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Friday, July 04, 2008
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Today I finished weeding and mulching the east end of my garden. I used five bags of mulch on that end of the garden, but it's a good thick layer that should last a while. Meanwhile, every time I work on it, I try to pull out whatever weeds are worst on the west end. Last week I got some brick things to put under the bench-with-trellis, so that is looking much nicer now, but I had to really whack the yellow clematis vine back, so there is nothing climbing the trellis right now. Never mind, it will be soon enough--that clematis climbs like crazy!
Also I've been helping Mom pick berries this week. Black raspberries that is. Very nice.
And I've been reading books I got at the book sale. I'm reading one right now about an orphan girl from England coming to live with settlers in Nova Scotia. It is one of those books that you couldn't say is brilliantly written, but I can picture the old-timey village and roughly-built house, especially after visiting various reenactment villages at different times.
It has been nice to have an extra day off work. I keep feeling like today is Saturday, but it isn't. I still have Saturday to look forward to tomorrow! But I should do something more useful, I think. There is always more work to do in my room; there are new books to catalog; I'm still working on Esther's afghan; there's my garden to work on, will be more berries to pick, and if I feel so inspired, I could do some more sewing. Maybe we will need to start cooking berries tomorrow, so they don't spoil in the refrigerator.
I will save any profound thoughts I might have had for another time...
Thursday, July 03, 2008
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Vacation: Part nine, second half
At last we reluctantly left the falls for the trail back. The first bit back was really rough, and it was hard to decide whether to go ahead and take the longer (and what I thought was supposed to be the more difficult) part of the loop. Was I up to the challenge? Dad and Debbie did not want to extend the walk any longer than necessary. But I rested and waited for the others, who had dawdled behind with climbing the boulders and such like.
Once they caught up, they definitely wanted to take the longer loop, and I decided I might as well take it as well.
Here is the easy part of the trail where I waited for the others to catch up.
You can see the trail number marked on a tree.The trail description mentioned following the stream above Eagle Falls, and here was a pretty bit of it where I should have liked to do some wading, had I the time and were the practice not strictly forbidden.
For a little while after this, the trail took on an unusual, almost jungle-like quality, through a tangle of rhododendrons, holly, and a large-leafed, slender tree, which we thought to be PawPaw.
Oh yes, very exotic to us!
We climbed for some time, and then the trail leveled out on what seemed to be a bit of a ridge (also mentioned in the trail description) for a little while.
Ahead of me, one of my sisters (Becky? Joanna?) said, "What looks like a leaf and climbs a tree?"
My initial thought was some kind of insect, but when we got on both sides of the tree so that whatever-it-was couldn't hide from both of us simultaneously, it proved to be a lizard. (I'm not sure I would have said it looked like a leaf, but perhaps it had the ability to change colors and was a brighter green to begin with?)
Once we were back off the loop, we had the choice of taking another side trail which most of us had bypassed on our way to the falls (I had supposed it was the other end of the loop). Vreneli alone had taken that side trail on the way out, and I alone took it on the way back. I did not count the steps, but Vreneli had, and I believe it was over a hundred. And we were getting pretty tired already, and she told us that the view wasn't very exciting (possibly she just wanted to be the only one in our group with the distinction of having been there, but what she said was true). However, I have this thing about history, and find the CCC rather fascinating, and I wondered if the CCC shelter there would be anything like the CCC shelter we saw in Pennsylvania (it wasn't, but I'm not going to dig through pictures from two years ago to prove it).
Anyway, this is what it looked like--just a small wooden shelter.
The trail did not stop at the shelter; however, that had been my main purpose in following it, so I did not take it clear to its end as it seems Vreneli had (so she still got the distinction of doing the most walking--besides, she did more exploration around the falls than I did).
Here is the unexciting view from the shelter... No doubt it was quite impressive when the trees were smaller!
These lovely log steps made up most of the trail between the rest of Trail 9 and the CCC shelter. The woods are extra dark here because of the pine trees.
I never saw the others for the rest of the trail, but it seems I was not far behind them, because one of the others expressed surprise that I had gone clear to the CCC hut and still got back to the van not long after they did.
