Pearson Falls
From the Pearson Falls History page:
A military man, farmer, and an engineer, Captain Pearson bought the Glen as part of a large tract of land that he wanted for his family. For years he and his heirs allowed generations of young people to picnic on the great stone table-rock that you will see at the foot of the Falls. Botanists and bird-fanciers from all over the country have come to discover and catalogue the wonders of this Glen area.
In 1931, the Tryon Garden Club bought the property in order to preserve this unique mountain Glen. Through the generosity of an honorary member and careful planning, the club members purchased the several hundred acres of this wildlife preserve. Although open to the public, the property remains under the ownership and protection of the Tryon Garden Club.
Over 17,000 people visit Pearson’s Falls each year. It is also a wildlife preserve, and outdoor laboratory for the botany departments of the surrounding colleges and universities, and the site of frequent field trips for local science classes. Pearson’s Falls is designated as a North Carolina National Heritage Site of the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, a North Carolina Birding Trail Site, and is placed in the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Gardens.
Big Black Worm
An excerpt from the page of one of the caches we hunted for:
All five of the caches are placed on two Duke Power service roads. Private vehicles other than employees and company suppliers are not allowed behind the yellow gate even though it will be open on week days. Do NOT climb on top of Carl?s Worm (large black water flume). At no time do you have to leave the service roads more than eight to ten feet to locate the caches.
Carl has been the keeper of the worm for the last 30 years. We met Carl on the road and he was gracious enough to answer many questions that we had about the big black water flume. Carl has maintained the new worm since it went in service in 1990 and previously maintained the old worm starting in 1974.
Water flume history as we remember it: The original water flume went in operation carrying water from Lake Summit to the Pot Shoals power plant in 1919 the same year that High Bridge was started. The original flume was made with Cyprus and the inside diameter is 7 feet and varies with expansion and contraction. The flume starts at the Lake Summit Dam in Tuxedo and is one mile long ending in a large water tank. The flume itself is always full of water.
The new Flume which went in operation in 1990 is made from Canadian Hemlock and has an expectancy of ten more years of service. The reason for the change from Cyprus to hemlock was cost. The Canadian Hemlock costs about 1/3 as much as the Cyprus.
The water in the tank is controlled by the hydro plant operators and is cut off when Lake Summit reaches a certain level. When the water leaves the tank it splits into two 5 inch lines and drops vertically for .25 miles to the Pot Shoals Electrical Plant. Each of the 5 inch flumes turn a turbine and can be shut off independently relative to the need for power or the level of lake Summit.
Danger Overhead
The weather has been warmer than average around here this week, so much so that we drove the Miata to work and had the top down both to and from. Today was on the windy side and this morning as we were driving down our street we got dripped on from the trees a couple of times with left over rain drops from last night. As we approached the first stop sign an acorn hit the road in front of us and promptly bounced off the windshield with a pop.
As we left ASCO’s parking lot to come home tonight a piece of pine straw zipped by Donna’s head before bouncing off the console. The rest of the way home we put the windows up to keep the blowing dead leaves from smacking us from the sides. And the Coup de Grâce was on our street again, where another acorn barely missed our heads and landed somewhere in the cockpit between us.
This prompted Donna to say, “We should have ridden our bicycles (we had contemplated this seeing as it is sort of Friday), we’d have been safer because we would have been wearing helmets.”
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1094
I Should Be Blogging Here
But instead I’m avoiding it. I also should be filling in the survey from Hyundai about our recent Purple Whale service, but I’m avoiding that too. Instead I’m procrastinating.
Oh, and, happy birthday Jennifer Morrison. No, not the one that is on the show Once Upon A Time, but the daughter of Donna’s older brother. Coincidentally, she is an actress too, she just isn’t starring in her own TV show. Yet.
Risk
We set out this morning to complete the last five of that pesky Risk series of geocaches. We found 2 of the three that we DNF’d last weekend and fortunately the information we needed to find the two final caches was not in the one we couldn’t find. To find these four caches we were gone from 8 AM until 3 PM and traveled 190 miles by car and 3-1/2 by foot. I’d really like to find that last one to say we got all 47, but I’m not so sure that it bothers me enough to go back and try again.
One of the ones we did find was near the August Canal head gates and that is where the photo above was taken.
Swing Bridge
Started the morning with a trip to Wrens, GA with the MMC for breakfast at Peggy’s. We had two different women help serve us our food, I don’t know if either was the restaurant’s namesake, but neither looked anything like Capital One’s customer service rep. After eats everyone went home.
We just took the loooooong way, 286 miles. First, we continued south on US 1 all the way to Santa Claus, GA to check on our cache (it was fine.) Then we worked our way back northeast on rural back roads carefully avoiding Statesboro (Alabama was playing Georgia Southern.) We crossed back into SC on US 301 and stopped at a new green way trail that was created out of old 301. There were six caches along the one mile “road” (we could only find 4 of them.) The trail ends partway across the Savannah River where the retired swing bridge used to meet the road.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1094