Hiking

Off The Hook

While sitting on the couch last night using the laptop to plan today’s geocaching adventure to Columbia, Donna was watching Diners, Drive-In and Dives. We were thinking of eating lunch at California Dreaming, but our plans were changed by the 10:30 episode of Triple D, which featured a place called Pawley’s Front Porch.

First stop though was Sesqui-Centennial State Park in northeast Columbia that has 10 geocaches. Looking at the map at home it seemed like most of them were on the shorter loop that closely circles the lake. Turns out I was wrong, they were scattered all over the place, on and off, some of the dozen or so miles of trails. We ended up spending 3 hours and walking 6.4 miles finding 8 of 8 of the caches attempted.

After driving to 5 Points in downtown Columbia, we circled the block, asked directions and still got turned around. We ended up walking the last block before finding the restaurant around 1:30. After a 30 minute wait we were seated and ordered our burgers. I had the Wadmalaw (chipotle BBQ sauce, fried pickle chips, applewood smoked bacon and cheddar cheese), Donna had a Rockville (sauteed Vidalia onions, wild mushrooms and gruyere cheese) and Joan opted for the Front Porch (cheddar cheese.) The fries and onion ring sides were alright, but the burgers were awesome and worth the wait. Three hours later I was still full.

Pearson Falls

N 35? 13.149, W 082? 19.929

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.

The Trail With No Name

The trail this photo was taken on goes from the Mange to Rabbit Valley crossing several major thoroughfares in the woods, including Pioneer Trail, yet it has no designation of its own. I like to call it the Clint Eastwood Trail.

We did in fact go find the new cache in Hitchcock Woods this morning, but we didn’t just park, walk to, find and leave of course, we took the long way. The temperature was in the middle 70s, but the humidity felt higher and by the time we were done with our 3-3/4 mile walk my T-shirt looked like I had been running from the “Others” along with Jack, Kate and Hurley. It was a very nice walk and I think we saw or heard more woodpeckers eating breakfast than we saw humans.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1056

Brief Glimpse

As noted yesterday, FOX did show the Phillies – Giants game here locally. I can understand it though, as the “local” MLB team of interest is the Atlanta Braves and they are in the same division as the Phillies, so the Braves fans could watch and root against them (they better root hard as the Braves trail the Phils by 9 games in the standings.)

So I listened to the game on the radio, all except for an inning of the Sox – Yankees game that FOX broadcast as bonus coverage. That bonus coverage was due to the difference in the style of play in the two different leagues, the National League tangos and the American League waltzes. The Phillies and Giants are in the NL and those guys play like they have someplace that they want to go to after the game. Their game was finished in 2 hours and 14 minutes. The Yankees & Red Sox play are in the AL where it seems like they have no place they would rather be than on the baseball diamond, so it took them 3 hours and 25 minutes to play those same nine innings.

The FRS scored first, 2 runs in the bottom of the third inning. The MFY came right back and scored 2 in the top of the fourth to tie the game. I almost turned off the broadcast because because I had a feeling that the Red Sox were going to lose this game too. Lucky for me their attitude was better than mine as the Sox then answered back in the bottom of the 4th with 5 runs. The Yankees never got close again and lost 10-4.

Donna and I along with friend Joan went for a 4-1/2 mile walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning. We were in the Woods for a little over two hours and saw 2 different people walking 2 dogs each, three high school cross country runners and three folks on horseback. Busy day.

Pigeon Trap Loop

For the first time in quite a while we took a walk in the woods and were not looking for an ammo can or 35mm film canister well integrated into the environment, we were just going for a walk. To beat the heat we stayed close to home and enjoyed Hitchcock Woods virtually to ourselves early this morning. I am not a botanist and I’ve never played one on TV (nor have I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express lately), so I have no idea what those two different yellow flowers are, but patches of them were blooming within feet of each other along the west side of the Ridge Mile Track.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1033

Aiken Horse Show

The above is not a photo run through some sort of plug in filter to make it look “artistic”, but an actual image captured by my digital camera (click on the image to see what it should look like.) It started today while we were at the 2011 Aiken Horse Show in Hitchcock Woods. All of a sudden the LCD on the back of the camera looked all purple and scrambly. I spun the mode dial and it cleared up. It happened again and I cleared the same way. It would crap out randomly, sometimes I’d get 10 pictures and others only a couple. After awhile nothing would get it out of “Purple Expressionist” mode, even resetting the camera to its default state. Do you think I need a new camera? I do.

So I did some shopping this evening and ended up buying another Panasonic. The recently deceased TZ3 was purchased in August of 2007 and if I can interpret the file numbering system it took 5,946 images. The new camera is a model ZS5 that is 12 megapixels instead of 7 and has a 12x zoom instead of 10 with a slightly wider angle setting of 25mm instead of 28. It has a panorama assist mode and those manual exposure controls I wanted back in 2007, but didn’t get. At 7.3oz it is 2oz. lighter and is almost exactly the same overall size. The LCD viewfinder is a bit smaller at 2.7 inches instead of 3, but that should help increase battery life. (I wonder if they use the same one?) It is black in color instead of blue, $100 cheaper and should be here Wednesday.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 984

A Bridge In The Woods

Just on the other side of this bridge is a new cache on a trail in McCormick County. We were the second folks to visit it in the 3 weeks that it has been active. The only thing is, that bridge is a little over 4 miles along the trail from the parking area. We are not totally insane, we didn’t walk all the way out here just for this one cache. There were 5 others along this trail and we found four of them (5 of 6 total for the day.)

We used to mountain bike on this trail way back in the early 90s and there were lots of places that were familiar. We didn’t ride this trail as much as the others in the area because it was a lot more technical, but there are lots of nice scenic riding in between the several rocky creek crossings we remember having to get off the bike and walk.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 948