Angry Birds Party

Vancouver

In May, I spoke at a conference in Vancouver.  I got to spend some time in that fantastic city.  They have this massive park on the northern peninsula of the city, with this greenway that runs next to the seawall.  In the interior are hiking trails through redwood forest.  Who could ask for a more beautiful place?

You can see the seawall greenway from this viewpoint up in Stanley Park.

In the redwood forest of Stanley Park.

Near the Lion's Gate Bridge

Cycling path on Lion's Gate Bridge

Redwood Forest within Stanley Park

Statue of Girls with Fins viewed from Seawall greenway.

Totem Poles at exhibit along seawall greenway for First Nations

Original Light House for Vancouver along Seawall greenway.

Teams practicing rowing on the inlet.

A section near the golf course and Hidden Lake.

There is public art all over Vancouver, this is near my hotel.

View from my hotel room.

This Vancouver One center where the Olympic torch was during the 2010 Olympic Games.  The digital Orca is a statue that becomes more pixelated as you get closer.

The Olympic Torch

The hallmark structure of Vancouver One is the ship like structure of the convention center.

Vancouver-Orcas

My early Father's Day present was a whale-watching trip while I was in Vancouver.  It took about 2 hours of boating to reach the area of the San Juan Islands where the resident (J pod) orcas were hanging out.  I think there were some transient (T pod) orcas as well. I went with Vancouver Whale Watch.  I was a bit disappointed in our naturalist (which travel with every whale watching boat).  For the four hours that we had with nothing much to do but sit in the boat, she didn't take much opportunity to talk about the whales or the environment.  When I was young, I wanted to be a marine biologist, and I think I would love her job and if in her place would have worked hard to use the time better to teach and educate. (Especially given how much the trip cost.)

 

The view along the San Juan Islands was fantastic.  There were some cabins on the cliffs of the island, I would love to own someday.  Watch the Orcas come by, etc...

The first 5 seconds of this video shows two surfacing of an Orca about 20 yards off from the boat.

 

About 40 seconds into this video, a male Orca surfaces about 10 yards off of the boat.  You can then see the "foot prints" of the Orca on the surface as it swims underwater.

About 20 seconds into the video you can see the Orcas in a distance.  But you can hear them throughout on the underwater acoustic microphone.

Although the Orcas are far away, you can see the whole family surface many times.

Caney River Trail at Scott's Gulf Part 2

We woke to find that our campsite was in a glorious spot on the river which was probably 20 feet wide at this point.  There appeared to be a moonshine cabin on the opposite side of the river. 

While we were pumping the water filter, PR or WVH pointed out crawdads swimming near the bank and could hear fish jumping.  It was very tempting to go for a swim in the slow moving, but very clear water, but we decided to wait until it was warmer and we had reached the waterfalls.

After breakfast, we loaded up our packs and started out again.  Now the trail was pretty easy to follow as it stayed next to the river.  The only problem was the place where you needed to ford the river to follow the Caney River trail was not marked at all, with the cleared trail continuing onward along the northern bank rather than to the actual ford. So we overshot it by continuing to follow the trail until WVH realized using the GPS that clearly must have gone too far and we had to hike back a quarter mile or so to a place that we had initially considered might be the ford except that there didn’t seem to be much of path out to the river.  After a bit of bushwacking, we found little whitened signs up in a tree pointing across the river and following this direction through the brush a few yards more could see across the river to where another large brown sign clearly indicated a crossing.  It didn’t look like there was a way to cross without actually walking in the river, which was only about a foot deep at the forded spot, so those of us that brought water shoes changed into those and crossed. JPD hadn’t brought any, so he ended up just going bare footed and used the hiking poles for balance.  On the other side of the river the trail was clearly marked and we soon came to a sign that indicated a fork to Lattimer, the Boy Scout high adventure area that was recently opened next to the Bridgestone Wilderness.  We stayed on our Caney Fork river trail and were rewarded with what I think was the prettiest section of the trail.  Much of river was crystal clear water with deep swimming holes lined at the bottom by large and colorful rocks worn smooth by the river.  The trail often passed through beautiful meadows of flowers.  PR and WVH independently decided that they had found a new species of flower and that they deserved to name after themselves. WVH confessed knowing the names of only rare species of plants in Tennessee and not common ones. 

