Sheltowee Trace- Day 12- Resurgence Cave

 We put in a good number of miles today and it was all on trail except for a few feet.

While it was pleasant enough, we sort of named it the dim green tunnel. Light was muted, and most of what there was to see was trees. The best thing of the day is Resurgence Cave. This is a limestone cave on War Fork Creek.

Water flows out of the cave all the time. It was even flowing today while things are very dry. Supposedly, there is sometimes enough water to swim in.

There were even some little arches!

We did find some interesting fungi. Pretty sure this is Chicken of the Woods even though it's not orange or peachy.

And these are Jack O'Lantern mushrooms although they are wearing Christmas Ferns.

One kind of funny story. Diane took this picture yesterday of horseback riders coming out of the section of trail we hiked today. It is open for this use.

So, we kept seeing fairly good-sized leafy branches on the trail that had been trimmed from small trees. But I was feeling annoyed that they had just dropped them in the trail. Ha! Then I realized that the horseback riders had probably trimmed them from horseback!

Although it was trail, a fair amount of what we walked had once been roads, so the grades were good. The hardest part was that the final 500-foot climb had a lot of large, loose rocks on the trail so the footing was tough. Tomorrow is a shorter day, and it is also a "changing of the guard" so to speak. Stay tuned.

Miles walked in 2026: 461.8
Miles hiked on the Sheltowee Trace: 135.1

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Arvel to Lime Kiln Ridge Rd, 12.8 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Across the Kentucky

Sheltowee Trace- Day 10- Sinking Creeks

 Today was almost all road walk, or you could say it was all road walk. But one mile was more like off-road. And it was very interesting. We left a county road to walk down Little Sinking Creek. At one time, this was a road, but has long ago reverted to a soft surface and grass. With rocks! But the area was different from the other rocky places we've been through.

There were caves in the rock walls. Not shelf caves, but limestone, probably with tunnels and caverns. In fact, several of them had water flowing into them. I'm thinking that's probably how the Sinking Creeks got their names.

After a while, the berm that had held the road was all washed away, and the trail walked in the dry streambed. Look at the size of those raw hunks of limestone. Not very weathered. This section must be impassible at certain times of the year.

This is the confluence of Little Sinking Creek and Big Sinking Creek. Big Sinking had water in it. The old road reappeared and turned left along Big Sinking.

The trail crossed Big Sinking Creek at this large curved shelf cave.

Now, some of you know that I've decided I'm an historic transportation junkie. So here's the very cool part. The road did come here in the past. And it crossed the creek just about where we crossed. Here is one of the bridge abutments. I can just picture a car from the 1930's with a young couple coming down here to picnic at the cave. The kicker? This bridge was only abandoned in 1985 after structural failure. I can't quickly find a record of when it was built. But it all seems so old and reverted to nature, and yet, it was functional until I was 37 years old!

On the other side of the creek, the road continued with a fairly steep climb of 400 feet on the old roadbed. This part is now an ATV trail, so it wasn't off-road in any sense of the word.

We passed the 100 mile mark on the Sheltowee today. The rest of the day was roadwalk. The Sinking Creeks was the very best part.

Tomorrow we have to move campgrounds, and have a high-mileage day. It will be a challenge.

Miles walked in 2026: 435.7
Miles hiked of the Sheltowee Trace: 109

Sheltowee Trace, Kentucky, Combs Cemetery Road to Quillan Cemetery, 12.1 miles.

See Sheltowee Trace- Lawful Evil

Quiverheart

 An amazing day. Nikki planned a big event, the kind of thing she puts together in conjunction with her LIVER-ee. She leads hikes and various adventures. She played on my "celebrity" status, and organized a "hike with Joan" event at one of the newest nature preserves in the Arc of Appalachia system. People paid to walk with me. This sort of blows my mind. In fact, it's so new that the map isn't even on the web site yet, but it will be in just a few days.

This first picture is just for attention. Bill, me, Nikki, and Kim Baker. She and her husband Dave donated the land for the preserve, and they are now the caretakers. They maintain the trails, and are working hard to eradicate invasive plants. The Arc of Appalachia guides the decisions for plant preservation, etc.

I spent a lot of time talking to Kim.

Here's the requisite group picture. Kim and Dave did interpretation for us (they are not in the group pic).

The first feature you come to is Quiverheart Falls. I can't tell you much detail about the geology of this area, but there are a whole lot of narrow, steep ravines whose creeks feed into Ohio Brush Creek (where Nikki's livery is). This is one of them. It's 200 feet deep, almost invisible from the road which is up on the Allegheny Plateau. Bundle Run flows down it, and this is the largest falls. I chose a long shot because I think you get a better sense of the scale with the rock wall beside it.

This picture gives some idea of the depth, and this isn't even from the bottom.

Just like all the eroded edges along the Allegheny Plateau, erosion creates clefts in the limestone, and then big blocks calve off. I took this picture because it's so much the same situation as Rock City in New York state, where the trail goes right down one of those cracks.

One feature is this great hanging shelf cave, very typical of southern Ohio and Kentucky.

Along most of the walk, Bundle Run was just a stream in the bottom of the brown (because it's winter) valley. However, below the cave, the rocks are moss-covered. There is also another waterfall that ripples down slightly angled rocks, much like Laughing Whitefish Falls in the UP, but smaller. This may be a feeder creek to the run. The trail map will not be available until the web site goes live in a few days. Supposedly Tuesday, but things happen, right? Anyway, I can't place the trails in the landscape accurately without that. I didn't have enough signal to track it.

