7 posts tagged “nature”
My weekend has been a complete mess but I can say that I at least got one good day out of it.
Jon's boss owns a beautiful home and large piece of property about fifteen minutes outside of town, along the Boonesborough River, its a dream of a place. He had mentioned that he has great hiking trails on his property and that we could use them any time, so we called him on his offer and spent the afternoon up and down the hillside, along the river. There were four of us and three dogs in tow. The ground was saturated and everyone, myself included, took a fall along the way, thank goodness for gor-tex boots. We hiked for about three hours and covered, hillsides, pasture, woods, rushing rivers, creeks, and waterfalls. Luna wore herself out, she ran along with their two dogs like old friends, up and down, back and fourth, in and out... all over the place. When we got home she limped around for two days because her muscles were just that sore.
Though we usually do all of our hiking in winter or fall, I promised myself we would have to go back there in the summer, the wildflowers are supposed to be stunning and they kept hinting at a few private swimming holes along the way. It was beautiful and a great place to spend the afternoon, we will have to come back.
Jon and I used to live in a small town about an hour south of Lexington, our commute to the city was long and dangerous on butterfly hills and country roads. I took away one thing from those early morning drives... a love for the scenic views. At sunrise the valleys would fill with billowing mist and the countryside woke in a fog which cleared as the sun color became more brilliant. Since we moved I've missed those views and had always planned on waking one morning early to drive to my favorite spot at Pleasant View Farm and photograph the views that I had loved so much. Today was the day.
This is why I love Kentucky so much, the landscape pulls at my heart because it is just so beautiful. It was thirty degrees and my bare fingers were feeling frostbitten but I couldn't put down my camera. I had expected to take shots of the hillside but was completely surprised by a family of horses who befriended me and posed frame by frame for my camera. At first they were skiddish and watched from afar, I talked to them, told them about what I had been there for, they came closer and I was able to pet a few. It was like something out of a dream, I watched the sunrise with my new found friends and marveled at the images I was capturing through my lens.
Watch the Flick Stream.
I woke up this morning to heavy rain and my Sunday drive had to be a bit delayed. I had planned a trip with mom to go to the Red River Gorge and photograph the famed Kentucky Redbud trees. We ended up at the national park a little later than I'd expected and though we'd seen some beautiful Redbud's on parkway once we'd gotten into the forest and along the river it was just too dark under the canopy for any buds to start blooming. I'd heard stories of how beautiful it is in the spring but I believe we tried a bit too early.
We drove around the park, had a picnic by the Red River on a huge boulder and stopped at a few overlooks on the way. Mom tested out her new camera and was clicking away at everything she saw.. her child-like excitement made me feel so happy. Though the trees still had their winter skeletons I managed to pull off a few nice cloudscape shots as the clouds passed by and darkened the forest below.
It was a very nice day and we laughed and giggled all afternoon as we got lost in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky.
We finally got a break in the weather and though its forty degrees outside its bearable and beautiful out. So I started my mission to break in my x-mas gift hiking boots and we went for a hike close to home. About a fifteen minute drive away there is a well kept nature sanctuary called Raven Run. If you go on a weekday its almost vacant and that Is what we decided on doing.
Its been months of harsh weather and it felt sooooo good to get outside for a few hours and enjoy world. We found beautiful waterfalls close to a historic settlers mill (a few stones piled on top of each other) but it was just what we needed. Jon brought his video camera and I brought my digital and we spent hours trekking up and down the hillside trying not to slip on icy cliffs. I really enjoyed our afternoon but it made me yearn for spring even more, green and warmth.. thats what I want.
I had a three day weekend with nothing to do, the first in a long time. Saturday we'd sat around the house all morning debating on activities for the rest of the weekend and I had it stuck in my mind that we should drive two hours to the Tennessee border and go hiking at Cumberland Falls, "the Niagara of the South". I was in one of those moods that only a long walk in nature could cure. But it was ever so cold to go trampsing though the woods so I put on long underwear, sweatpants, snow-pants, two sweaters and a down coat.. I was ready.
We drove to the border and made great time, I love the drive to Tennessee with its steep hills and sandstone. The national park was a bit hard to find hidden about a half an hour off of the highway and down a small windy road. As we pulled in my heart dropped, the parking lot was almost empty (which i had expected in winter) but it looked like a tourist trap, like Disney with its fake mountain lodge and gift shop with history museum. The falls were lined off and you couldn't even get close, the overlooks were too far away and simply useless. My mind was starting to go sour at the thought that we'd driven all that way to go to a tourist trap. I did stop in the gift shop (because I collect postcards) and picked up a few to send to friends.
There was one more hope, a trail
across the river that ran along the falls and lead further down the way to another smaller waterfall. We still had a few hours of daylight so we gave it a try. Up and down the side of the steep hill we went and caught some beautiful views of the Cumberland falls. A little over a mile down the trail we hit the bottom of the river which was filled with enormous boulders, some the size of a house! I turned the corner of another large boulder and it was like someone had opened the freezer door and a rush of cold air went all over my body. There were the falls, half frozen still pouring into a pile of ice below. I'd never seen anything as spectacular as this. Jon managed to find a fairly treacherous path leading to a huge boulder next to the top of the falls and we slowly climbed our way to the top. The view was fantastic and to be that close to the falls was just what I had hoped for. It made the trip completely worth it. And I'd go back, just to see Eagle Falls again.