We wanted to get to an "ice cream social" in another part of the park that afternoon, and we also wanted to go back to the falls for some group pictures. The falls were definitely between the Trail 9 trailhead and the pavilion where the ice cream social would be held, but we were a little pushed for time, which added to the general confusion of picture taking. To cut a long (at the time a fretfully long) story short, we got two main group pictures.
The first was at a spot Dad picked, far enough from the falls to get both people and falls in the picture without one badly obscuring the other.
The second was closer to the falls, where all could be included in a closer-up shot (my choice of location).
I also took this picture across the river to where we had just been hiking. It's hard to believe there is a trail there--perhaps with a pair of binoculars I could have picked out the wooden railings along the path at its most exposed location.
We did get to the "ice cream social" in time to take turns cranking the handle of the ice-cream-maker. The ice cream itself was quite sticky--it seemed to be made of things like marshmallow cream and sweetened-condensed milk. But the girl who had made it said it was just sugar and half-and-half and maybe vanilla flavoring (I forget, but it was none of the things I had supposed, and simple to the extreme).
She was also the one who told us there had been a tornado through there on Mother's Day, and it was near this pavilion that we saw (but did not photograph) the building (outhouse, I think) that had been badly smashed in the storm.
After that we drove about ten miles farther to a convenience store/gas station to get milk, marshmallows, and graham crackers. We needed the milk for a quick breakfast the next morning, and the camp store did not carry this commodity--nor, we were told, did any other place in the entire park. The camp store did have marshmallows, but they were outdated by at least a year, and looked about as gummy and useless as the ones we'd brought with us (I don't know if they were affected more by heat, humidity, or possibly an insufficiently-sealed bag). I don't know if the camp store carried graham crackers or not, but it only made sense to get them at the same place as the other stuff.
Our last night at camp, we fetched a length of log from where we had seen it on the trail to the falls (not too far from camp), and Dad split it up beautifully for our fire that night. Then we sang and sang, and some camp neighbors joined us. They had heard us the last time we sang, and had commented favorably on it to some of the girls. We sang so much that night that my voice was pretty tired by the time we were done.
Coming Home
Next day (Friday) we did not try very hard to get an early start, and there was quite a lot to do. Three tents and a dining canopy to take down and pack up, as well as eating breakfast and repacking the van and trailer. These take a good deal longer to accomplish then to tell about, especially prying stakes out of such hard ground, then waiting for tent bottoms to dry a little before finishing them off with a used towel... and considering how many bins could be nested and how many coolers could hold other random items, it was still amazingly difficult to fit everything back in for the journey home. But at last everything was loaded up and ready to go. I think it was noon, or nearly noon, by the time we got on the road.
We had lots of music to listen to on the way home. I have a walkman-style CD player, quite bounce-proof, and an adapter that connects it to the van tape player. There is also supposed to be an adapter to connect it to the "cigarette lighter" for power, but we have discovered that it doesn't work, and in any case, the "cigarette lighter" and other "power supply" were both in high demand. As it turned out, what with other gaps between CD's, the player (batteries) lasted until we were within an hour from home, and then the low battery symbol came on during that last CD and I decided not to try to put on another. Meanwhile, we'd listened to all four CD's obtained at the gift shop (two I got and two Esther got), plus another one or two that I'd brought along from home.
We also stopped at Pizza Hut for a late lunch, which was a good idea because that kept us reasonably filled the rest of the way home--though for those who began to feel nibbly, we also had plenty of snacks along.
An interesting sight on the way home was a fleet of hot air balloons and a couple of random parafoils/paraplanes--whatever they're called! For a long time we saw just three balloons in the distance, but by the time we got closer, I think there turned out to be at least nine! Only at any given time, I guess only three of them were high enough above the trees to be visible from a distance. Some of the other girls got pictures of them, but I did not. It's kind of hard to get good pictures of that kind of thing from a moving vehicle, especially if you aren't in a "window seat."
We got home around 9:00, and did a remarkably efficient job (for us!) of unloading van and trailer, getting personal things hauled off to individual bedrooms, and putting away fridge and freezer items. It was kind of nice to be home again!
