Seven More Arches

 September 16, 2019

I haven't looked very hard for the notes from this trip since I have so much to do, but our goal was to visit all the arches in Red River Gorge. I think there are 17 of them. We did manage it, and there was an interesting variety. We went to seven of them on this day.

I'll start with the most spectacular. In fact, this may be my favorite of the whole trip. It's a solid pillar of rock on one end and just a little balance point on the other. This is Sky Bridge, and you walk both on top of it and underneath it.

The view from the top.

Hensen's Arch is totally different- just a little double chimney with some water flowing in. You could go down inside it.

Look down at the end of those half moons that aren't quite arches. The last one IS an arch. This is Hidden Arch. Yes, it's small.

This one was medium sized and called Silvermine Arch.

Angel Windows was fun- it's two arches at an angle to each other. Just person size.

It's easy to figure how this one got it's name- Whistling Arch. Although we didn't hear it whistling.

As if that wasn't enough, we also went to Rock Bridge, so named because there is water flowing under it. I guess that's not terribly common. Most of these are made by wind erosion.

In just under 8 miles, we took in 7 arches. I also got what I think is one of my best wildlife pictures- a fence lizard eating a grub or caterpillar of some kind.

In news from today: I worked really hard and spent a block of time on each of my projects that have to be completed in one week!

See Whittleton Arch and D. Boon Hut

Modern Dentistry Is Amazing!

 Today I had the tooth that could be saved fixed. What they did today used to take a couple of months. This took 2 hours!

The blue line points to the screw-on nut that is keeping the dental implant covered until I can afford to get that tooth made.

The black line points to the crown they did today. I know... best tooth in my mouth, right?

It used to be that you had to get the rot drilled out of the tooth and filled. Then they would take an impression. That would be sent to the lab. In about a month a temporary crown came back and that would be fitted, trying to fashion it so that your bite wouldn't be altered. Then it would go back to the lab again. The final crown would come in another month, and it might be really good or not. And it was usuallly gold. I have a couple of those.

Of course, I had a lot of crowns on my front teeth before the partial plate was made. If you missed the whole long, sad dental saga of my life, and care, you can click the link. The point is, I've been subjected to a lot of bad dentisry, and some good but still brutal dentistry over the last 69 years. This was quite different.

They do almost none of that anymore, except drill and fill the bad tooth if needed. It was needed. But the filling material is some newer product that they squeeze in with something like a pastry bag. No more scooping and tamping until they think the crevices are filled.

Then...and this is the best... no more impressions that make you gag. The tech uses a small, hand-held 3-D scanner and just keeps waving it around inside your mouth until the computer builds an accurate picture of your teeth and gums.

This is that part of my lower jaw with the cover on the implant post (the round thing). The white part is the dentist's first go at computer-generating the crown. There was a previous view without the crown that tells the computer how to make it fit on the old tooth. The purple is just like you remember... it's where the tooth is going to hit the upper teeth, so he took a little bit off that.

They also do a scan with your mouth closed, so they can get the accurate bite. And the details of my partial plate are rendered quite accurately.

A machine grinds the shape of the cap out of a block of lithium disilicate. Then they check that for proper fit and decent bite. At this point, the crown is very fragile.

But, it's actually a type of porcelain. So then in goes into a kiln for about 20 minutes and comes out hard and perfect. One last fitting, glue it on, and out the door. I think this is the only crown I've ever had made that didn't mess with the bite. And no restrictions- I can eat and chew as desired right away.

Basically, not painful at all. They use a numbing jelly before they inject the... whatever it is. I'm sure it's not novacaine any more. It had all worn off by about 1 pm, and the only consequence was a tiny bit of a headache.

I am in awe of the speed, efficiency, technology, and painlessness of the entire process.

As a reminder, this is part 3 of a 4-part, expensive project.
1. Remove broken molar- last fall
2. Replace that hole with an implant- over the winter
3. Crown on the rotten tooth next to that one- today
4. Crown on the implant- as soon as I can save enough money.

I am blogging early today because I have a meeting later, and I'm going to take a short walk on the way to it. Most of what I did today was dentist and prep for the meeting.

Later:
Miles walked in 2026: 303.2
NCT miles walked in 2026: 114.7

North Country Trail, Lake Co, MI. North from 40th St for 1.25 miles and back. 2.5 hot, humid miles.

See Scouting Out the Dental Landscape

Whittleton Arch and D. Boon Hut

 September 15, 2019. I was feeling better, so we did a full day of exploration. An awful lot of it was on the Sheltowee Trace, so I'll see some of this again!

(It looks like we walked to VanHook Falls on the 14th, but were disappointed because there was almost no water in the creek, so I'll just skip that day too.)

First walk was to Whittleton Arch. Actually, this is down a short branch trail, so perhaps I'll go to it or not on this next hike. It was OK, but not spectacular. The best thing about it was that you could scramble all over the rocks. There were families with kids there and the young'uns were having a blast.