Despite the idyllic swimming holes, we again chose to not stop to swim and fish because we would do this once we reached the falls and we were progressing more slowly than we had planned.  In part this was because there were lots of fallen trees and weedy branches across the trail that slowed our progress, again indicating that this trail was rarely traveled or maintained.  I had taken off my rain pants at the river crossing and regretted this because it left my legs exposed to a lot of scratches and poison ivy.

After another hour or so of hiking, we eventually came to where we needed to ford the river back over to the northern side, which would also bring us to the campground that was at the far end of the road where the Virgin Falls and Polly Branch Falls trailhead was located.  This road goes from a standard dirt road to a road only really accessible by 4x4 over the last mile or so as it descends to the river. We chose not to go to Rosa Cave that forked off the trail prior to fording the river, because we wanted to be sure to have enough time to swim and fish at the falls.

After crossing the river, we found a number of campers at the end of the road.  The trail was not marked at this point, and based on the map we followed the 4x4 road for a ways until we ended up in a spot where a Boy Scout troop had camped.  It turns out that one of their tents was directly in front of the trail we needed to be on.  At this point, the trail began to be marked by round aluminum plates nailed into the trees.  The plates were about 3 inches in diameter with a hiker icon on a blue field.  Although the trail was marked in this way every 15 yards or so, only a single marker was placed into the tree, with its flat surface parallel to the trail, rather than two markers on either side of the tree.  This meant that it was extremely hard to see the marker until one was passing almost next to the tree, so the markers were not very useful for finding the trail, but only for reassuring you that the particular faint trace you were following was indeed the correct route.  Given this marking system and faintness of the trail due to lack of use, it is not surprising that we were never ever able to find the trail the previous evening in the dark.  After following this trail for about a half mile from the campground, it crossed the 4x4 road.  Only it didn’t pick up again on the other side of the road or anywhere that we could see.  We finally decided to keep ascending the 4x4 road hoping to eventually run into a sign or something indicating what we should do.  After hiking about a quarter to half a mile up the road, and about giving up on this strategy, JPD yelled down to us that he had found where the trail once again left the road.  He was way up ahead of us (this pretty much became the norm for the rest of the trip) , so before catching up to him, we stopped for a snickers and jerky break.  We then plunged back into the woods and brush.  I put back on my rain pants, despite the heat, because I was tired of all the cuts and scrapes from branches and bushes that lined the path.

The next section of the trail pretty much cut through the forest and far away from the Caney Fork River. We seemed almost to be bushwhacking through the wilderness except there was a faint trail and the little metal trail plates that assured us every once in a while that we were indeed following the route.  The trail passed through a number of interesting rock formations, particularly the Yellow Bluffs and the Rock House section.  One particularly appealing aspect of this trail was that one really had the sense of being in the wilderness.  So many of Tennessee trails are so heavily traveled by other hikers and so near civilization that one always has the sense that any remoteness is simply illusion.  But here, one really felt that few people ever passed through the area and that we were nowhere near civilization.  We saw no others on the trail between the Big Spring campground and Polly Branch Falls.

The heat of the day meant that we were burning through water pretty rapidly and we stopped to pump water at every little trickle of stream that we could. In one place, we scrambled down what would have been a water fall if there had been any real amounts of water, to find a pool of water deep enough to pump.  PR and WVH heckled me for pulling out my red webbing that I had acquired during last year’s high adventure trip to Virgin Falls and using it as a belt to hold my water bottles during the steep descent and ascent.  But that gave me both hands free to prevent falls, so I withstood their heckling.

At one of these little intersecting streams, WVH pulled out the GPS and made a startling announcement that he had been at this place before and that this in fact was Bee Branch Falls.  This was disheartening news, as there was only a trickle of water.  WVH expressed his amazement, because when he had been here before, there had been a raging torrent of water that had been difficult to cross.  We still enjoyed the view, but it dawned on us that our vision of a fun afternoon of swimming and fishing might be in serious jeopardy.

This turned out to be the case.  There was little water at any of the falls.  Just as amazingly, when we reached the Polly Branch campground situated along the massive Caney River, the massive riverbed was bone dry.  WvH said that when he had been to this spot previously, the water had been up to the edge of the river bed.  So the end of our trek was a bit anti-climactic. We deeply regretted that we had passed up all the great swimming and fishing holes. But still, it was a great adventure and I guess it leaves up the chance to go back sometime early in the spring when there will be high water.  

