Camping Trip?

I'm seriously thinking of going camping at Linville Gorge soon. Not sure. I do have some days off coming up so I may go there to camp and wander around.

The parking area on the eastern rim.

The famous Tablerock Mountain of Linville Gorge.

Extreme rock formations beneath The Chimneys.

At the Chimneys.

At the base of the Chimneys. I climbed about 3/4 of the way to the summit that day. If I go back, I'll scramble all the way to the top. Class IV, I think.

Random Photos from RMNP

I took all of these in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

Too busy working on my latest novel to write any essays. Sorry.

Nice Mother Nature artwork beside a glacial tarn.

Aspens aglow and Longs Peak.

Longs Peak. Yeah, baby!

Heading above treeline on Longs Peak.

A waterfall draining Chasm Lake on Longs Peak. I was sick as shit and loopy when I took this photograph.

Mushroom Rock. It was damned cold.

I think I was pretty altitude sick when I took this. But it was interesting so I took the time to photograph it despite being hideously nauseous. Classic intrusion geology.

Addendum:

Here's what Ed Frank says about this last photo:
I think your "Classic intrusion geology." in the last photo is really nice and is really gneiss - a metamorphic rock and not an intrusive. Most intrusive bands are straight and fill cracks and joints in the initial rock. In high grade metamorphism the rocks are exposed to high amounts of heat and pressure and the mineral elements migrate and reform to form bands of minerals different from the initial rock. These form the curved contorted bands you see in the image.

Once and For All: The Space Shuttle was a Piece of Shit.

Every once in a while I'll have a friend link me to an article about the old Space Shuttle. About what a great vehicle it was and how proud some city or another is to have part of the mothballed fleet in their community museum.

I get really sick of this. Because the Space Shuttle was a piece of shit. It was poorly designed and poorly utilized. It was a failure in so many ways as a space vehicle that it's hard to get your mind around how feeble it truly was.

It was supposed to have heralded the inception of the regularly scheduled reusable orbital spacecraft. In fact, though, it was a money-pit and dangerous for people who not only had to fly it, but who had to work around it. In all of the years it was used it never lived up to its hype and by the time it was discontinued it had the reputation of being a truly dangerous vehicle.

Some people have argued the point that it flew X-number of missions with only two failures and wasn't statistically as dangerous as I say it was. In fact, though, they're working from the wrong model. The fleet was five-strong. Of the five vehicles, two had catastrophic failures that resulted in the total destruction of the vehicles and the deaths of their entire crews. That means that 40% of the fleet ended up killing everyone who was aboard.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was asked to use a vehicle that had a 40% failure rate that resulted in everyone on it being killed, I wouldn't even think about climbing aboard. What if 40% of every Ford Falcon had disintegrated, causing the death of everyone driving and riding in them. Would you honor such a vehicle or wish to use it? I might write a column about how shitty the concept was, but I'd be damned if I'd be proud of it.

So, to my pals who keep sending me links about the fucking Space Shuttle: cut it the fuck out.

It was a piece of shit and a lasting shame to our space program.

Cemetery

Shots of a cemetery that we visited in the National Forest.

A nice view if you're not dead.

The cemetery is old, as they go here in the States. But hardly neglected.

Kirby's Last Fantastic Four!

I got a copy of FANTASTIC FOUR #102 today. This is the last of the issues that Jack Kirby wrote and illustrated before he left to do the Fourth Worlds series at DC Comics. I had forgotten that he'd done such a good job on the art in this issue. You'd think that a man leaving the company would possibly not put everything he had into the tail-end of a project as he walked out the door. Especially for an outfit that had stolen so much from him.

Instead, Kirby turned in a wonderful effort.

What is interesting is that the cover for the last issue he did in that run was by John Romita and not by Kirby. I do know that the editor had chosen Romita to take over the book, so perhaps he wanted the Spider-Man writer/artist to get some time in to get a feel for the characters.

Unfortunately, Romita had no business illustrating the Fantastic Four. His rendition of the characters--truthfully and bluntly--sucked. He didn't have the slightest clue what he was doing when drawing Ben Grimm. The rest of the team looked like refugees from Spider-Man.

At any rate, that was the last of the late Kirby issues that I needed. Now I'll have to begin the slow walk backward from issues #20 to #1.

The story was written and illustrated by Kirby. But the cover for Kirby's last issue on the book was by John Romita. It is absolutely awful. Romita had no feel for the characters, at all.

