Same Spot, Different Year

Carole and I have enjoyed our trips to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. Today, I'm only going to post a couple of photos taken from the same spot four years apart. There's a particularly good overlook on one rim of the canyon near the parking lot. I walked out to it and did a self-portrait using my tripod on a June day in 2007. Then, in February of 2011 we went to experience the park in winter. I took another self-portrait from the same spot.

Blackwater Falls State Park, June 2007.

Same spot, February 2011.

Memorable Trips, Part One

Crazy things going on around here. Far too busy to work on essays or extended blogging. Sorry.

Until things even out, I'll post some photos of memorable trips that Carole and I have taken.

On one of our trips to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. One of our favorite mountain areas in the east. On this particular trip there had been tremendous snowfall all winter long before we arrived. The weather did not change while we were there, dropping quite a lot of snow on us. It was great.

This was the view of Blackwater Falls that we had from the overlook. The river was bursting with snowmelt from slight warming that had occurred over the previous days. Snowmelt which was utterly reversed while we were in the park.

West Virginia in the Snow

Carole and I haven't been back to West Virginia in over a year. We'd like to take a trip there again. These shots are from our last vacation in the state, spent principally in and around Blackwater Falls State Park. For years there has been a movement to try to create a new National Park around Blackwater Falls and the canyon there. But of course the energy and timber corporations have fought such a proposal to a standstill.

This old train station had been restored and converted into a museum. Closed the day we were there.

Deer in the Snow.

The mighty Blackwater Falls.

Heavy snowfall hit while we were at the waterfall overlook.

Pointing across the gorge at the lodge where I was staying.

Snowmelt and fresh snow had created enormous water volume for the falls.

Last February

Man, the weather has surely been different this winter than last one. This winter...well, we haven't even had a winter. The past two weeks I have worn shorts and short-sleeved shirts to work. And the temperatures have been so high that I've had to deal with humidity and sweating. I don't know about the rest of you, but this human-caused global warming sucks ass. Winter is supposed to be cold at this latitude!

Last year, the ski slopes were deep in heavy snow. The ski resorts rarely had to even use the snow-making machines. It pretty much snowed the entire winter. When Carole and I were in West Virginia and Maryland last February, we saw snowdrifts ten-feet deep. We hiked on packed snow three feet deep in Cathedral State Park. It snowed almost continuously during our visit there.

Now we're back to these hellishly abnormal weather patterns caused by the release of carbon that had been sequestered in the Earth's crust for hundreds of millions of years.

The Earth is screwed.

Stir Crazy, Stir Crazy

Whenever I can't get away to the mountains or down to Florida to swim and paddle in one of the glorious freshwater springs, I tend to get really, really stir crazy. I've never made it a secret that I don't like crowds and I don't enjoy living in a city. I can only stand so much, and then I can't stands no more.

So for the past few weeks I've been daydreaming constantly about getting loose from Charlotte and into the woods. One place that's on my list of probables is one of the parks Carole and I most enjoy:


Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. Recently, it was announced that this area is now under consideration as for National Park status. It will be called (if it happens) The High Allegheny National Park. Of course energy corporations and timber companies will fight it to the death. They will do anything and everything--up to and including murder (of that I have no doubt)--to keep this dream of a new National Park from ever becoming reality.


But if any place in the eastern USA deserves National Park status, it's this area. Let's hope it comes to be.


In the meantime, I'm thinking maybe a January or February trip is in order. And hopefully, as this past February, Carole and I will encounter deep snow and we can go sledding on the sled run inside the park.


We'll see.

Embiggen these photos, but especially this one. Taken from the western end of the park.

Self-portrait at Lindy Point, this past February.

Very close also to Lindy Point.

What Miss Erosion and Mr. Gravity do to the mountains.

This the Blackwater Canyon Lodge where we like to stay. Carole standing on the other side of some friendly does who are obviously into pandhandling.

In Honor of Snow

Well, the super-hot weather seems to have finally broken here in Charlotte. It may merely be a short reprieve, but it made me think of the last time I saw snow, which was early this year on a vacation to Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia.