The End
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Vacation: Part nine (first half)
Once again, I have so many pictures for one day, I'm breaking this up into two posts. But I'm almost done now.
The morning of Thursday, June 19, I got this picture of the girls sleeping tentless.
Some, as you can see, are on folding lounge chairs. Others are on the ground. I think that had been a rather chilly night... Behind them is Vreneli's tent, the Igloo. Vreneli slept in it by herself most of the time we were there--but it's also where the other girls kept most of their Stuff.Here you see a corner of the dining canopy and my two tents, the cicada and the ladybug. Dad slept in the ladybug, while Esther and I shared the Cicada.
As you can see from the vertical trees, we were pitched on a bit of slope.The S's had little to pack up in the morning, and left before breakfast, with NM.
The day before, as we were waiting for Dad to get our van to pick us up at the falls, I'd picked up a couple of brochures and a trail map at the Visitor's Center opposite the gift shop. The trail map included descriptions, and as I was curious about Eagle Falls, I took a closer look at Trail 9. It really looked ideal--not terribly long (about a mile and half, and some of that in a loop... other trails extended for many miles), and of course I was interested in seeing more falls. The description also talked about hiking along the cliffs over the river, and sounded like the return loop of the trail (optional) was pretty rugged (I think this was a case of a misplaced modifier). I figured this would appeal to the more adventurous sector of the group.
And so we took Trail 9 to Eagle Falls.
One of the first sights on this trail was a tree with a gigantic burl (sorry, I called it a "boll" in the picture title... I knew that didn't sound Quite right!). I am showing a picture with people in it, to give you an idea of scale.
(One thing that can be annoying with my camera is the difficulty coping with pictures that involve dramatic differences between light and dark.)This trail, too, had been affected by the tornado, it seems. However, it was not too difficult to get over or around this fallen tree.
We did find, however, that this trail involved climbing (and descending) lots, and Lots, and LOTS of stairsteps! Some were shallow, some quite steep, some made with logs, and some with rocks. And in some places, the stairs were a lot rougher than the ones below, and only some of the time were there rails to hold onto. But I didn't get pictures of the worst parts.
We came to a delightful overlook of the falls.
The woods were full of rhododendrons in bloom. These were not just the little Mountain Laurel that is a sort of wild cousin, but had large leaves and flowers. Again, it's hard to capture the details of a white flower against a shady background, and I had some focusing difficulties as well.
We hiked and hiked, and it really seemed like an awful lot more than a mile and a half, especially considering that we were taking the shorter side of the loop on the way to the falls. I think the worst part of the trail was not the return part of the loop, as the trail description seems to suggest, but the ends from the road to the loop and from the loop to the falls (and the part from the loop to the falls was definitely Worst). At last we descended down to the level of the river and met some people coming the opposite way who assured us that the falls were not far away.
Eagle Falls is much smaller than Cumberland Falls, being part of a smaller river that joins the Cumberland. They have a beauty of their own, however, and getting to Eagle Falls is a bit more of an achievement!
The falls drop into a fairly quiet, rocky pool. The water was clear enough to see the minnows swimming underneath. I saw a crawdad as well, but it did not stick around long enough for me to take a picture. Someone who visited the falls later in the day told us that they saw a snake there (small, but probably poisonous); however, we never saw a snake the entire time (whether because they were hiding from us or because we weren't looking carefully enough, I cannot say).
Small and large plants grew in cracks of the large boulders around the falls.
And I admired this glittery spider web spun over a narrow space between a couple of boulders.
Then there was this tree on the other side of the stream, all twisted. Perhaps it originally grew around an object that is no longer there.
Our guest, Becka, posing on a rock. Although the face is in the shadow, I like this sort of picture with its sort of graceful anonymity--might be a good model for a painting (probably with a little more color added).
Here Esther stoops to enter a larger crevasse between big boulders. Vreneli recommended it as an interesting side trail.
I think this picture is the Cumberland River, though it looks small from this perspective.
The girls of course had to climb up on this giant rock. Eventually, I think there were four or five of them up there, but I got this picture of them climbing up.
To be continued...