I climbed up into the rocks, but Marie did not!

This hike was shorter than we thought it was going to be, so we tacked on another trail that took us to a cave that had D. Boon scratched into it. No one knows if THE Daniel Boone was here and just didn't finish his name, or if it's someone else. The cave is blocked off because there are endangered bats that roost there.

It was a hanging shelf cave, like all the others in the area, so I'll just show you this close view through the fence because this is more interesting. In this cave was mined potassium nitrate, Niter, which is used for making gunpowder. It was actively mined here through the Civil War. The troughs have something to do with that.

I just liked these roots.

Hiked a little over 5 miles that day. We were kind of in camper heaven. Even though it wasn't totally fixed up yet, the trailer was useable. We also had a screen house on our site. This is the only time we've used that when the wind didn't blow it over, but it worked great for that trip.

And I was in botany heaven with a lot of new plants. We'll see if I have time for some of those before I leave on this trip.

In other news: I worked hard on computer things today including editing. Made a small dent in my list, but the big projects are getting an alloted time slot each day, so they won't be DONE until probably early next week. I can't bear to work on any one of them for hours at at time.

See Rockcastle Narrows a nd Mill Springs

South Channel Light

 I was hunkered down at the computer, and had been for hours, when Cathy called and suggested a walk. Yes!

We went out to the Ludington south channel. This is the opposite side of the channel from the lighthouse. You can see both in this picture, but it would be 10 miles to walk from where we were to the Ludington light. We were headed for the red striped light on the left.

The water near shore was an amazing turquoise, although farther out it was deep blue. You can just kind of see that in the pictures above and below this one.

Although we probably could have made it to the south light safely by hugging the channel side of the walk, Cathy didn't want to get as wet as seemed likely!

On the way back to the car we walked through the Pere Marquette memorial. This is where Jacques Marquette may have died.

We added a little more to our hike by climbing the 73 steps up the dune to walk through Buttersville Campground. That had more shade and made a nice ending to our walk.

The little adventure made a good break in my computer-bound day- editing and other stuff.

Miles walked in 2026: 300.7
A loop from Buttersville Park, Mason County, to partway out the south breakwall and back. 3.8 miles

See Liquid Air

Shock Cord Replacement for Big Agnes

 Since Marie is not going on this trip, I decided not to take the really big tent we purchased. It's way too big for me alone. But I want more space than the little one-person Big Agnes Ultra Fly. Weight doesn't matter- we'll be base camping. Ergo... I need to use the Big Agnes Copper Spur that I purchased in 2017. But I discovered in the spring that the shock cord that holds the tent poles rigid had no elasticity left. That equals useless.

Supposedly, changing the shock cord is not a difficult job, but quite surprisingly, I've never had to do it before. This is the first time I've had it fail. Anyway, I ordered the new cord, and it came yesterday. You can see the reel of the new cord. Look at the fitting of the tent poles beside it, and you'll see the old cord lying loose between the parts. No elasticity. If you don't know, shock cord is basically a skinny bungee that runs through the tent tubes and is held tight at the ends.

I did watch a couple of videos, because there are several kinds of end fittings depending on the brand of tent. These end fittings screw in, so it was really easy to remove them.

The only remotely tricky part of this task was removing the fittings for the ridge pole. Once I figured out that they wouldn't break if I put a little pressure on them, they came out easily. This is that fitting with the new cord tied in it.

And then pulled down tight into the ring. Of course, when this was the view I had at the beginning, I wasn't exactly sure how to get it out, but it's plastic, and you just bend it a little to force it out of the ring.

I also looked up how long the new strands should be, and for Big Agnes, 80% of the length of the assembled pole is recommended. It would have been a tiny bit easier if I marked that length and then threaded the new cord through before cutting. But it didn't matter much. I used a clamp to hold the cord extended to get the last pole piece on, and that was easy enough.

I did do some research on the kind of knot to use. Found several fancy ones, but they all add bulk to the knot, and it needs to slide inside the pole. The knots that were on it were ordinary overhand loops. However, you can do these loops two ways. I didn't like the way they came from the factory (although I haven't ever had a problem with a knot letting loose). Anyway, the way they came, the loop was in the long strand which means the short end can pull through the loop. I made them with the loop in the short strand. You can see this in the second picture. Ha! I just noticed that you can't see the end of either strand. You'll have to take my word for it that the short one is the upper one.

Got all the cords replaced. Here's the whole pole assembly taking up a lot of room when it's flat in the house.

And proof that it's not too tight- they fold up as they should. The old dead cord is beside them.

What else should I have done? Set up the whole tent to make sure everything else is fine. Guess that will be tomorrow.

In other news: edited, did a bunch of things from my master To-Do list, but added some more. Cleaned the kitchen.

See What's In the Box?