Caney River Trail in Scott's Gulf Part I

June 8, 2012.  The sun had set and we were standing at the top of the bluff with no obvious path down to the river and our campsite. We (JPD, PR, WvH and SSD) had left from what we hoped was the trailhead at 6:45 pm, figuring that we could easily cover the approximately 2 miles to our campsite in the 2 hrs before total darkness set in.  We knew that this end of the trail system was poorly marked and infrequently used, but we had figured with a GPS we should be able to make our way reasonably well. Now the sun had gone below the horizon and the afterglow was the only light to guide us.  Only half an hour into our journey, whatever trail we had been following had petered out into an open meadow which we could find no obvious trail leading from.   

Crossing through the forest, we had eventually struck a gravel road that based on the GPS seemed to be leading in the right general direction. Over the next hour, we had found several potential trails crossing this road, but each time had found that these trails quickly died out within a few hundred yards of the road. So we had given up on trying each of the many openings into the forest. Unfortunately for us, we had just discovered that the gravel road was the one marked as a dead end on our map.  Still based on our GPS we were only about half a mile from the river, which based on our map, we could follow to our campsite, so we remained optimistic. 

Turning on our headlamps, we found a faint trail leading beyond the chained off end of the gravel road, and figured this was our best hope. Then in the narrow glow of my headlamp, we realized that the open space we were walking towards was the edge of the cliff.  The view was spectacular, as we could see across the valley to where the last rim of red fiery light beautifully outlined the hills in the distance and could see 500 feet below us the dark ribbon that clearly must be the river we needed to reach. We could even see where they black shadow split to surely form the island that was near where our campsite was.  The only problem was that in the quickly fading light, we could see no way down the bluff to the river from where we were, and our map clearly indicated we were at a dead end with no connection to the actual trail.  From our bluff overlook, we could see a ridge well off to our left that clearly sloped down in the general direction of the island, but how to get there we did not know.

With no other real options, we started back up the gravel road, deciding that we would have to go back and try each the little trails again, hoping to find one that would lead us to the sloping ridge.  After a five minute hike, we found the first one and there our headlamps caught the first real sign in two hours that we were on a trail that lead to our campground, Amber’s Den.  The sign was high up in the trees, which is probably why we had missed it in the fading light originally.  Heartened by this finding, we hurried on.  The trail was split in several places, with no signs or other indication of the direction we should go, so we chose based on the GPS and on which trail seemed to be headed downhill.  Eventually, the trail became a sunken road, making it easier to follow in the darkness as it steadily dropped downhill.  The overgrowth of plants and tree branches on this sunken road made it obvious that no one had passed over the trail for a long time.  In one particular section, at the end of a steep descent, an enormous spider web spanned the trail.  PR and JPD tried to trick WVH into walking through, but he spotted the web and found a way through it.

After about two hours of hiking in the dark, the trail began to be very flat and we could hear the sound of bullfrogs.  We still could not see the river, but Jonathan spied a campfire ring in a elevated flat patch three or four feet above the trail and to the right of us. Although a single campfire ring seemed unlikely to be the actual Amber’s Den campground, it seemed a reasonable spot if we could just find the river nearby.  At that moment, PR said, “I think I know where the river is and picked up a rock and threw it into the dark space about 20 feet beyond the campfire ring.  Sure enough, we heard a kerplunk as it landed in the water.  We climbed to the flat area and investigated.  The drop to the water line from the campsite was too steep to comfortably try to filter water, so we decided to investigate the nearby area.  We dropped our packs and WVH led the way through some brush and such and we found a place a little further up the trail where the slope was much more gentle down to the water.    Deciding that even if this wasn’t Amber’s Den campground, it was a good enough spot for us, we set up camp.  There were some glass whiskey bottles and a bizaree looking collection of stalks placed next to a flat rock near the fire ring.  At some point, JPD realized they stalks and rock were an improvised chair back.  

Happy to finally reached our destination we settled in for the night. PR and WVH ate their squished sub sandwiches and regaled us with stories of the Tim Tebow loving women at the local store who had made them for them.  PR had lashed his sandwich to the top of his pack and we had joked the whole time about it having fallen off or one of us having eaten it.  JPD and I had had the foresight (thanks to a loving wife and mom) to have a delicious dinner to eat on the drive down, so we just topped off on some snacks. After about an hour of discussion on guns, soda bans in school, and other political topics, and watching giant beetles come to our head light, we settled down for the night.  JPD and I had only brought our sleeping bag liners, since after all, it was June in Tennessee, but by the middle of the night we were pretty cold.  I put on my rain coat and such and felt tolerably warm after that, but JPD was apparently cold all night.