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
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Vacation: Part eight
Wednesday, June 18
So far, vacation had been quite busy and exciting. Every day we had either traveled extensively or done a lot of walking, or both. But we had now completed all the special activities on our agenda. All that remained was to enjoy Cumberland Falls State Park, Corbin, KY.
On Tuesday night Dad said we could all sleep in the next morning--till noon, if we felt like it. He did not so much appreciate being taken literally on this lenience, and found it apalling that people were still in their sleeping bags by 9:30 or 10:00. I myself, sleeping as I was on a gentle incline, was not as prone to sleeping in as I had been the first week. But I purposely held off on making breakfast, which, incidentally, came out very nicely.
After breakfast, we decided to take the trail down to the falls instead of driving. Only Mrs. S. stayed behind to drive a van down after us so that everybody wouldn't have to walk back up the way we went down. The trail had been "tested" the previous evening by some of the more energetic in the group, and they assured us that it was a very nice one.
Not too far down the trail we found some nice dry wood, cut into lengths that would be quite convenient for firewood. We did not take any back to camp on the spot, but kept it in memory for later use.
A storm had come through the park in May, doing quite a bit of damage. We later learned that a couple of trails--at least parts of them--were actually closed. The trail we were on was open, of course, but we still saw evidence of violent weather. (In fact, a tornado had come through on Mother's Day. Later we saw an outbuilding in another area that had been damaged quite badly, but as far as I know, none of us took a picture of it.)
Here we had to walk through the branches of a fallen tree:
The trail was fun in other ways as well. What a cute little plank bridge--just one step up from a fallen log!
More storm damage--my sisters said this made them think of a dinosaur:
Of course, what we found most exciting on the trail was the big rocky overhangs, some almost like caves.
Without too much concern about snake warnings, we explored the rocks underneath.
We even found some "cave art."
See the dinosaurs stampeding?Holly is something we don't see in the wild in state parks around here:
Of course, some rocks just beg to be climbed!
Others tower impressively over the road:
At last we reached the falls area! We had been here by moonlight the night we arrived. This was the first good look we had gotten by daylight.
Before getting to the falls, we followed the rivers a little ways. Upstream it was so peaceful and shallow-looking, I'm sure it would have been a great place for getting wet. But strict signs warned of dire consequences for even so much as wading--stiff fines, and ten days in jail! None of us wanted to take that risk. I had been forewarned by a coworker to expect something of the sort. She said that when her kids were young, they used to be able to "swim" there, but some idiot couldn't be satisfied with the safer places and had to get too close to the falls, go over them, and get killed, spoiling it for everyone. Well, naturally, we wouldn't want that sort of thing to happen again, though it seems like anyone dumb enough to go over the falls under those conditions might be dumb enough to do it in spite of warnings (what kind of threat is a jail sentence if you're suicidal?).
Placid shallows upstream:
A walk of, oh, several hundred more yards, took us around the bend to the falls. Here we had looked for the moonbow on Monday night.
Yes, there is a kind of fence between where we were standing and what you see in the picture!Another look upstream:
Looking downstream:
Cliffs over the river:
There is a rainbow by day here, as well as by night:
By this time, I had managed to get separated from the others, and wandered down a wide path to see the views from below the falls. They were much more exciting than the views from above.
First view:
I thought this would be a great place for a group picture--unfortunately, none of the rest of the group was around!Second view:
Also very pretty!Concerned that the others would be missing me, I began to wander back where I had come from. Anyway, I wanted to do some gift/souvenir shopping. And I found all the others doing just that. They have a very nice gift shop there, I must say.
After going over everything in the place at least twice, I finally decided on what to get: a couple more CD's, a simple string-and-stone necklace (I rarely wear accessories, but if I ever do feel like dressing up, it's nice to have something on hand), and at last, after a third time around the shop, the perfect gift for Mom--a little wooden box with nice flowers and a very decent poem printed on top, and the name of the park engraved on the front. Some of the other girls got CD's as well, and some got T-shirts or hoodies. Some got candy.
(Note about candy: giant jaw-breakers were quite popular among the three younger girls. Each got one, and then went around licking it for days. I think their tongues were raw by the time they were done, but it was all part of the fun, I guess!)
