One thing about Reedy Creek Park is that it's so large that you can actually get away from the sounds of gas and diesel engines. With one exception: jets and propeller planes. I was down in the creek taking a video of the water and it was pretty peaceful and quiet except for the drone of a prop plane fading in the distance.
I've been told that there is gold to be found in the creeks here. I need to go back one day with a pan and see what I can find.
I took this stitched photo on my hike last week. Wherein I got jumped by about a dozen chiggers. Suffered for days with those burrowing, itchy bastards. Healing up now, but it'll teach me to hike trails in the Piedmont in summer without my DEET spray.I was told by Ed Frank that this may have been a particularly large Osage orange tree. I need to go back out to the park with a tape measure so that I can give the figures to Ed. From what I've since read this tree was likely in the upper echelons of its species. Too bad it was done in by an ice storm.
Taken about a week before Christmas. The kitties liked me that day. I suppose it must have been a bit chilly in the house.
100 degrees here. Hauling mail through the heat and sun. Wish I was somewhere else. I even know the place:
My feet in the pool of cold, clear water at the top of North Harper Creek Falls near Wilson Creek.
I'm not kidding about having to neglect the blog. The novel takes precedent. I'm trying to get to "The End" before we leave for Yellowstone National Park. Until then...
Standing at the remains of the Rockhouse in Reedy Creek Park on Sunday. There really is a horrifying tale to go with this place and when I'm done with the current novel I'm going to tackle it with some fiction of my own.
This is the largest fresh water spring in North America. We visited it last year (in Missouri). Every morning there would be fog hovering just above the very cold water issuing out of the spring. A tremendously beautiful spot.The novel is coming along. I passed a bit of a landmark on it last night. Trying to hit the home stretch, now...
That signpost up ahead. The Twilight Zone?Nah.Not even Sassafras Trail.It says "Finish the freaking novel already!"Workin' on it.
Still working hard on the novel.And I'm still monstrously pissed off at the captains of industry and their political ass-kissers, so I'm posting this one again:Joe Barton eat shit!
Joe-the bastard-Barton
I took some photos of the cats yesterday. I think the portraits are a bit nicer with the new camera than with the older models we've owned.
This is Sophie. She's a bit strange and has always had some emotional problems. We don't know why--she was like that when we got her at the age of four months. She was born into a household that had a number of kids. My suspicion is that children were constantly harassing her and this made her rather skittish and paranoid. Visitors never see Sophie, for she hides completely when any stranger enters the house. For whatever reason, she is attached to me.
This is Lilly. Queen of the household, for sure. Like all Siamese cats, she is extremely intelligent. For instance, she can get that halter she's wearing off of herself in about two seconds. She puts tension on the leash, turns around, ducks her head, and backing up peels it right off. She's brilliant.
Lilly loves to go outside, but she's so inquisitive that she tends to run off if we don't leash her and watch her. Thus, the somewhat impatient demeanor about her when I took this shot.
Our newest cat, Cairo. She'll be one year old in October. She's still a kitten, really. We just had her "fixed" and we took the sutures out today. She's very sweet. As with Lilly, we have to keep her tethered when she's outside, or else she heads for the timber.
Cairo stalking bugs and such.
As I said in an earlier post, I wanted to get some hiking in. But because the trails that I chose were relatively very rugged, they were too tough for Carole. She had to wait at the trail heads while I went on my jaunts. So I had to speed things up. I did this by going light, taking only a camera and a bottle of water, and by basically walking very fast and, in several stretches of trail, jogging. This way I was able to cover a lot of miles in really short order.After we left the Big Butt Trail we drove to the Craggy Gardens Picnic Area. The last five or six times I've tried to stop there the place was closed. Mostly because of the weather, but the last time it was shut down because of aggressive bears that were literally terrorizing the people who tried to use the picnic area. Yep, just like Yogi Bear.Now, though, the bad bears have apparently been removed or chased off. I did see one sign warning people not to feed bears or leave food out. It consisted of a simple printed poster with a color photo of a Craggy Gardens bear on top of a mid-sized automobile with the logo: A FED BEAR IS A DEAD BEAR.