And I have always figured that Kirby knew he wasn't going to do the cover for #102. Instead he delivered this very symbolic cover for #101.

Miscellaneous Shots from Mount Rogers National Recreation Area

Here are just a series of miscellaneous photos that I took wandering around the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area.

 

Gnarly old tree in the Little Wilson Creek Wilderness Area.

Crossing Third Peak to head down to Scales. The big peak about to be covered in clouds beyond is Mount Rogers. The thunderstorm was moving in fast and I was in a hurry to get off the ridge. The horseback riders, however, were eager to ride right up into that shit.

Gnarly tree sitting isolated in a meadow between Second Peak and Third Peak.

Mother Nature reminding me that Summer is coming to an end.

Flower and little critter.

In the mist on Whitetop Mountain.

This is the upper part of the Fox Creek Falls. They're cascades, actually. Quite pretty. The water was silted because of nearby horse camps. Horses utterly wreck the trails and cause severe erosion. I'm sick of the National Forest having to cater to horseback riders.

These salamanders were sheltering under the wheel chocks of my travel trailer.

Virginia Creeper Trail

Carole and I decided to ride the Virginia Creeper Rail Trail again. In the past when we've had the opportunity to ride it we had passed. That's because the first time we biked it we rode it with Roy and Cindi Aiken and their kids, James and Emily. We had such a good time that day that the idea of going without them kind of made us depressed. So we didn't go when we had the opportunity a couple of times.

On this trip, however, we decided to ride it once more. It was fun, but not as much as the first ride with the Aikens. We made the 17-mile trip in three hours. It can easily be done in one hour if you don't stop and linger. The first time we rode it I think we took about five hours to do the ride. Because there was live music at one spot on the trail and we stopped a lot more to take photos and just absorb the beautiful scenery.

One thing about this stretch of the trail is that it's almost all downhill. And the brief parts that aren't downhill are level. If you start at the Whitetop Station and ride all the way into Damascus, you lost almost 1800 feet of elevation. That first section between Whitetop Station and Green Cove Station is pure adrenaline fun. Just coasting you can reach really wonderful speed. Even lard asses and people in just general bad physical shape and do this trail with absolutely no problem.

The Green Cove Station. My favorite of the train stations along the trail. This was the only one that was an actual station. It was in operation until 1977 when it was finally closed. It had a store and a post office.

Inside the store section which is mainly a museum now. Operated by volunteers.

One of several abandoned homes along the trail.

This place was for sale. Located directly on the rail trail. It comes with 23 acres and a barn and creek frontage. Only $350K.

A store along the trail. There's a footbridge allowing access from the trail. We stopped here for a while when we rode the trail with the Aikens because they had live bluegrass music that day.

Looking down from one of the high trestles.

Nice waterfall on the trail.

The bridges and the constant water cement the appeal of the trail.

One of the many views.

The trail goes through this guy's farm. What a panorama!

This is where we stopped for lunch. Creekside.

The Buchanan Inn at Green Cove Station. This is where the people who ran the Green Cove Station lived. It's now a vacation rental.

A Black ratsnake on the highest of the trestles on the trail. There were three of them using the side of the bridge to sun themselves.

Yellowjacket Apocalypse

Remember the yellowjacket nest? Well, my mother-in-law was as good as her word. She killt them. She's pretty good at it. What you have to do is go out to the nest after dark. The yellowjackets are all but dormant after sunset and less likely to swarm and sting. So she went out with a small bottle of gasoline and poured some into the entrance to the nest. She didn't drench the ground or anything. Just poured a little in there.

She repeated the process for three days.

After the third day she went out and to check the nest for activity. What she found was that instead of a small entrance tunnel buzzing with yellowjackets she saw a large hole in the ground!

The yellowjackets were obviously dead. Where the nest had been there was now a deep hole. Something had come to the now-vacant nest and had dug it up for the grubs in the combs.

Typically, there are three animals who would do this. Yellowjacket grubs are pure fat and protein. Some mammals like them so much that they'll risk getting stung severely to feast on the grubs. The calorie reward outweighs the pain. Black bears have been known to travel through the forest digging them up and feasting on the nests.

But this hole, while decent, was certainly not made by a bear. So, the three local critters at the top of my list are: raccoons, skunks, and foxes.