This is a really special place. This whole area, the region that hits the edge of the Appalachian Mountains has really diverse biology and habitats. Over the years, I've had the chance to visit several other preserves in the area and hear about their unique features. Even in winter, there were some great plants to see. You know I was zoomed in on those.

One really fun one is walking fern, Asplenium rhizophyllum. One of the ways it propogates is the long tips of the leaves will root and thus the fern "walks" across a rock face. I've seen this several places in the south, but was shocked to discover that it also grows in Michigan, even in the UP. The critical feature seems to be not temperature, but substrate such as limestone. The ones I've seen in Kentucky were much larger.

This is an orchid, Puttyroot, Aplectrum hyemale. I've never seen it in bloom. Very, very cool.

I also learned a couple of new-to-me invasives, and found one plant that neither Kim, I, or any of the apps can identify. I'm sure it's nothing totally weird, but I'll have to keep investigating.

After the walk (3.5 really muddy miles- this morning's weather was good but the recent rains made the Ohio clay just a slime pit), we went just around the corner for lunch. Some of us ordered pizza. It was really, really good.

I am going to have to come back in the growing season. They have a number of plants I've never seen, and especially some rare ones. Kim and I hit it off, so I might. And Nikki is here, and the NCT/Buckeye Trail is not far away. You can locate them with a seach for Quiverheart Nature Preserve, and the map will be available soon at Arc of Appalachia

Fantastic day!

Quiverheart Nature Preserve, Peebles, OH, Quiverheart Falls and Whispering Fern Trails. 3.5 hilly miles

See Stop 10

Rock House and Conkle's Hollow

 
Today's weather was about as perfect as it gets, and Marie and I went to two other rocky places here in the Hocking Hills. I'd seen the first one long ago. It was as spectacular as ever. It's called Rock House, and is one of the many hanging wall caves in the area except that it has columns which remain at the front. Here's the access.


I'll show you two views of the inside. First is with the light on the rocks. The tunnel you're looking down is parallel to the face of the cave.



In this one, the picture shows better how the light comes in through the portals. You can see a few people standing in there for scale.



It's been a popular spot for a long time. Native Americans used it, and as much as I don't like all the graffiti, the soft sandstone has been irresistible to lovers and ego-trippers. Here's the earliest date that I found that I was sure I was reading correctly, 1857.



Then we drove a few miles to Conkle's Hollow Nature Preserve. First we walked the gorge trail to the waterfall. The picture doesn't do it justice. We could walk right up under the falls which came from much higher than the free-fall at the end. The colors in the rock walls and the play of light was awesome.


After that we walked the Rim Trail, which stayed above the gorge beyond the head of the waterfall and back. One of the neatest sights there were these rocky outcroppings from the treeline. It was a lot like hiking in the Trap Hills of Michigan. We looked ahead to this vista point.



When we got there we looked back and saw where I'd taken the previous picture from.



Of course, we went and found ice cream after our hikes.

We are seeing plants and birds and interesting things to share by subject later. Neat trip!

	See TrailFest 2018
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Food- Cave- Food- Music

 
Can you believe this? After staying up until almost 3 am, Randy got up and had the table nicely set, and bacon, eggs, and biscuits & gravy (we are in the South) cooking and ready for us to eat at 8 am! He said he loved doing it. What a guy!



Loretta and I had planned an adventure for the day- to drive to a place called Cathedral Cavern about two hours away. At almost the last minute Randy and Annette decided to take off work and go too. Not only that, they drove and all we had to do was ride in the back seat of a nice new car.

Let me tell you about this cave! I'll be writing my monthly newspaper column about our trip there. It was so much better than I expected. It's a fairly recent discovery, with the inner rooms only being found in 1952. It boasts four "largest" features in a commercial cave, which is pretty amazing, I think. First is the entrance. It is 126 feet wide and 25 feet high, and is the largest natural entrance in a cave open to the public.



There were many, many features to see, and I took a gazillion pictures, with about three-quarters of a gazillion of them being useless. I'm bringing you five, which leaves me a few different ones to use in the newspaper. Here is "Goliath," the largest single formation stalactite column.



Fortunately, this is a state park, so the [stupid] shutdown didn't affect our plans. The pathway through the cave is 1.3 miles long and you walk in and walk out, so it was a nice stroll for me, and a bit of a hike for some people. They do have a paved walkway and an electric cart to serve as a sag wagon, and for accessibility. The third prize feature is the largest living smooth flowstone waterfall. This means it still has water running over it, which continues to build new rock.



And then we have the largest rough flowstone wall. Rough flowstone is created by water dripping, instead of running in a sheet. Think about how many drips this needed!

If you can see the large vertical crack in Goliath, and the smaller horizontal one in the smooth flowstone, these probably occurred during the great New Madrid Earthquake of 1812.



Finally, I had to include some other interesting columns. Really hard to pick only a few photos.



The three large formations in the front right of this picture have not stood still long enough to become stuck to the floor, like the ones on the left.



Seriously, if you ever are in NE Alabama, this cave is worth a visit. I didn't show you the cathedral room because I want to use that picture in the paper. It's such an amazing cluster of columns it gave the cave its name.

On the way home we stopped at a pizza place called Pie in the Sky. That was an adventure in itself. Their pizzas were excellent, but I had a chicken pesto salad that was to die for, and didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Was this enough for one day? Nope! Then Loretta and I went back to where we are mainly staying, and made music with Mary all evening. We did make one recording, but we think we should spare you from it. Maybe we'll try recording again tomorrow before we all get hoarse.



Well, we were making a joyful noise. That's all we needed.

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