Fall Hike

On Sunday we finally had some sunshine so we took advantage of it and hurried home after church to change clothes for a hike. We went to Abbo's Alley, an easy nature/hiking trail on campus, to check out the Fall colors. The leaves are just now starting to change and it seems there is more and more color everyday. I was anxious to try my new camera outside and use all the fun features. The kids had fun picking berries, running down the paths, showing Grandpa John around, and *A* took some pictures of her own. I love that she's a budding photographer; all of her pictures are lined up and centered nicely, she even has a special stance when she takes a shot. Too cute!

December = Snow!

I got my snow! This is what we woke up to this morning...

and big, juicy flakes are still coming down, yay! More pics later of wet, cold children playing. Happy snow day!

A Typical Walk

To the library and back...










And home to feed the birds.

Morgan's Steep, real steep

We went for a long hike yesterday on one of the many campus trails. There is a main trail running all around the "domain" (the 10,000 acres of the campus) called Perimeter Trail and there are various points to access it, usually these points are at a vista. They all have names like Green's View, Morgan's Steep etc. since we live at the top of a mountain and they look out at the towns below. Anyway, we had heard that Morgan's Steep was part of the Perimeter Trail but that it branched off onto a secondary trail called Bridal Veil Falls Trail and at the end there is a nice waterfall. We packed up water and the kid backpacks and we were prepared to do a "real" hike. We looked at the trail map and decided it might be a mile one-way trip and we thought we could handle that so we headed out.

The scenery was amazing! The first part is at a cliff edge looking into this rocky valley area, you hike around all that and, if it had rained recently, there would probably be a nice creek running along side you the whole time. Then you come to these huge rock faces and cave areas, The vegetation is much thicker down here and very high on both sides which makes the trail a little less than single-file. J&A hiked up to the cave area, but I was afraid we'd disturb some coyote den or something so (H) and I stayed below. It was SO wild and undisturbed that I was afraid a couple of times about what we might run into when we turned the next corner. It's the same feeling I get when I'm way out in the ocean, like I'm trespassing into another world and I'm not really supposed to be there. I love it, but it's scary too sometimes.
Some parts of the trail we're so dense you couldn't see very far ahead of you, but some areas were more open forests with tall trees and less undergrowth. It's strange how much the landscape changed as we changed elevation.
We finally got to this split in the trail and didn't know which way to the waterfall so we went right. After a few hundred feet we found our path blocked by a huge fallen tree. Josh hopped over it, and of course the kids wanted to too.
He discovered the trail was pretty much completely covered by the tree so we stopped and took a water break. We'd been hiking for over an hour and (H) was getting tired, so we decided to go back down the other side of the trail and see if we could get to the waterfall quickly. Once we got to the fork in the trail, we went a little bit further but couldn't see any area that looked like there might be a waterfall nearby. Our bodies were already a little tired and we knew most of the way back was VERY steep uphill climbs, so we headed back. (H) fell asleep on the way back up which was slightly uncomfortable
(his head was resting on my neck and not allowing me to look all the way up) and we started to hear thunder, so I think it was good thing we headed back when we did, although I am disappointed we didn't get to see the falls. When we got to the top, huffing and puffing, I looked at the map again and I think if we'd just have gone a little further down we would have been there. Apparently there are a lot of caves there too. It started raining so we hopped in the car and went home (but first we stopped by the library for free movie rentals). It was a lot of fun, and now that we know the trail and kind of what to expect, I know we could do it again and make it easily to the waterfall. Coming back up is a real challenge though and our muscles are a little sore today.
The rain yesterday cooled things off considerably. It's in the 70's today, we have all the windows open and tonight it's supposed to be in the 50's! Yay! It's that little taste of Fall that makes you want to make soup and curl up under a blanket. Next week life will be pretty different for us, not as much playing and freetime since ^J^ will be starting orientation. It'll be good for us to get into a routine, but I know we'll miss seeing him all the time like we've gotten used to.
We'll just have to live it up this weekend...the unpacked boxes can wait.

Nature Girl...now with visual aids!

O.k., our mail is being delivered and our dsl is up and running so no more angst (at least for today). Oh, and hero husband found the camera battery charger so you can finally enjoy some of what we experience everyday.
We are living in such an amazing wilderness! I've always loved most-things in nature (not so much ticks or spiders) and I do have a dad who my pal Kelley dubbed "Nature Man" (this was after he taught her how to wear a lizard as an earring), but even ^J^ , Mr. "I hate Science", has caught the nature-bug (ha! I'm punny!). We went to the library and got field guides for mushrooms (^J^'s idea of course), trees, birds, wildflowers, and insects. We've seen so many beautiful and strange looking new bugs that we never saw in Georgia. There was a huge Katydid on our porch last weekend, a stick bug that was on our car and drove with us about a mile, a luna moth on our bathroom window, shiny large green beetles in our yard, butterflies galore, and not so fun things too like big flying ants in our kitchen and a too big red centipede in the yard. *A*'s been collecting cicada shells she finds and the bug sounds at night are deafening, and that's with the windows closed!
The birds are wonderful too, our most recent finds have been these pileated woodpeckers. I think there must be a family of them up in our trees, they make this crazy "chuc, chuc" sound and I followed the sound one day and saw three of them hanging on the side of a tree. They're really big, crow-sized and they have that distinctive woody-woodpecker red tuft and beak. As I'm typing this, I can look out the window to the treeline of the woods and make one out on the base of a tree. We also have a consistent hummingbird population. I know of at least one pair that chases each other around the feeder and they make this cute squeaking noise. We've seen bunnies and deer all over the place, in broad daylight even. One night I went out to the porch to feed Gracie(dog) and Ella(cat) and this wave of skunk spray smell came in. It must of happened pretty far out in the woods and travelled to our house, but that is a new thing to think about when we go out for hikes or let the animals run around in the backyard! This morning Ella brought us a present...a bird. When ^J^ went to take it outside, warning *A* it might die soon, it flew off. I guess Ella just played with it and then got bored. As he was coming back in I saw a field mouse running around in the grass, or it could have been a vole...I don't really know what that is, I guess I need to get a mammal guide book too.


Anyway, we're all so into all this wildlife. *A* gets so excited when she discovers something and she's usually the one who points something out to us. She's the one who found the stick bug and she comes running inside in a panic screaming "a tick bug, a tick bug!" I didn't even know she knew what one was. Yesterday she took a walk with ^J^ and our next door neighbors who are 6 and 7, and she told them in her stage whisper "Shhh, we have to be quiet so we can see the deers and bears.". The seven year old informed her that she had been living here almost 3 years and she had never seen a bear. Well, that's good news but I'm not convinced they don't live somewhere on these 10,000 acres.
I'm reading Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and it's so perfect. It takes place on a mountain in Southern Appalachia (I think it's supposed to be Virginia, but it's so similar; the county they live in is even Franklin, which is where we live) and it talks about all the creatures that live in the woods and about life in the country. People who live in the country are a whole different can of worms, I'll just stick with the animals for now...they're much more interesting.