Last week, Sarah and I decided to hike the North Tower Loop, one of the mountain bike trails I ride regularly at Brown County State Park. I had never hiked it before, and she had never seen it at all.

It was a bit odd hiking a trail with which I’m quite familiar from bike rides. It was a completely different perspective, and most of the parts that are tricky on a bike are quite easy on foot. The slower pace allowed me to enjoy the scenery more and take some photos with my good camera, which I never take on bike rides.

We ran into my mountain biking buddy Dave, who was out riding. We talked for a few minutes before he took off. He was riding the trail in both directions, so we expected to see him again.

We saw Dave sooner than we expected. It turns out that the trail meanders so much that there’s a spot where two disparate parts of the trail come within about 30 feet of each other — we just never noticed before because unless someone’s riding on the other part at the same time, you can’t see the trail through the brush. You learn something new every day!

It was a really fun hike. I’ve seen this trail in all seasons and conditions, but always from my bike. It was cool to get a different perspective; we’ll have to go back and hike some of the other mountain bike trails sometime.

I figure it’s time to post some good things about our trip to the mountains — and while we had very little opportunity for recreation and my enjoyment of it was tempered by my injuries, we still took in some incredible scenery. First up is Jump Off Rock, in Laurel Park (near Hendersonville), North Carolina. It was a slow, steep, twisty drive to the top of the mountain.

View from Jump Off Rock

Sarah at Jump Off Rock

Mountain layers

Neighboring mountain

There were a couple of hiking trails, but I was in too much pain to hike. As you can see, though, there were some truly incredible views. Later that night we saw some other mountains on the other side of town.

House in the mountains

Sunset

On our way to Roanoke, VA from Hendersonville, we got caught in a couple of intense storms. We stopped at an overlook alongside the incredibly scenic Interstate 81. It was still raining and there was thick fog nestled in the mountains. My photos don’t do justice to the sheer size of some of these mountains or the atmospheric beauty we witnessed.

Fog rises from the mountains during a thunderstorm

One of many climbs on the interstate

Panoramic shot of the mountains and the interstate

In Roanoke, we made a trip up to the top of Mill Mountain, where the Roanoke Star sits. It’s a 100-foot lighted star on the mountain overlooking the city. This spot also offers panoramic views of the Roanoke Valley. Once again there had been strong storms and the whole region was enveloped in a thick fog.

Roanoke Valley

Roanoke Star

Roanoke Valley panorama

I also took a few infrared shots. It’s interesting how well the IR shots cut through the haze

Part of Roanoke Valley, in infrared

Infrared mountains

Steps on the short hiking trail

Trail leading back to the parking lot

We also took in part of the Blue Ridge Parkway near Roanoke. It was absolutely stunning.

Houses and power lines

Hazy mountains as darkness falls

Blue ridge panorama 1

Sky

The Blue Ridge Parkway — maybe someday I’ll get to ride part of this

Mountains

Blue Ridge Panorama 2

Sun setting over the mountains

As you can see, our trip was not exactly a bust in terms of scenery. And while we experienced the mountains from a more passive perspective than I prefer (driving, rather than hiking or biking), I feel lucky we got to go at all.

It’s true what they say. Virginia is for lovers. I sure was glad to be there with mine.

A few weeks ago, Sarah was gone most of the weekend, so Monday I took a day off at the last minute and Sarah and I spent the day together, driving around southern Indiana, taking photos and exploring/hiking. I fell behind in my blogging, so I’m just now writing about it.

The great thing about taking a day off at the last minute is that it feels like playing hooky, without any guilt (well, maybe a little guilt for not giving my boss more notice, but hey, it wasn’t a problem). We started our day off by going to our favorite breakfast establishment, Wee Willie’s (we like the Ellettsville location). Anyway, after that we started heading south with no real destination in mind. Unfortunately I left my Indiana Atlas and Gazetteer at home, so we had to make do with the road atlas. We ultimately decided to drive down to Paoli, a town I had driven through but Sarah had never seen. We stopped in downtown Paoli to take a few photos. There is a pretty quaint square with some big hills in the background.

Courthouse, downtown Paoli, IN

Some shops

I did a couple of infrared shots, but quickly decided I didn’t want to haul the tripod around or deal with the cumbersome nature of IR photography.

