing and then seeing this waterfall high up on the cliff to my right. And then I got a good view of it from the opposite side - it was coming out of the cave at the base of this very tall painted bluff, and the falls spilled over a moss-covered ledge before plunging down into the bottom of the canyon. I HAD to get up to that one. It would take a pretty good scramble to reach it though - the side canyons up this high were nearly vertical, with loose rock and hardly any solid ground to grab onto. The fact my cheap hiking shoes were wore down to almost no tread at all didn't help any. But eventually I made it to the base of this magnificent waterfall, and spent a few minutes taking photos. Then I scrambled on up to the top of the falls, which was at the very base of the big bluff. It was not only WET up there, but VERY SLICK as well! I worked my way on around and across the top of the falls looking for a way up into the cave. The only way up was via a patchwork of grape vines that were growing right out of the mouth of the cave and down the first ledge - I just grabbed ahold and climbed on up. It was a very neat little cave inside, with water pouring out of two places in the back that formed the waterfall. I did not carry my camera gear up with me, but plan to return some day to take a few photos. I continued on bushwhacking far up into the drainage, but the light began to fade and my dogs had grown pretty tired, so I decided to call it a day and head back to the truck. Being the sly devil that I am I took a different route back - instead of making the difficult bushwhack back along the creek in the bottom of the canyon, I opted instead to climb up to the very top of the bluff and hike the ridgetop on over to where I could connect with the Buffalo River Trail, which would then take me right on back to my truck. My plan worked perfectly, and before long I had landed at one end of the old low water bridge over the river. This day was actually the first day of Amber's spring break, and oh how all of that brought back memories. It was 31 years ago that I stood at that very same spot on the first day of my very last spring break of high school - we always used to come to the Buffalo back then, just like lots of folks do now. Things were a little bit different though. The old low water bridge was actually the highway - no big steel bridge high overhead for traffic. There was no national park, or any campgrounds - we simply parked where we could and slept next to the car. The next morning I remember there being more than 200 canoes all lined up along the edge of the river and the bridge, all waiting to put in at the same time. Goodness that sure did seem like a LOT of people to me, in fact too darn many! That was my last springtime float on the Buffalo River, at least on the main part of it. The river was spectacular as always, but just too many faces to go along with it. Back to 2005. I got back to the truck just in time as my ladies came driving up the highway on their way to Amber's basketball game in Jasper with Mt. Judy. I changed clothes, scraped off the mud as best I could, and we all headed for the gym. It had been one fine day in the woods, and I hoped to return soon. Here are a few photos from the day...
03/27/05 Text for today is after the photos - I have run out of room again!
3/27/05 (photos above) Silly me - I believed the weather channel that said it would rain this morning and be done by noon. Naturally it did not rain all morning and STARTED raining just after noon, at about the very same time I stepped out of the truck and put my camera pack on to head into the woods - it continued to rain until I returned to the truck just before dark. Before I left the cabin to go to work, the three of us took a hike around the loop trail and did some much-needed maintenance in the orchard. It was cool and wet, with a pretty good breeze blowing. Amber suited Aspen up in his new chest-protecting vest, and we were off. We passed by a hundred or more trout lilies that were all rolled up tightly. I know they love this moisture, but don't really like the rain - they are sunny day wildflowers! As we were leaving the orchard and hiking down the lane, we were nearly all run over by a very large deer - he/she (hard to tell this time of the year as the bucks have dropped their antlers) appeared next to the lane out of nowhere, then leaped high and long and came down on the other side of the lane - never even touched the wide lane at all. Then he/she disappeared as quickly. The three of us let out a collective gasp. The deer was only a few feet in front of us when this happened. Quite an exciting moment! The brush on both sides of the lane was so thick that we never saw the deer coming or going - they are very good at that. OK, so I was ready to strike out and take a few photos, but where to go, where to go. One of the great things about days like this - when we have had ample rain to make creeks and waterfalls flow, and beautiful soft light all around - is that there were at least a hundred different terrific locations I could have gone to. One of the bad things about day like this one - is that there were at least a hundred different terrific locations I could have gone to - but WHICH ONE!? I decided to go to a spot on the map that I had always wanted to go to, but never had before. A little adventure, yes, but I was also risking wasting a wonderful photo day in the woods, but what the heck, it is on days like this one where you discover new treasures. Literally, as soon as I stepped out of the truck and began to put on my heavy camera bag, it began to rain. No problem - I got lots of rain gear, so that was not problem. I have my camera rig set up now so that I can open up my camera bag and mess with my camera gear, then mount a camera and lens on the tripod and shoot as long as I want to without a single raindrop getting onto anything - well, maybe without a lot of raindrops getting on. If