2000 Feet Down…2000 Feet Up…Just to see a Waterfalls


Sunday, May 19, 2019

A hot evening was followed by a warm night.  Today it hit 31 degrees.  We were expecting some warm temperatures on this adventure but not in the mountains this early.  We can only imagine what is in store for us in the future.

In Sue’s research last evening, she realized that there was a possibility of seeing another waterfall today.  It would only be a short hike and then we could continue on our ‘merry way’.   It would only be a 1.3 mile hike.  We kind of overlooked the fact that it was 2000 feet down and that it was rated as strenuous.  To add insult to injury, it was 1.3 miles back as well.  It is a good thing that it was a picturesque waterfall.  And did I mention it was hot today?

After recovering from our hike, we continued along the Blue Ridge Parkway, weaving our way around 100’s of bicyclists that were participating in a race.  It made an already tough road to navigate even more difficult.  However, our challenge paled in comparison to what these cyclists faced with all the climbing.  Even with our cycling experience, we thought these people were nuts!

We have come down off the Blue Ridge Parkway to camp tonight in Fairy Stone State Park (the name has something to do with the belief that fairies are seen here…it seems the ‘hill people' have been drinking too much of their special juice!)  Now when I say we came down I truly mean we came down.  The highway was one continuous series of switchbacks.  Once again it made some of the roads that we traveled in Australia seem easy.

Distance Traveled = 210 km.  Wildlife Sightings = Robins, Indigo Bunting, Canada Geese, Turkey Vultures, White Crowned Sparrow, Morning Doves, Giant Yellow Swallowtail Butterfly, Large Black Snake on the road, Loony Toons on bikes enjoying the climbing!


The waterfall we worked hard to see


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Final Thoughts

Image
I have always found it difficult to write the final blog.   This one is no different.   As we pulled into our yard last evening, reality hit…this adventure had come to an end.   But we have so many memories. Being on the road for 3 ½ months, we traveled 22,742 km through 23 States and 1 Province.   We know that we will be asked, “What was your favourite place that you visited?”   That is impossible to answer.   We saw and experienced so many things.   The variety of landscapes in the United States is simply ‘mind boggling’!   It has so many beautiful National Parks and we had the pleasure of visiting quite a few of them. It is time to wrap this up.   We would like to thank all the people who have taken the time to follow our travels.   It has been fun to share our experiences with you once again. We would also like to thank all of our friends and family who shared in and made our adventure possible.   Without your help and support Sue and I would not have been able to lea
Read more

Up One Side and Down the Other

Image
We drove north today to South Dakota’s capital City, Pierre.   It is pronounced ‘Peer’…only the Americans can pronounce a clearly French word in such a manner.   Pierre has a population of only 14,000.   It is the 2 nd smallest US State Capital.   There is also nothing there.   If you wanted to tour their capital buildings, you had to give them 48 hours notice…not sure what that was about.   Didn’t matter, we probably would not have anyway! What we did get to do today though, was drive up one side of the ‘Mighty Mo’ (The Missouri River) and down the other.   The river is a big one.   In places it is 2 miles wide.   It has a large water shed and this is the river that caused a lot of the flooding problems in the late Spring and early Summer.   It is still running far higher than usual for this time of year.   It dumps into the Mississippi.   We can only imagine how bad things must have gotten down in Louisiana after we left there…the river was already pushing the limits of its
Read more

A Family Connection to Plantation/Slave Ownership???

Image
Wednesday June 5, 2019 We were off to visit a sugar cane plantation today and made an interesting discovery…more later. We visited the Destrehan Plantation, a large plantation along the Mississippi River.   We joined a guided tour of the original plantation house built between 1787 and 1790 by only 8 men.   Our tour was with a bus tour…no we were not on the bus tour…we just had to endure the presence of a large group of people…and you know how much I like crowds…not!!!   The plantation has a long and storied history.   It began as an indigo plantation and by 1800 switched to the more profitable sugar cane.   It was large…one mile wide and stretching 8 miles from the banks of the Mississippi River.   By the beginning of the Civil War, it had 200 slaves. It continued growing sugar cane until the early 1920’s when it was sold to a Mexican Oil Refinery.   It then became their headquarters and was abandoned in the late 1950’s and sat vacant for over 20 years.   It was a mess when
Read more