March 9, 2012 - Hurricane Creek and Welti Falls

Yes, another trip to Hurricane Creek Park. This hike was a little over 3.75 miles down into the canyon, up the south ridge, back down, up and out. We were intent on some elevation changes after our walk last weekend that was mostly flat, flat and more flat. I was also trying out my new backpack and had it loaded up with about 20 pounds of water, and a new geocache to place in the park. The other caches in the park focus on the north side with the exception of the Twilight Tunnel cache that is not as far up the south ridge as the trail we took this trip. I even managed to leave a little room even further up the ridge for a potential future cache along the mountain bike trail.

Spring, she is all a-sproing-ed! Plenty of flowers are pushing up through the dead leaves all along the trail and the canyon floor. Spring beauty, buckeye, trout lily, trillium and may apple are easy finds at the moment and you can bet that more are on the way.

As is our luck, we managed to time our hike after some significant rainfall and the waterfalls were nice and full for our trek.

In other news... Esther is not shaped like a cork.

After we left the park we made a few stops to find some of the local geocaches. One was at the end of a trail that lead to yet another waterfall. This was quite a find and just another benefit of caching. I give you, Welti Falls just before sunset:

Here's the tracklog of the hike and the link to all the pictures.

March 4, 2012 - Busy Ozians, The Big Darn Walk: Wheeler Wildlife Refuge

Ack. We've been busy. Most of February was taken up with the Oz production the kids were all in. Not so much time for hiking. The play went well, better than I thought it would at times. And I'll say one really negative thing and then move on: when your kids are rehearsing for a play and you, the adult, the parent, are in the audience with the other adults, the other parents... maybe you should shut up or leave the theater to run your big soccer mom/redneck dad mouth. Talking in your "middle of Cracker Barrel" voice is detrimental to the production. You are not the most important thing happening during rehearsal, the rehearsal is.

And I'm done.

Here are a few pictures I took during dress rehearsal. My little Powershot was really out of its element and not quite up to the task, but I grabbed a few shots that aren't that bad.

Now just this last weekend (I'm typing this on the 7th) Boss Lady and I were looking for a nice long walk to really stretch out on for a few hours. We found our destination on the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge right outside of Decatur, on the shore and floodplain of the Tennessee River.

We started under the north end of the I-65 bridge and headed west and north, looped back around and under the bridge again and walked between the elevated northbound and southbound lanes back to our start. Total trip- a little over nine miles.

Spread across the floodplain is a network of irrigation canals that control the flow of the river water through the nearby fields.

To say we've have a mild winter does not begin to describe the out-of-season warm weather that's settled over our area. Spring flowers have been popping up for a couple of weeks now- most of which the names I don't know. 

I know this one!!!! Spring beauty!!!

I also found a fairly old geocache that was placed in 2002 and hadn't been found since 2010. Sometimes the story of the hide, the cacher that hid it, or the history of the area is more interesting than the actual container you find. This one has come up missing and been replaced over the years and it's probably seen better days. 

The log was soaking wet and mildewed and there was about a quarter cup of water inside. But this wasn't a disappointment because in reading over the web page for the cache I was led down a path of discovery about the person that originally placed the cache here and his unfortunate passing due to leukemia. His caches are for the most part still out in the wild and being maintained by others that have adopted them and keep them going. So while I may have only found a waterlogged note pad inside a drippy plastic container at the hide location I also found a little piece of our local cachers larger story.

Marvin the egg shortly before ingestion.

A few days earlier, the kids had spent the afternoon devising ways to protect an egg from damage in a fall. The "hero" egg was given a face and a name: Marvin. This past Friday, Esther boiled most of our eggs in preparation for a really nasty storm that didn't materialize (thank goodness).We packed up some of the boiled eggs to eat on our hike. There was much speculation over who would be the unlucky soul that would have to eat Marvin, the boiled egg. Chan drew the Marvin.

More of the Oz pictures can be seen here.

The rest of our hike on the riverside is here.

Here's the tracklog of the hike and here's the route along the refuge roads to reach the start of our hike from Mooresville.

February 18, 2012 - ARGH

Having issues with Gallery2.0 at castlemischief.com and I've been wanting to make room within my hosting limits so I'm in the process of editing older posts to nab the images off of my Picasa Web album. There may be some older posts with missing image files. If you see that don't send me an email or leave in in the comments just know that I'm working on it. All the pictures of our adventures and mishaps (with the exception of half of 2006 and all of 2007 and 2008- working on that too...) and can be seen here if for some reason you can't find them somewhere else.

-Matt

February 10, 2012 - Birthday Girl and Dead Nettle Tea

First things first: my beautiful, creative, and super smart baby girl turned 14 today. 