In honor of snow, here then are a few photos from that trip.

Yer blog host standing on the far side of Blackwater Canyon pointing across the chasm toward the Blackwater Falls Lodge where we were staying.

Stitched panorama of the really cool lodge. We love staying there!

Something a southern boy doesn't get to see very often. A lake completely frozen over and suitable for ice skating. In this case, it's Pendleton Lake just on the park border.

There is no shortage of white-tailed deer here in the East, but I don't get to see them grazing in a snowy field very often.

The pure power of Blackwater Falls.

Some More Snowy Photos from Blackwater Falls

We had to peel ourselves away from Blackwater Falls State Park on that last day. It was cold and it was snowing hard and the place was just so quiet and beautiful that we did NOT want to leave. The forecast for the rest of the day was for another half foot of snow to fall. We seriously considered paying for another night at the lodge and playing hooky. But we thought better of it. However, we took one more lingering drive around the park and one last hike through the snow forest. The following shots were mainly taken by Carole, with just one or two by me.

Me, on the Balanced Rock Trail.

Carole on the trail with a tea-colored stream behind her. The water is tinted by the tannic acid from the decomposition of decades of hemlock and pine needles.

Gorgeous snow-covered hemlocks.

The clear, but tinted water.

There's nothing so quiet as a forest during a snowfall.

Carole in the snow.

This is Pendleton Lake which was completely frozen over and covered in snow. It's not often a southerner gets to see something like this.

The Power of Water

When we got to the Blackwater Falls area they were experiencing some warm weather after a long period of very heavy snowfall. So there was a tremendous amount of snow melt going on, even though I had to hike through places where the snow was about two feet deep. I could only imagine how deep the snow must have been before the thaw.

Because of this, the streams and rivers were bursting their banks. Thus, the waterfalls were about as powerful as you could ever hope to see them. In fact, the trail down to the Blackwater Falls had been put off limits because the flow was so great and the ice cover was so treacherous that the park officials felt the need to keep people away. So I was not able to hike all the way down to the base of the falls where the best photo opportunities were to be had. I was able to get a look at the viewing platform from above, and it was coated in what appeared to be five feet of solid ice. I decided to obey the signs and not venture beyond the barriers the park rangers had erected.

Here then are some videos and images that I took of the rivers and waterfalls that we encountered in West Virginia and Maryland.

This falls in Swallow Falls State Park reminded me of Hooker Falls at Du Pont State Forest here in North Carolina.

The namesake falls of Swallow Falls State Park.

The river was actually kind of frightening with the elevated levels and the constant steaming of sublimating snow and ice.

This was the best view I could get of Blackwater Falls due to the closure of the main trail. If you look to the left side of the photo you can see the dwarfed viewing platform almost filled with snow and ice. The staircase leading down to it was so packed with ice that the stairs were completely hidden.

The Blackwater River just above the falls.

Reluctantly Heading Home

Carole and I did NOT want to leave Blackwater Falls State Park. We were having such a good time and we still had things we wanted to see and do in the area. To make things even more painful, the snowstorm that had been predicted for days was just getting cranked up. There was about three inches of new snow on the ground with another half of a foot forecast before the storm would end. We debated staying over and playing hooky from work...but decided against it: our sense of responsibility kicked in. Too many Steve Ditko comics in my past, I reckon.

Here I was at Pendleton Point on the north rim of the gorge. I was standing on newly fallen ice/sleet/snow. If not for my Yaktrax (those guys need to pay me), there's no way I'd have wandered out on the cliff edge.

And here I am in largely the same spot in the summer of 2007.

This was taken on another cliff and I'm pointing across the gorge to the lodge where we spent three and a half great days.

This is actually the last photo I took as we were leaving the park. I used my telephoto lens to catch this one. The deer had been pawing in the snow to excavate whatever they were eating--grass or lichens or mosses--not sure which. This was in a kind of bog/wetland, so there's not telling what kind of vegetation they were eating.


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Or my cryptozoology action novel, THE FLOCK!

Unexpected Snow.

