Sherando Lake Recreation Area, Virginia

In September and October 2005 we volunteered at Sherando Lake Recreation Area which is in the George Washington & Jefferson National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The Blue Ridge Mountains are breathtaking, but Sherando Lake has to be the jewel of the national forest. Its beauty is incomparable, which is why you really need to look at EB's pictures!

We thoroughly enjoyed our work-camping experience there. We worked the gatehouse on the weekends. During the week we registered campers. It was fun meeting so many different people and hearing their camping stories. We made good friends with the other work campers, especially Ron and Barb and Terry and Cyndi. Terri and Cyndi, married probably as long as us (that's a really, really long time!), met at Sherando Lake when she camped with her family and he was working there as a teenager.

Sherando Lake, a 25-acre spring-fed lake, is the center of the park which was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930's. The buildings are constructed of stone and timber and blend into the rugged natural surroundings. There are lots of hiking trails in and around the park, and the lakes are popular fishing spots. The campground is beautiful, but it is first-come (no reservations) and usually fills up early on Fridays. The hardest part of our duties was turning people away once the campground was full.

We took a day trip to Crabtree Falls, which are huge, wild and wonderful waterfalls. If you have the stamina, you can hike from the bottom to the top of the falls and stand on a footbridge that crosses over the top of the falls. We hiked about half way up before we had to turn back to be in time for work at Sherando Lake, but EB decided that the BEST pictures were from down below anyway. Be sure and take a look.

Geocaching

What is geocaching and why do we like it?

Well, it's sort of a combination of scavenger hunting and orienteering, using GPS technology to locate a "cache" of pretty-much worthless trinkets usually waaaay out in the woods somewhere. It is the thrill of the hunt that keeps us, and thousands of others, searching.

Information about caches can be found at www.geocaching.com where you can search for caches by zip code, latitude and longitude coordinates, or by city. Download the coordinates into your hand held GPS and off you go. But don't be fooled! The GPS will show you how to get there in a straight line, but that is NEVER EVER the way you get there. Things like lakes, rivers, heavy woods, no roads, mountains, etc. stand in your way and you have to find your way around or through these obstacles.

Once in the general vicinity of the cache, you head off on foot watching the GPS and hoping like heck there's a trail. Often you'll start on a trail, but end up in a thicket . . . or a cornfield . . . or a cemetery (especially popular in Indiana) . . . or down a very steep embankment . . . or a swamp.

The cache is usually pretty well hidden, often in or under a tree, and can be a small plastic container, an ammo box, a plastic photo film cannister, or even smaller! We once found one on the end of a pully way up in a tree. The container was smaller than an inkpen and the pully was nearly invisible fishing line. Inside you will generally find several trinkets and sometimes a "Travel Bug" which you can take to leave at another cache destination. You can even add something of your own, if you want. We've moved Travel Bugs and other trinkets from one state to the next, left small pebbles we found on the shores of Lake Huron and little seashells from the coast of Maine.


Besides your hand held GPS, you'll need a few other supplies for geocaching: a hiking stick is good for poking around to make sure there are no critters around the cache. I like garden gloves for sticking your hands into those places where the critters might be. And anytime you are geocaching with EB, water and a snack will sustain you through those long hours of stumbling around the woods!

You can learn more about geocaching at www.geocaching.com. It's fun, challenging, adventurous and sometimes tests the strength of your relationship! No, really . . . . it is lots of fun!

Turkey Run State Park, Indiana

This is one of the ten heavily wooded trails at Turkey Run State Park in Park County, Indiana, near the Illinois state line. We were here last year and the trails are so awesome that we didn't hesitate to come back again this year.

The trails are rated from easy to strenuous, so -- of course -- we decided to take the most strenuous one this time. You'll definitely need your hiking sticks, waterproof hiking boots, and leave your fear of heights at home! (That's a tall order for me, says Jeanie.)

You start most of the trails by crossing a high hanging bridge over the Wabash River. For this trail you follow Sugar Creek through a narrow canyon where the trees grow high up on the ridge, sometimes sending their roots right down into the rocks. If there aren't any other hikers around, you really feel like you are explorers in an undiscovered forest. Keep to the creek and watch your foothold as you climb right up the middle of the creek and along narrow ledges of rocks.

Soon you are high above the creekbed walking narrow trails like the one pictured here. Everything was very green this year, even though there hadn't been much rain. You can see little "caves" in the rocky cliff walls along the trail. They are big enough for birds to nest in, but not for bears, thank goodness. (Spoken by one who has had a bear encounter on a trail before!).

This is about a five-mile trail that takes you from low to high country and back to low country again. Along the way we had to climb down two tall wooden ladders to reach the lower parts of the trail. Thank goodness they were sturdy, or I'm sure we would have taken a U-turn at the first one!

After we finished our three-hour hike, we had lunch at the dining room of the rustic inn located right in the state park. Between our two visits to Turkey Run, we've done all but two of the ten trails (one has an old wooden covered bridge), and can highly recommend them if you are in that area of Indiana. If you are a member of Thousand Trails, Horseshoe Lakes is in nearby Clinton and is a pretty nice campground.

For more of EB's pictures of Turkey Run, go to http://ebinfl.smugmug.com/gallery/936734.

Texas Wildflowers

In mid-April we traveled to the hill country of Texas to see an extravaganza of wildflowers growing along DeWitt County country roads. The wildflowers are Lady Bird Johnson's legacy and gift to America as she inspired so many of the roadside and city beautification projects we enjoy today.

Start your Texas wildflower tour with a stop at DeWitt County Wildflower Association's headquarters in Cuero, Texas. There you will find fresh samples of all the wildflowers picked early each morning displayed in bud vases with both their botanic and common names. You'll get a wildflower road map and advice on which are the most scenic roads of the day. These dedicated ladies invite everyone to come to Texas in April and see for themselves why DeWitt County is the official wildflower capital of Texas!

These are Texas Bluebonnets and Coreopsis. You can see more wildflower pictures at http://ebinfl.smugmug.com/gallery/1134462.