Happy Birthday, Chan-Chan

To avoid becoming too reflective and to stave off the urge to sing a few bars of "Sunrise, Sunset" here is Esther in her toboggan and funny shirt.

Super effective

And now on to the tea...

I've been wandering around the yard looking for something to turn into tea. I recently collected a bagful of dandelion leaves to dry and put in the tea cabinet. While I was on the ground plucking weeds for the tea pot it occurred to me that we have an insane amount of these little purple flower things that look like teeny-tiny orchids. I know I've been told what these things are called so I asked the wife and she very patiently told me (again) that they are dead nettle. 

Off to the Google I went in search of some validation for my desire to turn this little weed into tea! I found people with plans to put it their pancakes and frittatas, plenty of evidence for its use in salads, and more than enough examples of it being made into tea.

Dead nettle fresh from the yard, pluckity-pluck

As I've been doing with all the wild herbals, I placed the plants on a black pizza pan and let them dry in the oven at 170° for about an hour, or until dry and crunchy.

Right out of the oven, crunchity-crunch

Then, using pure brute force and no actual tools, I grind them all up with my bare hands. Brutal. Remember when you were a kid and the most fascinating thing you could do with your time was to mash dead leaves in your hand until they were powder-fine? Yeah, just like that, but in a bowl so I don't waste anything.

No, officer, not that kind of weed

Then it goes into the tea kettle with some just-barely-boiling water. Green herbs tend to make bitter tea if you steep them in water that's been brought to a rolling boil. The resulting brew is earthy in smell and flavor and really needs some sweetener (honey works well). When I say "earthy" I mean it smells like a hole that you've dug in the ground. The fresh plant has this same smell, only much stronger. The tea is more subtle and little bit minty.

Dead nettle is purported to have all sorts of healthy properties and benefits. I'm just drinking it for the taste and joy of taking in something that would normally fall to the lawnmower and came from right outside our door. 

Other pictures of birthday girl and dead nettle tea preparation can be found in the gallery here.

February 5, 2012 - Rush Creek, Bankhead National Forest

Esther and I set out today, sans kids, to find something new in Bankhead National Forest. We didn't have a specific spot in mind but she wanted to see a waterfall if possible. Luckily, there's a series of geocaches that have been placed near many of the waterfalls scattered across Bankhead. I punched the nearest one into the GPS and off we went.

The cache we were seeking is called "Bankhead Waterfalls Series # 14 Hidden Cove Fall". Parking is located on the side of the road just below were it crosses the creek. The bridge was covered with moss and ferns.

We headed down the clearly marked trail and set off in search of splishy-splashy and, I guess also cachey (forgive me).

First error in judgement- started off on the wrong side of Rush Creek. No problem. We realized this after arriving at a point directly east of the falls/cache and just kept walking along next to the water. The winter has been incredibly mild and all the plants and trees are either budding or on the verge of budding, if not down-right blooming.

When it became apparent that following the creek was only going to result in a gradual climb and the waterfall now somewhat behind us we decided to wade across the creek and start hunting on the other side. Esther was much better dressed for this in her fancy new zip-off-leg pants. She suggested that I should ford the water in my undies, but I disappointed her by merely rolling up my jeans and making a go of it.

Esther: Woodland fashionista.

Let's just take another look. *swoon*

Once on the other side of the creek we promptly decided to walk in a direction that was not towards the falls, but indeed in the opposite direction! We could hear some sort of falling water feature nearby and headed towards it at full speed! But first... WITCH'S BUTTER.

Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle...

The detour paid off with not one, but two waterfalls that we hadn't even been counting on seeing! (High-fives and knuckle-bumps commenced.) 

The next hour of hiking contains what I like to think of as "the part that didn't happen". We did not wander along the top of a giant bluff with sheer rock walls of twenty to thirty feet in height. We did not crawl under, around, over and through (yes, this) mountain laurel, holly bush, saw briar and cedar. We did not walk around in a big giant circle only to backtrack and climb down the bluff right were we climbed up it. I know these things did not happen because I have no pictures of them (regardless of what the GPS track log may indicate.)

We finally found the correct route but due to continued resistance from the brush and faced with having to cross and re-cross the stream to reach the falls we called it a day and headed back towards the van.

Esther got hungry along the way, and well... 

I did find another nearby cache and we did both take a handful of pictures, so the day was not a waste. Oh, and also we burned collectively enough calories to summon roughly four Whopper Jr. combo meals from the unassigned proto-matter of a new universe in another parallel reality.

The album of my pictures of the day are right here: CLICKY LINKY!

The track log: PUSH BUTTON!

Esther's blog of the same event but with touchy-feely girl perspective and pictures of me: MASH THIS LINK!