Yesterday we went for a ride to scope out some of the local recreation areas. We found a National Forest campground that had totally escaped our notice and we're definitely going to take our travel trailer there as soon as we can. I'll post some details on that spot in a couple of days.

On the way back it began to rain. This was expected as the weather report had called for such. However, as we gained elevation and began to close in on Blackwater State Park snow began to mix in and soon the rain had turned completely to snow! And not just a flurry, but a full-on blinding snowstorm! In nothing flat it began to accumulate everywhere, adding to the deep snow that was already covering most of the terrain.

So we delayed our trip to a local restaurant so that we could hike to the Blackwater Falls overlook in the snow. We took a few photos and then drove back into Thomas WV where we had a light supper at a Restaurant/Hostel in the middle of the tiny town. The place was packed with young people staying at the hostel and there was live music by a very talented fellow playing neo-classical piano.

Looking down on Blackwater Falls. The volume over the falls was fantastic!

The happy travelers in the snow.

Lindy Point

I hiked through some seriously deep snow to get to an overlook today. I'd promised myself to take a winter photo from Lindy Point which I'd visited before during summer. But the road to the trailhead was shut because of deep snow so that added more than a mile to the hike, so instead of a one and a half mile round trip I was looking at a four-mile round trip. Still an easy hike if you didn't consider that I was going to be hiking through extremely deep snow with many patches of hardened ice. If I hadn't worn my Yaktrak Pros I probably wouldn't have been able to make the hike in a reasonable time frame. As it was I did it fairly quickly. I only encountered one other person the hike--a woman who'd ski'd in on her cross-country skis, but she left soon after I arrived at Lindy Point so I had the place to myself for quite a while.

The trail in to Lindy Point. Very deep snow and lots of ice.

I went over the fence onto a rock pillar to get this photo. That's my camera tripod beside the viewing platform.

And here I am at the tower of rock they call Lindy Point. The Blackwater Canyon behind me.

Our Next Two Vacations

Our next two significant vacations are going to be familiar territory. This month we'll be returning directly to a place we haven't visited since 2007: Blackwater Falls State Park in northern West Virginia.

Our initial reason for going there in February was to enjoy the snow. However, it looks as if we're going to be there during a period of warmer weather and we'll miss our chance at snow sports. We won't get to enjoy the sledding slope they have in the park, and I won't get to try my hand (or legs) at cross-country skiing. Crap!

But we'll fill our days enjoying the fantastic scenery that Mother Nature provides in the Mountain State. One place that I'm going to hit that I've wanted to see for some time is Cathedral State Park. It's the last surviving patch of virgin hemlock forest in the entire state of West Virginia. The trees, I hear, are still free of the hemlock wooly adelgid that has obliterated our hemlock forests in Georgia, North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and Virginia. It'll be great to witness such a forest.

Blackwater Falls.

The Blackwater River.

Me, standing on the lip of the Blackwater Canyon.

The Canyon from Lindy Point.

Seneca Rock, also in West Virginia. We won't likely have time to see it this trip.

Me, in Bear Rocks near Dolly Sods Wilderness. Another place we likely won't have the time to see this trip up.

After that, late in the Spring, we're headed down to Florida. We're going to hit a spot in the state where we've driven but never camped. I don't have any photos of the specific area where we'll be staying on that trip, but here are a few blasts from the past.

When I was a kid, we lived just across the Georgia/Florida border and I was actually kind of bored with the state, since we spent so much time there visiting relatives. But now that I'm older I've discovered so much natural beauty in Florida that I love going down there to vacation.

Of course Carole and I don't hit the places that 90% of the tourists hit. We don't do the amusement parks and the beaches are not generally our favored haunts when we're there. We really enjoy the rivers and the first and second magnitude freshwater springs that dot the karst topography of Florida. And I have to say that, with the possible exception of West Virginia, Florida has the finest system of state parks on the east coast of North America.

Blue Springs, from 2008.

Standing inside the resisting snag of a dead monster cypress, 2008.

Great blue heron, a really great predator of our forests and rivers.

Mr. Alligator. I enjoy seeing them in the low country.

Live oaks and Spanish moss.