johnny November 5th, 2008
Yah, I know we’ve been slacking on the blog updates lately, but as soon as we were done with the carnie gigs, we hit the boonies again without pausing to look for cellular service. I don’t think we’ll be doing any concession work anytime soon; so whatever jobs come next should be fairly new to us.
We left South Carolina in a hurry and made a beeline for the Great Saltpetre Cave Preserve in Mt. Vernon Kentucky again. We were hoping to get some caving in and see some friends once more before it gets too cold to be in Kentucky and we head out west for the winter.
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boonies,
caving,
kentucky,
work
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johnny September 24th, 2008
Well, we’ve got more than a bar of Internet tonight, so I figure it’s time we got caught up on some blogging.
After we spent a couple of weekends at the Great Saltpetre Preserve caving with some great people from the area, we headed towards Boone, NC to start our next stint as carnies. However, we got sidetracked leaving Kentucky as Jenn noticed Carter Caves State Park was just a few miles out of the way. As this is where Crawl-a-thon is held in January, we decided it would be worth a quick stop over and looksee.
We got up bright and early and explored Laurel and Horn Hollow caves. Both are rather short trips, that have been ‘prepared’ for tourists, but they are still unlit, self-led trips. Horn Hollow has a beautiful entrance, but is otherwise not much to look at from inside. Laurel was quite a pretty little cave and we were able to get off-trail and explore the upper passage as well as climb a small waterfall that most non-cavers would have never seen.
Once we got to the camper, covered in cave mud, and I got stripped down to my high performance underwear, a couple of guys walked up, and rather than running away, they wanted to chat, which marked them as cavers and not afraid of dirty, half-dressed hippies in a parking lot. This was our introduction to Roy and Jerry. They were in the area building a bat gate, which is designed to let bats in, but keep people out during bat hibernation season. Since we were the only muddy folks around with a bat sticker on our vehicle, they assumed we’d be good suckers, err… candidates, to volunteer to help out.
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Tags:
campsite,
caving,
forestry service,
kentucky,
state park,
work
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johnny July 23rd, 2008
We made it back from Karst-O-Rama alive! We met some really amazing folks that were happy to bring along complete novices, loan equipment to complete strangers and give lots of advice. Jenn’s parents and her nephew came along in her parents’ Class A. The road getting in and out of the Great Saltpetre Preserve was… interesting… for the 35′ motor home, but we made it without any mishaps.
The general format of Karst-O-Rama is caving all day and partying all night. The electric sites are smack in the middle of the party camp, where there are no quiet hours as there are in the family camping area. It was awfully hot, hitting the 90’s every day and we were glad to be underground during the heat of the day.
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caving,
family,
festival,
hobby
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johnny July 13th, 2008
I’m on day three of being temporarily crippled. Seems I managed to give the knee with the least amount of cartilage left a viscous twist a couple of days back. Over the course of twelve hours, it went from mildly annoying to three times the size of it’s twin. Needless to say, I’ve spent the last two and a half days laying on the bed chewing through books at the rate of about five hundred pages a day.
Day one was pretty rough as I had not yet figured out the delicacies of reaching the bathroom on one leg. Thankfully, the bed is only about ten feet from the bathroom with plenty of things to lean on along the way. The catch is that there are a couple of steps at both the bed and the bathroom to negotiate. After handling these obstacles poorly for a day, I finally got the hang of it and can now handle the gymnastics like an old pro.
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caving,
family,
health,
hobby
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jenn June 22nd, 2008
Well, its a another rainy day; which is good, because the streams are pretty low here. But today, I’d planned to finally finish up that hide that I have been carrying around with me. A year ago, I fleshed it out and mostly worked it soft while I was at Rivercane Rendezvous.
I didn’t mess with it again until we were out of our stick and brick home. At that time, I pulled it out of the freezer and finished the softening stage. I couldn’t make a fire to smoke it at that campsite. So, I put the hide back in a bag and stuffed it into outside storage.
Since we are talking about staying in this great campsite until my family gathering at the beginning of the month, I thought it would be a great time to finish the hide. So, yesterday, I gathered up some rotten wood to smoke with, some nice (fallen) trees to make a tripod, and started sewing up the hide. Johnny was so excited about the prospect of not having to smell my brain tanned hide when he opened that compartment anymore that he offered to erect the tripod. Such a nice guy. Thanks hun! Nice work.
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Tags:
national forest,
Pisgah,
weather
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