In the end nobody wanted to walk back uphill to camp, and as we couldn't all go back in S's van, only Dad and the girls who were on lunch duty went back with them--the rest of us waited for Dad to come back with our van.
We anticipated a long leisurely evening after that, but it wasn't quite so simple. We were due for another Bible study, but our guest Julia wanted to listen in on her home church service via cell phone connection with her brother. So we made haste and did our Bible study in the afternoon, then some singing, and then listened to the sermon as best we could over the bad reception and preparation of a late supper.
S's would be leaving us, with NM, first thing the next morning, and they took down their screened dining canopy before going to bed. They had been sleeping in their van, and NM under the stars, so there would be scarcely anything for them to put away in the morning.
Meanwhile, we plotted to take a hike the next day. Part of it was said to be quite rigorous, but the warnings didn't sound any more dire than the ones for the Grand Avenue tour at Mammoth Cave. Anyway, the trail wasn't supposed to be more than a mile and half long, and part of it was a loop. And we were curious to see Eagle Falls.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
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Vacation: Part seven (second half)
The break here was so as not to have 36 pictures on one post!
From the barn, we headed toward the goat shed. En route, we passed the gardens. Next to the gardens was a clothes line, and here the volunteers had hung freshly-washed curtains to dry. One of them noticed that a fire had been built to roast hot dogs for lunch (theirs, not ours), and the breeze was blowing the smoke toward the clothesline--so she came to take them down and move them somewhere safer!
The roof in the background goes to shed that was once a playhouse for a girl Irma raised. I think it is now more of a garden storage shed.I assume that the aluminum pie tins are to scare away birds and other garden pests.
This shot shows the goat-and-sheep shed, with the barn in the background (see diagram).
There were lots of goats--more than half of them kids. I call this kind of goat "Heidi goats," because that's the kind that was depicted in the illustrations of our old Heidi book. We also saw goats like this (at least to my untrained eye) one place we visited in Switzerland.
Some of these baby goats had the most plaintive calls when separated from their mothers!
Julia, one of our guests, proved quite adept at catching the lively little critters to hold.
There were sheep in the shed, which I noticed as an afterthought, because they never came out to say Hello. (Or maybe they weren't invited out.)
We must not, of course, neglect the dog, who was actually the first animal we met. He (or she?) was missing part of a leg--well, maybe just a foot--from some kind of farming accident. So (s)he had a bit of a limp.
And then, beyond the goat sheds, was The Bridge. We did not cross this bridge when we came, but came the back way, using smaller roads. We did take the bridge when we left. Taking the bridge is much more direct... if you have the nerve!
The Bridge spans this creek, as well as making a bit of a climb from the floodplain to the higher level of the main road.
I had not noticed when the others first went to the bridge, and I arrived just as NM let out a yell that stampeded the cows and sheep out from under the bridge and farther up (or down?) the creek (I did not notice which way the water was flowing). But my camera zoom still achieved a pretty good picture of them...
This is a view across the bridge and toward the main road. Yes, there are gaps between the planks. No, there is not room for two vehicles to pass each other!
This is the view from the main road toward the farm. From what Mrs. S. said, even in a van it looks like the road just drops away on the other side of the bridge. That may explain why we did not come in this way.
This sign is next to the bridge, by the main road.
By the time we got back from the bridge, Irma was busy raking hay (I guess that's what it's called). By the time we were ready to leave, she was baling. It would have been fun to see more of that, but we needed to get back to camp.
We had a stop to make on the way back. Someone had accidentally spilled the cooler with the rest of our drinking water that morning, and we didn't care much for the camp water. So we got a 4-gallon jug of decent water at an IGA on the way back. Even that did not last us for the rest of the week, but by the time it was gone, we only had about one day left, and we survived on camp water...
On our way out of the park that morning (we were going out the opposite way from what we'd come in the day before) we caught a glimpse of a scenic view and a place to pull over for a better look. We didn't have time to stop then, but we did on our way back. It's hard to capture this kind of view in a picture, but this gives you some idea.
I don't think we did anything else very ambitious that evening, but I don't recall for sure. I could go back to my diary to check, but I figure if I don't remember, then it probably wasn't all that important.
The next few days were spent generally within Cumberland Falls State Park.
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