Winter Arrives A Week Early

Wow! Indiana took a bit of a hit this weekend. I live in Central Indiana, so we got a mix of ice and snow. Northern Indiana and some parts of southern Indiana took on more of one or the other. It was a real mixed bag. I finally managed dig out my old hiking shoes, but found just cleaning off the porch and sidewalk a bit treacherous under the current conditions. Not good hiking for a beginner like me, in my opinion.

Still, I would have liked to have gotten out and done some hiking. The best I could do was some "close to last minute" christmas shopping later in the afternoon on Saturday. It was a truly beautiful time of day to be out and about. About four in the afternoon, the sun was shining through the ice covered trees at a low angle and the dancing light made them shine and sparkle. Absolutely enchanting. I felt a little like a four year old looking up and telling mommy to look at the shimmering lights. My boyfriend was trying desperately, of course, not to slide us off the side of the slush-covered roads, so I think I was driving him a little bit nuts with my "ooo's" and "aaahhh's".

Unfortunately, I am not one to drag a camera around everywhere I go, so I was unable to get a picture. I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities before the end of the winter. I'm hoping to get back out to Cataract Falls soon, as all the snow and rain we've received lately will have greatly improved the river's volume of water and there are bound to be some wonderful icicle shots from the overhangs around the falls.

Happy hiking and be careful out there!

Product Review: Swiss Gear Hiking Pole

I've recently purchased my first real piece of hiking equipment. It's a hiking pole made by Swiss Gear. It's something I've been wanting since I started hiking. My sense of balance going downhill and crossing streams over logs is a bit iffy, so I wanted something that could provide a little extra balance. Eventually I may get two, but for now I just wanted the one so I can keep a hand free for the camera.

The Swiss Gear Hiking Pole is a very nice piece of equipment for the price. I bought mine at Dick's Sports, which tends to be a little pricey, but I have seen it slightly cheaper at Wal-mart and online at Amazon. It's red aluminum with black ergonomic handles. The stick can be easily adjusted to height (which is great because I'm short). The handle has a small compass embedded in the head. I double checked mine and it seems to be working appropriately.

I've taken it out on my first hike and it worked just as I hoped it would. There is little to no flexing in the pole. The tip comes with a plastic cover or you can remove it to reveal the spike (would I would expect will be more useful during the winter months). I have found that just about or slightly above elbow height works best for me. I would give this product 4.5 stars out of 5.

Indiana's Largest Waterfall (per volume)

 

Cataract Falls, IN

Back around mid-October, my boyfriend and I went on a photography/hiking trip to Indiana's largest waterfall (per water volume), Cataract Falls. It's located in West Central Indiana, about halfway between Indianapolis and Terre Haute. Due to the drought season we've been having here in the Midwest, the falls were at an all time low, so we were actually able to get close up and see features that were normally hidden by the river.

The Falls themselves are actually broken up into an upper and lower by about a mile or so of wandering riverbed. Geologically speaking, Indiana (and a good portion of the Midwest) was at one time at the bottom of an inland sea. Because of this, the primary rock is sedimentary in origin (mostly limestone, shale, clays, etc.) Cataract Falls is a great place to observe the layered nature of these stones and how water works to erode them. Even more interesting is what happens when a much harder stone is trapped within those layers and then eroded out through river action, as in the picture above "River at Work". In fact, because of the low level of the river, we were able to observe an almost alien moonscape that the river had churned out when it is running at full capacity. The imagery was fantastic! Who could imagine that such details were hidden beneath the water's surface?

Hiking and Textural Photography

Almost from the beginning of this year's hiking adventure, I've been taking pictures. The pictures I tend to take are more of textures, then things. Most of my images tend to be more close up. I am fascinated with the way patterns and colors interact in nature. I've always got my eye on the dirt in front of me or the way that water moves in rivers and lakes. My boyfriend gets a kick out of it. He tends to focus on a much larger picture, which is fine for a nature and wildlife photographer (photograph3r.com), but sometimes I will see things that he has missed. For instance, I love the way color plays across water. While he's taking pictures of the fall leaves on the opposite bank of the river, I'm taking pictures of the same leaf color as it dances on the river. To me, this is even more timeless, almost abstract. The fall color on water pictures you see in the slide show below have almost a Monet quality to them that I couldn't resist. And I love the contrast of the actual leaves floating through the color!

Fall Colors

Above are my latest collection of pictures from Holliday Park. This time we pretty much stuck to the trail alongside the White River. The colors of the leaves were still pretty good and as you can see, danced vividly on the water.

It was also a great opportunity to capture some wildlife, which is usually hidden among the foliage. The robin looks quite cold, doesn't he?! The chill of fall was definitely in the air that day! The woodpecker was working at full tilt, from tree to tree, trying to find what bugs he could before they burrowed too deep in the wood for winter.

Downtime

I've been feeling kind of bad about having such huge spaces between postings, so I thought I should find something to fill in the space, for those one or two (wishful thinking!) viewers that might check in on this blog every once in a blue moon. :)

It's not always easy to get out on the weekends, especially when you are in the middle of home repair! We're in the process of renovating/rebuilding our bathroom, so things have been a bit busy. I have crazy work hours, so my part in this fun can only happen on the weekends. In a way, this is also a bit of a workout. I'm painting the drywall at the moment, so I have to step up and down from a stool to get to the paint pan. Not quite the same as scrambling down a ravine or climbing stone steps in a park, but hey! I'll take what I can get.

