Reptiles, Living History, Kayak, Rock, Arch

 September 21, 2019. On this day we did a couple of touristy things, but two of them pretty much happened by accident. Perhaps you can tell from the title that we packed the day full.

The first one was purposeful. We went to a museum that had reptiles of Kentucky. It was pretty interesting, but most of the critters weren't labeled. You know how I feel about that. These might be a red-eared sliders.

Then we happened to stumble on a living history day. This was really interesting. It was at a reconstructed log house at Gladie. There were all kinds of displays of historic crafts, and lots of Native American crafts as well. Kids got to start a fire without matches, try their hands at grinding corn by hand, etc.

Here are some woven mats.

This is the interior of the Gladie Cabin. The event was huge, and free to the public. We could have stayed much longer, but...

We had stumbled on this opportunity the day before, and even though it was pricey, we decided that would be our big splurge. This is a kayak tour through an old limestone mine, all underground.

The day was fading, but that was perfect to visit Chimney Top Rock because the late light was hitting it nicely. This was only a short walk from the car.

And... we still had time to squeeze in one more arch, another very short walk. This one is Princess Arch.

You can never say that we don't know how to pack a day!

This will end my series on Kentucky for now. We hiked one more day on interesting trails, but nothing as spectacular, and visited a couple of places on the way home.

I think tomorrow I'll share the end of season garden goodies, and then I'll be on my way on Wednesday!

In news at home: I am within sight of completing the two big paperwork/computer projects! Errands, laundry, mowed (just one more piece to go tomorrow), some dealing with plants because it will certainly frost once or twice before I get home, some packing (that's also almost done but is awaiting a few odds and ends). I also got to spend about an hour with Cathy. Her girls are all there and are acting as gatekeepers because all kinds of people want to come by and help do something. Doug was much loved in the community. But Bekah let me know that Cathy would like to see me before I left. She's doing as well as can be expected.

See Auxier Ridge Trail

Auxier Ridge Trail

  September 20, 2019. We decided to take on a longer, hillier hike. We did the Auxier Ridge Trail- about six miles along a rdige, then down into the central valley and then back up again. There are two interesting, named rocks you see from the trail. This is Haystack.

And this one is called Courthouse Rock.

This is another hike from which you get awesome views of the Red River Gorge.

After you climb back up the other side, you visit Double Arch. See the narrow slit above the main arch? This view is actually from the first ridge, because once you are under the arch, you can't see the slit.

The climbs down and up are so steep there are a lot of stairs to accomplish the elevation changes.

Here we are with the view from Double Arch behind us.

We felt pretty good about this challenging hike.

In other news today: Things are getting real about needing to be ready to leave. I worked on my projects, I mowed half the yard, I got almost all my gear checked in. I crossed another big item off my list, but all I really did is put it away because I've lost a computer file I needed to do it right. It must have been one of the things I truly lost in the great computer crash that happened on the trip I'm showing you today. I'll have to rebuild it, and that isn't happening in the next two days.

See Natural Bridge and Rocks

Natural Bridge and Rocks

 September 19, 2019. We didn't walk as far this day, only about 3 miles. But we wanted to see the most famous arch in the area, called Natural Bridge (not to be confused with Natural Arch). This is the view from the top of the arch, er... bridge.

And here is the top of the arch. Looks like a bare trail, right? Well, it is- it's just that after you get out past the ends where trees can grow, it's only as wide as the stone.

This is another arch you could walk on top of or below. Here is one end from below.

Aand looking the other direction

This was another fantasyland day. The staircases were just magical.

Our other goal for the day was to see Balanced Rock. The branches obscure it a bit, but I think you can see the shape.

Here's another interesting geological thing we saw throughout the park. This is called Liesegang banding. It's not totally understood, but it is almost always found in sedementary rock. I thought it was really cool.

In other news: I don't think I covered yesterday but they are the same. I concentrated on the two biggest projects and made good progress. If only there weren't a lot of other things on the list too. Also went shopping and got a bunch of food for the trip.

Not a quality item: If you made it this far and are local, you know it is "our" Doug who drowned on Wednesday. My friend Cathy's husband. The name has now been publicly released. Impossibly sad, but we know he has gone to his heavenly home. It's just hard to understand the timing and mechanism of his transition.

See Arch, Point, Tunnel, Bridge

Arch, Point, Tunnel, Bridge

 September 18, 2019. I'm skipping the 17th for now. We took a day and went to the Kentucky State Botanical Garden. That was awesome, but I'll save that for another time.

Our first destination for the day was Gray's Arch. This is one of the biggest ones at about 80 feet high. Very impressive. But it was hard to get pictures because it's surrounded with trees.

Our biggest goal of the day was to find a trail that goes to Hanson's Point. It's not on the official maps, but everyone said we shouldn't miss it, and that it wasn't hard to find. So we went hunting, and it was well worth it.

This trail goes out on a peninsula of land that sticks out into the central valley. The peninsula gets narrower and narrower as you approach the end. Near the end of the point it's bare rock.

The views from there were the most far-reaching we'd seen. The valley is the Red River Gorge.

This is a fun item. I zoomed the picture in, but there is a tower of rock out there that isn't eroded away. It's called "Revenuer's Rock" because supposedly moonshiners operated out there during prohibition. No one could get to them undetected.

Then we drove through the Nada (say NAY-duh) Tunnel. This was hand cut in 1910 as a railroad tunnel for logging. Now it's a single-lane road tunnel. Yes, it's the small dark rectangle at the bottom of that pile of red rocks. It's 900 feet long.

We had just one more stop to make for the day. We wanted to walk the suspension bridge for the Sheltowee Trace across the Red River. I'm glad we got to walk it then, because it was destroyed in floods last year. There's a walkaround if the water is too deep to cross. Guess I'll find out in a couple of weeks.

We walked about 8 miles that day.

In other news: I hunkered down and worked on my projects. Time is running out, and I had to add another one that I had forgotten about to the list. Yikes!

See Seven More Arches

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

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