Courthouse in infrared

Infrared shops and hills

So, I put the tripod away and broke out my kit lens, and threw a circular polarizer filter on it. We had fun just walking around the square, seeing what shops were there (actually surprisingly few of interest), and just being together. I was fascinated by many of the buildings’ textures, and several very interesting windows. Many buildings were vacant or businesses closed. A couple of businesses had moved across the square to different stores.

Siding

Sherrod (not sure what that was …)

Windows

The Music Store

Railing

Walters Ye Olde Barber Shoppe

Peeling paint

Stairs

Public Library

Hills

After going around the square and taking some photos, we went into a “pub” that based on the outside looked like it was going to be pretty nice. It wasn’t dirty or anything, but it wasn’t what we expected. When I asked what they had on tap I got a funny look. Nothing on tap, just bottles. OK! One guy drank Stoli drinks out of a paper cup and a number of people gathered at the bar to watch Maury Povich. We each had a Rolling Rock and left.

Bar

After our … uh … “urban” expedition, we decided we should do something outdoors and found we weren’t far from Patoka Lake. We drove there and got a map at the front gate, but didn’t realize until it was too late that it didn’t include a map of the hiking trails. Oh well, we figured, we read that one trail was short and decided to give it a shot, even though we were not wearing proper shoes and didn’t have a map. As we prepared to go hiking, we saw an animal from a distance that we think was a fox. Then as we walked along, we saw a couple of lizards sunning themselves. They stuck around long enough for me to put the long lens on my camera.

Lizard

We took photos of the lizards and some nearby plants before heading down the trail

Ferns — nice and fractally (yes, I’m sure that is a word)

Flower

I’m not sure what this is, but it’s really cool-looking and fuzzy

We debated which way to go once we reached the trail. It was a loop, so we figured we should be able to go either way.

Sarah hiking

Hiking

To make a long story short, we must’ve gone the wrong way, I believe at the very beginning, because this trail was not short, and we ended up going “backwards” based on the signs. We hiked for a good hour or an hour and a half in sandals/poor shoes and really got pretty tired. Eventually we found a “short cut” back but it was probably another two miles from there. Sometimes being spontaneous has a price, but it was well worth it even though it was a bit frustrating, and we were not well-prepared this time around.

Trail

Light

Pines

Eventually we got back to the car. It took what seemed like forever to get back. We enjoyed our hike immensely, though, and we’d like to go back again and do more hiking at Patoka Lake. There are also some bike paths there that looked like a lot of fun, a couple of campgrounds, and I am sure some boat rental. It looks like it’d be a fun place to spend a weekend.

We drove back to Bloomington tired, but happy, and glad we were able to spend this time together. I can’t think of a better way to spend a day than wandering through the countryside with my soon-to-be wife.

We had a very full weekend. Sarah got her driver’s license on Saturday. She was nervous about her driving test, but she got a perfect score. I’m very proud of her, but not at all surprised she aced the test. We’ve practiced driving a lot lately, she’s very good at it, and she was prepared for the test. After that, we went and visited with my family for a while. My mom had pulled out some boxes of stuff I left at her house, and we looked through the contents, which brought back a lot of memories. Among other things were some photos of me from my track racing days back in elementary school, and other bike-related shots. Hopefully I can scan and post some of them soon.

We also finally got Sarah a DSLR camera, a Nikon D40. We had been saving for a while, and it was time. So far, it looks to be a great camera.

In celebration of Sarah’s status as a new driver, we went for an outing on our bikes. It sounds backwards, but it was a great way to celebrate, and I had made her promise we’d go for a ride once she got her license. We spent a lot of time practicing driving and hadn’t ridden together all year. So, we headed out to drop off some books she wanted to donate at the library, and then went to dinner.

Sarah on the bike path

Downtown

We decided to go to Crazy Horse for dinner, a pub with good food and beer selections.

Our bikes

They had Dogfish Head 60-minute IPA, one of our favorite IPAs, so we ordered a pitcher.

Dogfish Head

 
Crazy Horse

Sarah’s pasta dish and my buffalo chicken sandwich

After dinner, we saw a few more bikes outside, a touring bike and another bike with a child seat extension thing on the back, and one or two others. They were pretty well loaded, might have been on tour or something like that. We headed home. It was rather hot outside, but Sarah was a good sport about it.

Sarah

Fountain

Handlebars

There was quite a bit of debris on the bike path and in some parts of the road from all the crazy rain and flooding we’ve had. We got around 8″ of rain in a 24-hour period. The manhole cover was ajar. We fixed it.