At any rate, I parked the truck and decided to run up the mountain to the summit area where Craggy Gardens is located. When the rhododendrons are in full bloom, the natural gardens there are fantastic. The top of the ridge is a classic natural heath bald with rhododendron patches interspersed with grassy fields and a few stunted trees. The views are often spectacular and when the flowers are out the place is stupefyingly beautiful.But the blooms were all gone, so the only thing for me to see would be the mountaintop itself and the views from the ridge.
It was eight-tenths of a mile to the top so I took off at a very quick walk--almost a run. I went up the trail passing a few late-comers descending the peak and stopped here and there to take photos in the fading light inside the forest. Pretty soon, though, I reached the top and got ready to take some photographs. However, the views were somewhat disappointing due to the fact that the sun was beginning to set and clouds had rolled in all around the horizon. And it began to sprinkle rain. In the end, I just took a few photos, turned around, and dashed back down to the parking lot.
After getting back to the truck and drinking some water, I discussed our options with Carole. We had built in the time to spend another evening in the mountains if we felt like it. But both of us were really beat and we just wanted to get home. So we plugged our address in to our navigation device and pointed the truck back toward Charlotte.
The trailhead to Craggy Gardens, with the bear warning (due to last year's really bad bear troubles).
The trail was not really this dark. The flash went off and made it appear darker.
This shelter is at the top of the treeless ridge. I can see a huge need for it, especially if a thunderstorm suddenly appears. People would need a relatively safe place to retreat.
This patch of flowers was nice, but I couldn't quite get a good shot. More practice is needed.
The sun was going down, but the clouds looked spectacular above the mountain.
Heavy clouds passed over the top of the mountain and it began to rain lightly.
Another patch of those pretty flowers.
My last shot as I headed back toward the truck. For the day I hadn't hiked that many miles...maybe seven. But I'd done those seven miles in such a hurry that I was wiped out.
The Black Mountains of North Carolina have the highest peaks in the eastern USA. Mount Mitchell and Mount Craig are the first and second highest bits of land on this side of the country. The drive up to Mitchell is always interesting because of the change in weather one experiences from the foothills up to the summit parking lot. In our case we drove up from temperatures of about 90 to the upper 60s by the time we climbed out of the truck at the top.The Black Mountains also remain my favorite hiking destination, especially for backpacking. This is because the trails are relatively uncrowded. Sometimes I do encounter some people when I'm camping in the back country there, but generally I can find some real solitude and quiet. In addition, there's not a lot of this type of country in the South, so it's a very unique and precious area. The forests and the animals who live within it are all very delicate and fragile. I never get tired of the Black Mountains.
The entrance to Mount Mitchell State Park with Commissary Ridge in the background. A couple of decades ago the forests here were all but dead. You can still see the bleached trunks of dead balsam trees (the source of the range's name). But the trees have made quite an amazing comeback and now it's possible to hike in the shade again where the ridges had become sunny from the dying trees, killed by invasive pests and acid rain.
The park office and the road leading up to the summit area. 
This is the new trail to the top. It's now paved and well graded so that access is easy even for the disabled.
Carole at the summit sign.
Carole took this of me on the top of the new observation platform.
I'm resting here on the tomb of Elisha Mitchell, for whom the peak is named. He was convinced that this mountain was the highest in the East and died climbing down after another trip to make readings to prove his position that it was, indeed, higher than any other peak in the eastern USA. He was right, but died when he slipped and fell from a waterfall on the way down the mountain.
Carole walks down ahead of me as I stop to take photos. 
I enjoy walking off trail on Mitchell. The balsam forests here are so much different from the kinds of woodlands I'm accustomed to that I never tire of them.
Just a nice view I found while wandering around off the main trail. 
Spruce trees. 
This sign is at the parking lot. Even this point is higher than all but a few peaks in the southern USA.
From that point I took this shot of Mount Craig, the eastern USA's second highest mountain. It's worth the hike over to observe the exposed summit and the great views from the clifftops.Next, the run up to Craggy Gardens.
I used the telephoto lens for this one. This bird was actually quite a distance away.
Same bird, slightly different setting, slightly worse results.
I'm still trying to figure out how to focus properly when I use manual settings. Once again, taken from a distance using the telephoto lens.
Macro shot. Until I get a macro lens there's no way I'm going to take any really good shots. Bugs and birds are notoriously busy critters who rarely hold still. This bumblebee was extremely uncooperative. And don't get me started about the huge butterfly that would freak out and fly away every time I got anywhere close to being able to take a good photo.