Whatever dug that hole was really good at it. Raccoons can dig, but I've never seen one construct such an efficient excavation. Skunks are exceptional diggers, but Faye said she never smelled a skunk around, and they're hard to miss. So my guess is that the nest was dug up and consumed by a gray fox. There are lots of them around that part of the county. I've seen them, mainly in the evening.

No more yellowjacket nest. Faye killt the adults and this left the grubs vulnerable. Of course they'd have died anyway without the colony to feed and care for them. Or it's even possible the same gas fumes that killed the adults did in the grubs.

Must not have affected the flavor, though, because there was not one grub left.

Hole where the nest had been.

There were bits of yellowjacket nest scattered around.

You can see that the grubs were all gone...gobbled up.

Horseback Riding and Hiking.

The first experience I had backpacking and hiking on trails shared with horseback riders was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Because of the way that Park was established the government had to basically allow free access to almost the entire Park by people on horseback. One of the few exceptions there is the Appalachian Trail which follows the spine of the main ridge and is for foot travel only.

That first time sharing the trails with horses wasn't too bad. Mainly, looking back on it, because we didn't run into very many people on horseback. In fact, I only recall having to move out of the way for horses one time (horseback riders have the right of way on such trails--they outweigh your average hiker by a vast margin), and I think we only had to camp near horses one night. So, my first experience wasn't all that bad.

Since then, I have come to regard horses in our National Parks and National Forests as a truly negative thing. They give access to some of the most unsavory folk I've ever met while hiking and backpacking. Lard-asses who would otherwise never think of delving into a wilderness can be found crushing the spines of horses in National Parks. And they almost always bring all manner of nasty shit into the forests with them, including guns.

Horses and their riders scare off all of the wildlife. I never see any wildlife when I encounter goddamned horses on the trails. With the exception of flies and gnats. Horses carry their own little traveling ecosystem in their wake. Whenever horses pass me when I'm hiking, I am left to contend with vast swarms of annoying gnats and flies that find me and linger to bug the shit out of me when the horses have traveled on.

The horse shit isn't really a problem for me. As shit goes, horse shit isn't offensive. It's mainly grass and such and is easily avoided and if you step in it...well, no big deal. That's not the problem, at all.

The absolutely WORST thing about sharing trails with horses is the massive damage that they do to the trails. They utterly wreck the trails. Erosion is a hideous problem on trails that horses use. They absolutely destroy the vegetation under their hooves; they press into the soil; they denude the trail of dirt and leave only a ragged and blasted surface behind. In places where the soil is deep, you have to contend with huge chunks of real estate that is essentially muck--almost like quicksand.

At long last I have had it with the horseback riders. 

One problem about the area where I went is that so many of the trails are for horses and hikers. Which means, essentially, that they are for horses.One trail was so badly damaged by horses that it had become nothing but a sea of mud and the Forest Service had erected a sign to dissuade both hikers and horsesback riders from using that stretch. It isn't safe for any of us now.

I managed to bag three peaks that I've wanted to summit for quite a long time, but I had to contend with doing so on trails used by horses. It was not a pleasant experience and I do not recommend that particular system of trails if you are a hiker or backpacker.

Almost all of the trails in this area are for horseback riders and hiker/backpackers.

I had been hoping to see some wildlife in the two wilderness areas adjacent to the Grindstone campground. Alas, it was not to be: the forests were packed with horses.

This trail damage was mild compared to what I encountered throughout the Little Wilson Creek Wilderness.

I could not hike through this muck. My boots would vanish in the depths of the mud. I had to bushwhack around these sections, some of them quite long.

I didn't hike down this trail. If it was worse than the ones I'd already encountered, I didn't even want to know about it.

This group of riders were actually nice. They said hello and spoke to me and smiled. Some of the others I encountered were belligerent, as if I had no right to be on the trails.

I had cut my hike short not because of the damage to the trails, but because a large and noisy thunderstorm was rolling in at a rapid clip. Just before taking this shot I had been able to see Mount Rogers, but it was quickly hidden behind thunderheads and lightning.

Every hiker and backpacker I know gets the hell off of the ridges and mountaintops when the lightning rolls in. I was hustling to get back to my truck. But what were the horseback riders doing? They were headed right up to the highest points, as if lightning must avoid people on horseback.

Home!

Well, we're home. I'll post some photos and descriptions of the campground, the trails, and the creeks and such tomorrow.

Our Casita all lit up in the night with a colorful string of electric lights at our campsite at Grindstone Recreation Area.

Details later.

The lower section of the Fox Creek Falls.