Going Up The Country

 I have honestly been trying to get back here to make a post way before now but life kept getting in the way.  Well, that and the posts that I wanted to make were going to require a bit of effort (meaning thought and planning) and I just haven't felt like going to that much trouble.  Ha!  Been having a few headaches this week and the ol' noggin just wasn't much on deep reflection.  Anyway, my Mom has been under the weather for several weeks now also and I went up to spend the day with her this week and then I have been trying to get caught back up on my pottery after being out of clay for so long.  And no, I have not gotten any garden started yet either.
  I did, as you can see, and we had a very nice hike on a beautiful day.

The hiking trail we chose was pretty moderate and easy until right at the end as you start to descend to the falls.  But if you can make it down it was just gorgeous there.  This is Peavine Falls and they are about 30-40 feet maybe.  Not huge but certainly pretty.

This is one view of the trail going down.  Only for the very ambulatory.  I was very glad we had brought walking sticks.  They came in very handy to brace yourself.  The trails are very well marked and maintained though.

Another view of the falls.  I was mesmerized by the clarity of the water.  We rested for a while and had a little snack while we were there.  After a while some other folks came down with one of the guys smelling like he had bathed in cologne so we had to leave before I started throwing up.  (I could smell him before he even crossed the creek) Why do people do that to themselves?  Can they not understand that they stink to high heaven?  It is not attractive in any way.

Oak Mountain is a wonderful park with tons of activities for everyone.  I believe they have over 50 miles of hiking trails in addition to many miles of bike and horseback trails.  Also, a nice 18-hole golf course, several lakes and many camping areas.

For the most part everything was very clean also.  This one tree did catch my eye though.  It had been so repeatedly carved with people's names and initials that the bark had taken on a very abstract quality.  Almost like some ancient hieroglyph pattern.

I think this is red buckeye but I may be very wrong.  It grew here quite prolifically. 

This is the entrance to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center inside the park.  Mainly they rehab birds.  I once brought an injured cormorant here many years ago.  I don't believe I ever told ya'll that story.  I'll have to see if I can find the photos and tell you about it.  Kinda interesting and quirky tale.

They also have this Treetop Nature Trail where you can view some of the permanent residents of the Rehab Center.  Oak Mountain makes every effort to release all it's patients back into the wild but some are just too damaged and would not live without help.  So they live here to educate the public.

 They had owls, hawks and buzzards, although they called them vultures. lol!

This beautiful Red-Tailed Hawk had built herself a fine nest and even stood up to show us her one egg!  Unfortunately, we later found out that her egg is not fertile, so she's gonna be a bit disappointed.

These photos are a bit out of order but I don't feel like moving them.  Blah!

One view on our way to the parking area for our hike.  You are looking back towards Birmingham. 

By a nice turn of luck we also got to meet this little Mississippi kite.  Oak Mountain is his forever home too because some humans messed his hips up.  They tried to raise him from a baby but did not provide a proper roost, so his hips joints did not grow right and he can't feed himself correctly.  Apparently they feed while in flight a lot of times and he can't get his foot up to his mouth.

He was such a sweet little guy though and got several grub treats for letting us take photos of him.

Oak Mountain has tons of water activities with 3 lakes to choose from.  You can rent various types of boats, canoes etc. or just enjoy the water from the beach.

I always laugh when I hear people say there is no money in Alabama.  These houses overlooking the lake were several million $$ easily, and they are not uncommon.  I also laughed when I thought how that the people in the most distant house were probably so mad they could bite nails when these others built that big monstrosity right in front of them!  Ha ha!!  So much for the view!

It had been many years since I had been to Oak Mountain, so we had a great time.  Although, I admit, I'm a bit sore from that climbing hike!  If you've never been here I highly recommend it and if you are ever passing through Alabama it's a great place to stop!

River Low Mountain High

This past week was unseasonably mild with low humidity and since we had been working hard on the garden, art and various things, which I will show ya'll soon, we thought a fun day out was in order.  I was also waiting rather impatiently on the kiln to cool so I could see some new experiments, so a road trip was a good way to keep me from opening the kiln too soon.  We had talked often about going back to Little River Canyon and some of ya'll may remember our trip there a couple of years ago.  That trip was in the winter though and I wanted to experience it in warm weather.
The water levels were down quite a bit but it was still very pretty and actually safer to do a little swimming.
This is the main falls up near the entrance to the park.  Since the weather was SO nice I expected the place to be overran but it wasn't terribly crowded.

