Big South Fork, KY

Once again we headed down to Kentucky for the yearly spring river trip. This is the fifth year in a row that I've been down here. It may be time to start checking out some other rivers, but I really love it down here. My buddy and I got into Blue Heron late Thursday night. We slept in Friday morning then woke up and starting drinking beer and smoking weed. We left Blue Heron about 3:30 and were lightly scolded for not checking out by noon and not observing the speed limit. We overpaid for our campsite by $5 in the night deposit and I was under the impression that when you overpay you do as you please, I guess they hadn't heard that one. Anyway we got in the river around 6:00 and were already pretty tooled. My buddy tipped over once and fell in a couple times before we reached camp. I would not recommend the Angel Falls portage while drunk, it sucks! We had camp set up and had just started a nice fire when the rain started. He got in my tent to wait out the storm, which ended up lasting all night.

Unfortuantely we drank about half a fifth of whiskey after making camp the night before (keep in mind we'd already been drinking all day) which didn't make for two eager kayakers Saturday morning. The weather stayed cloudy and dreay most of the day which didn't lighten our spirits. The water was moving a little faster on Saturday. The flow was about 500 cfs (Leatherwood Ford guage) on Friday. Saturday it kicked up to about 800. We got on the water Saturday about 2:00 and paddled about 14 miles. The long open stretch from Angel Falls to Station Camp wore us down a bit, but overall the paddle was nice. Luckily we were about out of whiskey. It stayed dry on at night so we were able to get a nice little fire going. Sunday we got going early (12:00) and the water had come up to about 1800 cfs. The day was nice and sunny and the rapids were great! We did chicken out of Devil's jump. We've done it before when the water was a little lower, but I think we could have easily run it again. However, the fear of injury or boat damage kept us to the portage trail. Maybe next time.

We decided to stay a night after getting off the water this year. It's always a long ride home the last day after paddling and picking up the cars. However, we didn't know that there is absolutely no place to get a beer around her on Sunday. Everyone we asked where we could get a beer said we'd have to drive about an hour. We're used to not being able to buy liquor on Sunday, but to not even be able to order one in a restaurant was a new one on us. The Kentucky side of BSF is a dry county so you can never get booze there. The Tennessee side isn't so bad, except on Sunday apparently. We ate at Pizza Hut and then went north to get out of the dry county and get a couple beers. Once on the road though we decided to head on home.

Morels

Well, it's over. I had hoped for a better harvest this year. I got busier than I would have liked and didn't get out in the woods nearly as much as I had planned. I did find a couple pounds worth, but mostly just two or three at a time. No big patches this year. My best patch from last year didn't produce nearly as many this year. I did find my first blacks this year. However, I didn't get a good sense of their flavor because they had a lot of soil and I couldn't get it all washed off before I cooked them. The result was a pretty gritty meal. This is only my second year finding morels (I spent the first two years looking with no luck), so I guess I can't really complain - at least I'm finding them now. I read Morels by Michael Kuo before the season and found it to be a very informative book. I may try my hand at chanterelles and some of the other edibles this summer and fall.

Charles C Deam Wilderness

Well, back at Deam again this weekend. This trip was with my girlfriend. We started out at the Blackwell Horsecamp and went along the Cope Hollow Trail for a while. We trailblazed up Cope Hollow, looking for mushrooms along the way. Didn't find any morels, but it may be a bit early. We saw plenty of what we though were devils urns though. We found a nice spot along the a creek to set up camp. There's been plenty of rain, so the creek was flowing well. We smoked too much hiking and by the time we made camp were sorta out of it. We ended up crashing out at about 8:30 and sleeping until 9:00 the next day. We packed up before the rain started, but it didn't last very long. We hiked the last couple miles to the Horsecamp for a total of about 9.5 miles between the two days.

Charles C Deam Wilderness

There were going to be four of us, but as usual we had a couple back out at the last minute. John and I met at the Blackwell Horse Camp at about 1:30. It probably worked out better without the other two. One didn't sound like he had any gear so I would have probably ended up having to help him pack up his stuff after lending him some of my extra gear. This would have required me packing/unpacking extra gear as well as cleaning it all off afterwards. We had some weed and whiskey for the hike. We took Cope Hollow trail and went about 4.5 miles before setting up camp. We got a little off the trail, but found a nice stand of pines to camp in. This loop, which is about 10 miles total, has a wealth of pines. There are also a couple nice hollows (Cope hollow is one) the trail crosses. We finished the whiskey around a roaring campfire and crashed sometime around 10:00 or 11:00, which is pretty early for us. We got up and hiked the rest of the trail the next day. Both days were nice hiking weather. Temperature was around 45 degrees and sunny. Just a tad chilly when standing around, but once we were moving it was perfect. A great trip for the hikers who did not fall victim to St. Patrick's Day.

Nebo Ridge Trail

Well, I finally got a mountain bike a couple months ago. I've been wanting to get one for years now, but never seemed to have the cash. I've had it out on the Town Run Trail Park in Indianapolis a couple times, but this was my first HNF trail. The weather wasn't the best. It wasn't too cold, but wet and and little sleet coming down. My buddy and I make the mistake of getting baked before the ride. We left from the north trailhead and the first 3 miles or so is a pretty steady uphill climb. The muddy conditions didn't make the hills any easier either. It was some leg-burning shit, but felt good. The ride back down was much better. The trail's 8.9 miles, but we only made it about 3.5 before time constraints dictated that we head back. I think that was about all I needed for today anyway. We stopped by the quaint Story Inn for some beers and a burger afterwards.

Charles C Deam Wilderness

Went out to Deam for a little winter camping. We hiked back a couple miles from the fire tower to a nice little pond surrounded by pines. There was some snow on the ground, but it wasn't too cold. One my buddies that came just hiked in with us to hang out for a while. He left about dusk to hike back to the car and head home. We got a huge fire going that night. My girlfriend felt the need to stand on the log over the fire most of the night, which was making me a little nervous. We were all a little drunk though, so I'm sure I was doing some stupid things too.

Sugar Creek

My girlfriend, a friend, and I went paddling on Sugar Creek today. We did our regular trip from Deer Mill to Cox Ford. I think the water flow was about 200 cfs at Crawfordsville. It was a chilly day, but we stayed pretty warm until it got dark. We didn't get on the water as early as we had hoped, so we had to paddle the last 3 miles or so in the dark. We saw plenty of bald eagles and hawks today. At one point there were about 7 eagles circling around overhead. We camped at Shades State Park that night. Some kids decided to start chopping wood about 8:00 AM, I only hope we kept them up last night when we stayed up drinking beers. We went for a short day hike at Pine Hills Nature Preserve. There's some nice geological features here, the best of which is Devil's Backbone (see picture). I'm also including the Shades Park "Official" Scat Rap:

Starts with an "S", ends with a "T",
It comes out of you, it comes out of me,
I know what you're thinking, it could be called that,
But let's be scientific, and call it "scat".

If you wanna find out what animals eat,
Take a good look at what they excrete,
Stuck in the scat are all kinds of clues,
Parts of the food that their bodies can't use.

Down by the creek on a hollow log,
Scat full of berries and bones of frogs,
Fresh last night he was out with the moon,
Hunting crawdads, it was Mr. Racoon.

You park your car by a wood or a field,
Gonna find scat on your windshield,
Full of seeds, purple and white,
You just got bombed by a bird in flight.

If you wanna know what's in the woods or around,
Take a good look at the scat on the ground,
It tells us what they eat and tells us who they are,
And that's what we know about scat so far.