Day 3, Part 2: Monday, August 19th
From the fire tower At the top of Blue Mountain (the mountain), in addition to thousands of dragon flies, is a large, recently renovated fire tower, and, disappointingly, power lines connected to the tower and going down the other side of the mountain. You are allowed to climb the fire tower. Priscilla wouldn't let me climb the power lines. These pictures are from the top of the tower. The shift in color tones is where we finally figured out that the lightbulb icon in the corner of the LCD screen meant that we had it on the "artificial lighting" setting.
I carried the camera, so most of the pictures are of priscilla.
At a point along the trail, there is a clearing. To your left and right, you find that the clearing extends as far as you can see in a straight line in both directions. There is no stream, and nothing man-made like a road or power-lines to explain why it does that. My guess is that at one point a long time ago people cleared off the area to make a dirt road or somesuch, and while the ferns and other smaller foliage have reclaimed the space, no large trees have grown back yet. There did used to be a coal mining industry in this area, but it dried up about a hundred years ago when they ran out of coal.
After the hike up and down Blue Mountain (took about 4.5 hours round trip), we drove a bit to the Buttermilk Falls picnic area for lunch.
It's not exactly Niagara Falls... but it's also not something you'd want to go down in a canoe, and it is on a canoe path. There are trails here so that you can get out before the rapids start and carry your canoe to below the falls. I took that third picture right before i jumped into the rapids and forced priscilla to reveal that she is super-man.
Before the Fall We took a few pictures of the river before it hits the falls. It's very calm right until the rapids start. I'm not sure what that pile of stones was in the third picture. It started to drizzle (you can see drops in the fourth picture), so we went home.
Previous | Next