I love the rock formations at this place.  I'm not sure what type of rock that is; have to do a little more studying on the subject.  Northern Alabama has a lot of limestone and that may be what it is but I'm not sure.  At the entrance to the park, which is a National Preserve, they have a really nice, large visitor's center, which has also won various awards for it's "green" building components.  You can watch films there about the history of the area etc. and I believe they also hold various conferences and classes there that are somehow affiliated with JSU.

These people were enjoying a not too deep swimming hole set back from the falls a bit.  After we took a few photos here we decided to go all the way to the other end of the park and drive the length of it, back up to this point.

We were about a third of the way up from the "bottom" of the park when we noticed a sign for Orbix hot glass studio.  It said welcome to the public so we decided to go in and see what was going on.  Turns out it was a real high class studio and these fellers really knew their business.  They had an area where you could sit and watch them work but were close enough to talk to them, so we watched them make 2 or 3 of these pitchers.

Excuse the crappy photos.  I'm still learning this camera and some of the settings were not correct.  Anyhoo, this was very interesting and it was amazing to watch them.  They had recently been featured in one of the fancy Birmingham style magazines, so they were working on production in anticipation of orders from the coverage.  I hope they do well.  Of course they had a showroom there so you could buy directly from them also after you watched them at work.  Well, we might could if we win the lottery but somebody could buy the stuff.

It was fun and a nice extra to the trip.

There are various falls throughout Little River with varying degrees of difficulty to get to them.  Some of them are right by the road and some of them require a fairly strenuous hike down to them.  And then a real strenuous hike back up.  Maybe one day.

Little River is the deepest canyon east of the Mississippi and is unique because it flows for most of its length atop Lookout Mountain, which is kinda flat on top.

Over the years I've read or heard people, who had to travel through Alabama to get to the beach or other destinations say, 'well, we drove through as fast as we could to get out of Alabama!'.  Ya, and miss some of the most beautiful sites around and wonderful places to visit.

'Course, if people have that ugly an attitude about us, we don't want them to stop here noways.  Keep our beautiful treasures to ourselves.

As we approached the north end of the park again we stopped off at one of the more popular falls because it wasn't too far a hike down to the water and I was determined to do some swimming.  When the water is higher some of these areas can be quite dangerous but right now the water was wonderful.  Deep, languid pools that were like your own little spa.  Well, you and the little fishies, which were abundant.  The water was wonderfully only slightly cool.  The perfect temperature to me.
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This feller was trying his hand at some fly fishing.  I imagine this area would be great for that.  There are a fair number of camping places available here also, as well as cabins to rent etc.

Just down from where I was swimming in a kinda shallow pool was a much larger, deeper pool that was very popular.  These little redneck kids ain't skeered of no high jumps.  Yes, I know that is horrible grammar etc. in case anybody is thinking of my last post!  It was good to see most of the kids jumping were wearing floaties though.

This is the side opposite from where they were jumping from so high but it had some good launching points too.  When I was a kid, and where, you were high-falutin' if you got to go to a real pool to swim.  The creek and railroad trestle was were I learned to swim and also got over my fear of jumping from high places.  Places like this are the best swimming holes in my opinion.  Beautiful clean water in a wonderful area.  Oh, the park is free also, so it's a great place to come frequently, as I imagine many locals do.  Bring you a picnic lunch down here and spend all day.

On our hike back out I even spotted some native flora I'd never seen before.  I'll have to see if I can find this species in my new Alabama fern book.  I also spied a plant near this that looked very much like a native wild orchid but I could have been mistaken.

So, we had a great day and I was wore out by the time we got home but we really enjoyed it.  If you've never been to Little River Canyon I highly recommend it.

In The Garden

After reading this post you might like to enlarge the photos, by clicking on one, and go through the slideshow.

 While we were on the coast a few weeks ago, we took time to visit Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile.  I can't really remember if I had ever been before but it was very nice and I enjoyed touring the gardens.  They have a pretty wide selection of garden types; sunny meadows, shade, water and Japanese amongst others.

Their rose garden was maybe not quite as nice as Birmingham's but they had some real beauties nonetheless.   I love bi-colored roses like these.  And these were real roses too, not any of that "knock-out" crap that don't even have a fragrance.  In my book, it's not real unless it has that rose smell.  I'm absolutely horrible at actually growing roses but maybe one day I can devote a little more time to my efforts.

They had a very nice arboretum that was crammed with all sorts of cool flowers, trees and shrubs. 

