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 January 13th, 2008
It’s been quite a few years and I was usually busy reading while Dad drove us to the next destination in the family RV, but the best I can remember, we’d often drive until late in the evening and then find a parking lot relatively close to where we were going, park overnight and then ask the manager if it were OK to park there the following day. Sadly, this is not as effective in this day and age - at least not on the East Coast. So many counties and towns have passed laws against overnight parking that it takes some research ahead of time if you don’t want to sleep in the Lowes parking lot, with your slide in, under the bright sodium arc lamps, half dressed just in case the cops show up to roust you.
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Tags:
beach,
boondocking,
campground,
family,
geek toys,
parking lot,
sleep,
state park
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johnny January 9th, 2008
This past weekend, we headed over to the east coast to see if we might find some buried treasure. We decided at the last minute and had a few things to finish up before we could leave, so we didn’t really get to the Cocoa Beach area until close to midnight. It was late enough that we didn’t see the point in trying to find a campground only to get up and leave in 8 hours.
Unfortunately, Brevard County doesn’t want anyone to park anywhere overnight without paying. On our way home Sunday, we would find a couple of likely boondocking spots, but they’re kind of difficult to find in the dark. We finally decided to just park in a Lowe’s parking lot outside of the city limits and hope the county cops had more important things to do than harass us.
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Tags:
brevard county,
campground,
cocoa beach,
metal detector,
parking lot,
sleep,
state park
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jenn January 6th, 2008
Ok. I know I promised lots of information and pictures. I know I need to follow through. We have had lots of adventures recently, and they are starting to stack up. I still need to talk about our travels with a very dear friend of mine and her family through Highlands Hammock. I promised to talk about our metal detecting adventures in Clarcona Horse Park. And just this weekend, we racked up another great time on the east coast.
Johnny is really the better of the two of us when it comes to this blog. I am a big slacker. He is a writer at heart. I would much rather have the adventure and take pictures than spend time writing about them. But, this is our blog, and its time for me to make a contribution. I know that I am really going to be glad that I took the time in 20 years from now. I am really sentimental. My memory isn’t so great anymore, thus this blog is probably the only way that I will remember the details of our wonderful times exploring together.
So without further delay, our funtastic Clarcona Horse Park story:
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Tags:
blog,
new year,
sleep,
state park,
treasure hunting
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