Buffalo River, Rush to White River- May '09
I met up with Mom, Dad, and Aaron at the Rush landing on May 11 for our annual buffalo river float. Since they had a long way to drive I beat them to the landing by about half a day, so I hiked the trail system at Rush. The trails circle all over Rush Mountain and past a bunch of old mine entrances. The openings are all blocked off because endangered Indiana bats nest in the mine shafts. These aren't in any particular order... the mine shafts are all over the trails and I don't remember which one was where.
This is one of the old mine cars they used to cart the ore back into Rush for processing.
There's still an old smelter that was built when the miners thought they had found silver (it was really zinc), and the blacksmith shop is still standing.
I took some pictures of the trail and the mine tailings.
I think these are painted ladies, but I'm not sure. Whatever they are, they must have just hatched because they were everywhere.
When I was done hiking I drove over to the Rush campsites to wait for the family. When I first pulled up, this guy was sitting in the parking lot. He kept squealing and acting like he was going to charge me.
This was the first trip I've tried camping in a hammock. It was a lot more comfortable than sleeping on the ground... I didn't wake up with a sore back and sore shoulders like normal.
The first night, we were sitting around after dark and heard a really loud crashing just into the treeline from where our camp was. We were SURE it was a bear because of how loud it was. Dad and I searched the treeline with flashlights for a few tense minutes and came up with a fat armadillo. Those guys are noisy! That night, there were three raccoons who would NOT stay away from the camp. They weren't afraid of us at all. About halfway through the night they managed to figure out the lock on the cooler and make off with a pack of hot dogs. We hadn't worried about it too much, because we didn't think there was any way they could get that cooler open.
Once we got on the river I didn't take many pictures because the water was REALLY high and I didn't like to have the camera out of the dry bag for very long. I got a couple shots of the family on the second day.
I caught a couple of nice bass the first couple of days, but most of them got cleaned before the camera made it out of the bag.
I set up my hammock on a hillside the second night. Mom and Dad had their tent blow down on them a few times... the wind was really gusting! You can see in the picture that there was a game trail behind where my hammock was set up, but I didn't have any animal encounters that night.
The third night a huge storm blew in. The wind was gusting at 60mph and ripped the fly off mom and dad's tent. All three of them got soaked and so did all their gear. Luckily, the hammock stayed dry and my tarp stayed put. One corner did pull loose during one of the gusts, but I was able to hold it down until I found my stake. It hailed quarter sized hail for a few minutes, and I was afraid it would rip my tarp, but all my gear pulled through ok.
I did have a deer trip over one of my tarp tie-outs after the rain storm. He grunted at me and clopped down to the river. More raccoons got into the boat and drug stuff around during the night, but the cooler was better secured this time, so they didn't make off with anything.
Everyone but me was pretty much ready to get off the river after being cold and wet all night, so I didn't stop to take many pictures on the last day. I did catch some nice goggle-eye on the way out though!
