MUSHY'S MOOCHINGS: BACK ON THE CUMBERLAND TRAIL

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

BACK ON THE CUMBERLAND TRAIL

Steve and Terri had not been to see the big rocks up on Black Mountain, along the Justin P. Wilson Segment of the Cumberland Trail, so we took them Sunday. Steve, particularly, seemed to have a ball and even had me climbing to greater heights than I dared before. You can see us displaying our manly strength from high atop one of the lone boulders! I even surprised myself and wasn’t even sore on Monday.

We discovered several more unusual wildflowers like this Pink Lady’s-slipper! I was so afraid I would mess up the shot, so I took several. My camera is set to auto-focus and sometimes it focuses on the ground behind a flower instead of dead on the bloom. However, this one came out great in all shots!

I picked up two chiggers and a tick, which makes three ticks this season between Judy and me! I know, but it’s been worth it!

This placing, looking out over Grassy Cove, is one of the most beautiful places in East Tennessee and I’m so sorry that we didn’t discover it until this year. We could have had so much fun as younger folks there…that is if we survived a fall from climbing up all the hand hold cracks!

We were off again Monday, so more on that next post!

12 comments:

Sarge Charlie said...

this is very nice, it reminds me of my time on the Appalachian Trail. The mountains are so beautiful.

PRH said...

As usual great photos Mushy....and of course a fine story as well!

Loki said...

Some great shots Mushy. The rocks remind me of White Rocks on Cumberland Mountain.
That's a good close-up of the Lady's-slipper. The focusing issue used to drive me bonkers with my old camera. If your camera has the option, changing the auto focus to spot focus might help.

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

Thanks for the tip Luke...I'll try manual focus.

Lin said...

GORGEOUS lady-slipper! Did you find any Jack-in-the-pulpits? I sure miss those, too.

I LOVE the blue, blue water trapped in the rock impressions! I'm glad to see you practicing some rock climbing now because we're gonna run your butt off out here.

Scott from Oregon said...

Must feel good to get that beer sloshing around on them hills....

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

Lin - No Jacks this trip, but on the last two I did...they were either posted or are on Flickr. I missed one Jack due to the focusing issue Luke and I discussed.

Scott - I run on empty but I know what waits at the end of the trail! A great motivator!

Buck said...

Cool pix! Wait... you can only take those with a Nikon, right? So let's change that to "Great pics!" ;-)

Buck said...

Forgot to mention... use your camera's "macro" setting (if it has one... on Canons so equipped it's a little flower icon... appropriate, eh?) and you'll get perfect close-ups each and every time.

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

I use macro Buck, but the auto-focus seems to be too sensitive at times. I'll try what Luke suggested on the macro setting and see what happens.

FHB said...

Beautiful shots man. Always fun to see what you guys are up to.

BRUNO said...

You get to count the TWO chiggers as ONE FULL SCALE tick! Call it the "itch-factor", if you will....!