 
Fixing the manhole cover

We had a great time. Hopefully we can have more dates by bicycle. Sarah rode better than the last time we went out on our bikes, even though it’s been so long since she rode. We had a great time together, and went out again later so she could test her new camera. I took some shots too … more on that later.

On Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, we went camping at Jackson-Washington State Forest. We’ve been camping there before and in fact, is where we got engaged.

After we arrived, we set up camp. It was late afternoon, and this place was a lot busier than we had ever seen it. Not surprising, since it was a holiday weekend, but there were tons of campers (unusual) and a lot of loud dogs and kids. A lot of the kids were riding bikes around the parking lot, which was good to see, but they weren’t being very safe about it.

Our tent (the camper is our neighbors)

My hiking boots (photo inspired in part by Mr Macrum’s “Leather Friends” post)

After we pitched the tent, we decided to go for a hike on one of the shorter/easier trails. I think the trail we did was trail 6, about two miles long. We walked to the trailhead.

 
They drained the lake for … well, some reason

Bridge

There was something in the air, a mystical atmosphere from being back in the lush forest with the sun low in the sky, light filtering through the trees.

Glowing leaves

The fog is really lens flare from a cheap filter, but it turned out to be a nice atmospheric shot

Me

The trail was fairly flat and wound through the woods gently. It wasn’t a difficult hike, but it was great to be outdoors together and enjoying the scenery.

Ferns

Soon, we came to a clearing. This was an interpretive trail and we had a pamphlet describing some of the features, but after reading a couple of things we simply ignored it. Most of what we read wasn’t too interesting. We did look up the explanation of the clearing, and apparently they do some testing with cross-pollinating various species of certain trees here.


Clearing

Rays of light

Rob, looking very dramatic

Tree, moss, groundcover

After a while, we came to a lake, the name of which I can’t remember. The sun was reflecting off the water, at times it was a bit blinding but overall we had a stunning view of the lake. As soon as Rob saw the lake, he ran down the steep hill and jumped in the water. He ran back up immediately, and of course got us wet.

Lake

I spent more time looking at Sarah though … she was flattering the light.


Sarah

Us … the focus isn’t how I intended but it ended up being an interesting shot.

The trail took us across a boardwalk for a while, which I tend to have mixed feelings about. I prefer more natural trails, but on the other hand the boardwalk lets you walk across a wetland. In this case, it was very cool.

Boardwalk

Hills, lake, marsh

Rob and me

Before long, we came across the remains of a house or some other building. The trail went right through it. The walls had partially crumbled, and parts of what remained were covered in thick moss and vines. This added to the mystical atmosphere that the whole hike had, and we spent a few minutes here taking photographs. None of them really seem to do it justice.

Mossy wall

Sarah

There was a staircase leading us out through the other side of the house.

Stairs

As we continued hiking, we saw remains of other houses, none as cool as what we had just seen, but interesting nonetheless. An entire chimney still stands where the rest of one house is mostly gone.
 

Chimney

The trail ended shortly after this, and it was getting fairly dark. We should really do more hikes late in the day like this one, it was truly fantastic. We really enjoyed this trail, as it had a variety of scenery, especially for such a short trail.

Returning to the campground

We got back to the campground and found it was still pretty noisy, maybe moreso. The campground at Jackson-Washington State Forest has “primitive” campsites (no electricity). Normally, this keeps things quiet, but in this case a number of people had turned on generators attached to their campers! I was pretty stunned at this, and it was pretty annoying to have what is normally such a quiet, peaceful event punctuated by generators, but we were able to tune them out pretty well after a while.

I built a fire, which always seems to take longer than I think it’s going to take, and we cooked burgers over the fire. They turned out pretty well, and we had a great evening being together, eating burgers and s’mores, and generally goofing around.

Some goodies

Cooking burgers

Sarah

Tending the fire
 
The next morning, I went for a bicycle ride, which I’ve already written about here. After that, we went canoing at Starve Hollow Lake. We took Rob, as we’ve done in the past, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Rob kept shifting his weight, making it difficult for us to keep the boat steady. Eventually he laid down. He is so lazy! We got a good, close look at a Great Blue Heron and saw some other wildlife as well. A great end to a wonderful trip. Here are a few photos from our canoing outing.

Hills

Great Blue Heron

Lilly pads

Me

Rob, lounging