I really loved this area with the pool.  The story of Bellingrath is fairly interesting.  Basically, a very well to do couple, with no children, bought several hundred acres (I think) as a "fish camp" for Mr. Bellingrath to use for relaxation and fun.  Well, Mrs. Bellingrath thought it needed some work, so she hired a famous architect and well, the rest is history.  You know how those architects are....After extensive development they decided they might open their gardens to the public for one day, so in 1934 they placed an ad in the Mobile paper.  Anyone who would like could come out for an afternoon stroll around the gardens, free of charge.  I think something like 4,700 people showed up and they got the idea that maybe they should allow the gardens to be open more often.

Mrs. Bellingrath was the first to pass away and in his devotion and love for her, Mr. Bellingrath established the gardens as a public establishment forever in her memory.

 Visiting places like this always makes me want to go all wild landscaping when I get home.  I, however, have to work with a severe lack of funds.  And landscaping design sense.  Mostly I just move rocks and plants, that are already growing here, around until I find something that works.  I am going to put in some kind of fountain/ water garden behind the house though and it is going to be cool beans.

Of course there was the quintessential Spanish moss hanging from the trees everywhere.  The girls in the big Gone With The Wind dresses only come out on special occasions though.

Since it was originally a fish camp it actually is situated on the shores of a river and several of the trails lead down to the water.

This was a good size estuary sponsored by, get this... Exxon.  I laughed out loud at that one.  What hypocrites.  How 'bout spending some dough up in that Alaskan town you ruined, you bastards.

The ideal time to come here would be when the azaleas are blooming because this place was eat up with them.  I can imagine that when they are blooming it is just a sea of color everywhere.  But, alas, they had all bloomed a few weeks before we were there.

Lots of mossy trees.  We took a break for a really yummy lunch in their cafeteria and I thought everything was very reasonably priced, including admission.

The Japanese gardens was the only part that was a little disappointing.  Birmingham's got them beat by a mile.  However, they did have a few plant/ flower species I had never seen before, like this ginger.  (I think)

There is a home there also that you can tour but we were not interested.  I was kinda surprised to see it was modest compared to today's rich people standards.

 

There wasn't a lot of art but they did have a few bronzes and things.  I want a spouty frog for my garden.

Shores Of White Sand

The blog has been quiet because I slipped off for a short vacation down at the Gulf.  This time it was the Ft. Pickens area of the Gulf Islands National Seashore.  This park was recommended by several friends and was a first for me.  After staying there I would also highly recommend it.  Old Ft. Pickens is way down at the tip of the peninsula, as a lot of forts are, and the photo above was taken there.  The place would be a bird watcher's heaven, in my opinion, as it's just covered up in all kinds of sea birds.

This must also be one of the ospreys' favorite breeding grounds because the trees were full of nests.  My camera was no good for getting up close but as we watched this nest we would occasionally see the little baby pop it's head up for a look around.  lol!
Camping at the beach was on my bucket list, since I've camped just about everywhere else, so that was one other reason we chose this area.  We had a little trouble getting in though, due only to the recent bad weather in the Pensacola area.  This is a barrier island and the elevation is basically sea level.  Flooded roads closed the park twice before we finally got in to stay.  We also were going to stay 3 nights but had to settle for 2 in order to get in before the end of May.  That's okay though.  We still had a very nice time. 

 It was very enjoyable and so relaxing.
For the life of me I will never, ever understand why people want to go to crowded, nasty public beaches when they can drive down the road to this.  Maybe I'm just anti-social.  Haha!
This was also the frugal way to vacation.   I guess the biggest cost was gas to get down there.  But, we saved enough money to indulge our appetite for seafood!  And boy, did I!  Raw oysters, shrimp, clams....mmmm!

This was the nice boardwalk from the camping area over to the beaches.

This is looking back towards the camping area.  You can see a few trees in the distance so yes, our camp site did have some shade.  It was also a full moon while we were down there too and that was nice.

I do have to say though, that only one camping loop was open, due to rain etc., so there was not as many people as there could have been.  However, anyone can come into the park, even if you are not camping.

The first and second days the water was a little cloudy due to the storms but by the third day the water had cleared to a pretty light green.  It was a little chilly for swimming but certainly doable and I swam a fair amount.  As I always say, salt water cures everything, whether it's the sea, sweat or tears.

While walking along the edge I saw 4 large sting rays cruise past, quite close to the shore, and then 2 more a little later.  I decided the water was kinda cold and maybe I had swam enough! lol!