the wind is blowing very much, it would all get wet. But the tripod-mounted umbrella that I have been trying to perfect for years and that Larry Roberts finally found for $4 at Wal Mart does a terrific job with rain, and it is with me all the time now. So I headed on down a steep hill and out into the thick forest, eventually finding an old logging road that just happened to be headed in the same direction as I. Sometimes old logging roads are a blessing - making the hiking easy and quick - sometimes, like today, they are all grown up with briars! The old road took me a long ways down the mountain and eventually landed at the very bottom of the hill right next to a raging creek - only the creek was not raging. In fact it was BONE DRY!!! What? In this Buffalo River country when a creek comes down out of the sandstone hills and meets up with a layer of limestone rock, the limestone will often suck the creek right on underground in all but the heaviest of water flows. Such was probably the case with this creek today. While we did not get a ton of rain yesterday, we did get an inch or two and most of the rivers were up at about normal levels for springtime. OK, so the creek was not my main objective anyway, but I used it as a conduit to take me downstream where I would intersect with the side drainage that I was interested in exploring. Of course, it might be dry too. As I rounded the corner I could hear water running - the side drainage was up and running pretty good, and dumping right on into the very dry main creek bed - kind of strange! I was happy to see the water, and even more so once I began to explore this neat little side canyon. Almost immediately I could hear and then see a tall, skinny waterfalls, pouring down a moss-covered slope. The sides of the canyon were very steep and the going was rough, but I managed to get to the base of the falls and set up my camera gear - in the rain - and shoot a photo or two. OK, less than an hour into my work day and I had a good photo - that's the way to work! But there was more - I could hear and see more whitewater up above, although getting up beyond the top of this first waterfall was going to be really rough. The canyon walls were close in and VERY steep and slippery. Luckily the soil was loose, and I was able to dig my boots into it for each step - it was sort of like climbing up a steep snow bank, one step at a time. It took me nearly ten minutes to get up and around and back down to the creek again, but when I arrived, I saw a moss-covered landscape with whitewater coming out of an even tighter canyon up above. I dropped my camera pack and tripod and spent about 20 minutes just exploring around to see what there was and where I could shoot from. As I was doing this - and discovering one great scene after another - the rain began to fall more rapidly. I found a mini-slot canyon of sorts - we don't have much of those here in the Ozarks, so anything is a treat. But I could not find a good spot to shoot it from. Another wonderful scene had a large umbrella magnolia growing right in the middle of it - mental note - RETURN with the magnolias are blooming! But I did set up and made another photo, even though I knew it would be a little soft due to the falling rain. There did not seem to be too much more exciting stuff higher up, so I exited this little slot canyon area and returned to the dry creek bed. There was another spot on the map that I had wanted to go have a look at, but it was about a mile upstream and on the opposite side of the creek - no telling what secrets it would hold. As the rains came down harder I continued on up the creek bed, and wound up spending the next several hours right in the creek bed, shooting photos and looking around and just having a blast. Some of the neat stuff that I shot was nothing more than boulders strewn about, some interesting rock formations in the creek bed, and one spot where there were several small pools that had been carved out of the limestone bedrock that now had turned blood red, and all held one to three sweetgum balls. I had to sacrifice the camera equipment for that shot because the umbrella had to be used to shield the little pool from falling raindrops that messed up the water surface. No problem - I've got tough equipment. At one point I left the creek bed behind and climbed up to a cave entrance on the side of the canyon wall. There had been a lot of breakdown in this opening, which was pretty large. As I ventured towards the back of the cave I began to smell bat guano, and found a couple of the little critters clinging to the roof of the cave, but I also began to feel warm air - coming up no doubt from a large cave system deep below (caves in our area maintain about a 56 degrees temp all year long, and anytime that cave air is warmer than the surface air, it will rise - one way that cavers find small cave openings it to go out looking on very cold winter days - the look for the warm air or steam rising!). With no flashlight, I elected to return to the creek bed and end my cave exploration for the moment. The river eventually surfaced once again, and I found numerous small waterfalls, pools, and other interesting things to photograph along the creek. Also made a side trip up a tiny side drainage that was filled with moss-covered rocks and cascading whitewater. This is the sort of place where today you could almost turn around and point your camera in any direction and come up with a nice image. Before I knew it my eyes were having trouble focusing through the lens - it was getting DARK! Time flies when you are having fun. So I packed up my soaking pack and tripod and headed on up the steep hill and back to my truck. Another blank spot on the map has now been filled in - another spot on the map that I will want to return to again and again! The rain never stopped, until I was about half way home that is... Back to top | ||
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