Don't get me wrong, I'm missing my hikes terribly! Happily we have another trip to the Ohio Renaissance Faire next week and then a trip to southern Indiana the first weekend of October (Happy Birthday to me!). We're heading back to Lake Rudolph for another camping weekend and we are going to side trip it over to the Hoosier State Park while we are there. Should be great fun! I've signed up to be a volunteer photographer, so maybe you'll see some of my pictures on their website soon.

Until then....keep stomping!

The Ohio Renaissance Festival

This weekend was all about the Ohio Renaissance Festival! This festival starts around Labor Day and ends right before Halloween. We've been going every year for approximately 10 years and I've never been disappointed. Despite some recently developed pain in my heels, I was more than happy to tread up and down the hills on the fair ground to see the wonderful shows and take in the crafts and food. I highly recommend it!

How does this relate to my hiking? Well, we were on our feet for about 3 out of 4 1/2 hours (my heels will attest to that). The grounds are not paved and are far from flat, so you definitely have to put in some physical effort to move around. And if the hills don't get you, the gravel paths will! We covered approximately 2 plus miles Sunday afternoon taking in the entertainment, which was often located on opposite sides of the grounds.

The pictures above are as follows:

Picture #1 - Our good Queen Elizabeth (represented by a new person this year) and her royal court.

Picture #2 - An on-rushing knight in the midst of a joust.

Picture #3 - The Skull and Bones swordsmen troupe. Great act! They are not "The Swordsmen" quite yet, but they are a close second!

Picture #4 - Daniel, Duke of Danger - One of my favorite acts of the faire. If you go, you must catch his act! In this picture he is preparing for one of his balancing acts and trying to draw in the crowd.

Small Adventures

Remember when you were child and a test of balance was walking the thin line of a tire curb? I still enjoy doing this as an adult.

During my 15 minute breaks from my computer at work, I like to go for short walks to get some fresh air. The front of the building I work in has a nice curb that separates blacktop from lawn and rises about four or five inches off the ground and runs the length of the building (several hundred feet). Great balancing material! I like to go out and walk this length to clear my head and refocus. The curb kind of tilts back and forth (not perfectly flat), so it can be a bit of a challenge.

At the end of this run of curb is a sidewalk that leads to a pretty round flower bed filled with an assortment of flowers. I like to go here to see the different little butterflies and moths. Usually it's a pretty standard assortment, but today I got a special treat, a 2-3 inch long Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Hemaris thisbe). It was absolutely magnificent! Unfortunately, we are not allowed to bring cameras into our building, so I couldn't get a picture of it, but I did find a nice one from the web that comes really close. Note the green hairs on the back and the translucent wings. It's easy to see how someone could confuse this with a real hummingbird at first glance. This moth has some real weight to it! Sometimes you see the greatest things on even the shortest of walks!

Check out this great way to show pictures!

One of the big stumbling points I have been fighting with in posting my pictures to this blog is how to show a large number of them without having you page for miles to see them. Well, I finally found a way! Just in time too. We went to the Cope Environmental Center outside of Richmond, Indiana on Sunday and I have got lots of great pictures! It was a great 1.5 mile hike with a couple of small side trips to view a small pond and what was left of some wetlands.

As you may or may not know, Indiana, and most of the midwest, is suffering a drought this year, despite a week's worth of rain recently. Most of it came down too hard and too fast to really do much good, and one of the things you will see when I post the pictures from that trip is just how dry even the wetlands have become! One picture in particular reminded me of the dry lake beds you see in Utah, particularly close to the Great Salt Lake. Huge cracks with good sized cattails trying nobly to withstand the dry conditions.

We also saw a number of butterflies and small animals, particularly a small turtle that was hanging out in the middle of the path. And the flora was absolutely beautiful! I can't wait to track down some of the plants I saw on this trip. I think this is some of my best photography yet.

On the hiking side, although the path was primarily flat at first, as we ducked back into the heavily forested area, the hills and gullies began to appear! That was great fun! You would never know, just by looking at the map, how varied the terrain really was until you got into it. Eastern Indiana is surprising hilly considering how flat most of the rest of state is. Still, if you are into trail running or a little light hiking, I highly recommend the Cope Environmental Center as a good stepping off point. It has several paths with varying degrees of difficulty to challenge the hardiest of souls.

A Camping We Will Go - Lake Rudolph and Holiday World

This last weekend was our first trip camping since my son was born 13 years ago. That last trip was to the Salamonie Reservoir in northern Indiana, and it was a nightmare! Never, ever, if you wish to die of old age, ever, take your pregnant wife camping in a primitive location in the middle of Indiana's monsoon season. Everything was wet, the air was extremely humid, and we were utterly miserable. By the second night I couldn't take it anymore and we ended up packing up shop and staying at my husband's uncle's house, who happily lived close by. Until recently, I had had no desire to repeat the experience.

I'm not sure what changed my mind. My brother and his wife frequently go camping while on vacation and it always sounded like fun to me. Tony, my boyfriend/ex-husband (and that's all I'll say about that), was agreeable to the notion of trying the camping thing again, so we set a time and a place at Holiday World, to keep my son happy. There were nature trails around the campgrounds, so we hoped to do a little trail hiking as well. We bought a tent for Tony and I, and a selection of gear to get us through a couple of days in the woods. As it turned out, we were rather unprepared.

Here are some significant lessons learned: 1) Always buy a tent that has twice the footprint of whatever size airbed you are using. We had a queen-size bed in a 9x7x4 tent. It fit, but it was a close one. My boyfriend and I are typical somewhat overweight Americans, so a smaller bed would have been impossible for either of us to sleep on (especially with his snoring!). 2) Water protect your tent. I took great pains to do so, and happily it paid off. We had a significant amount of rain Sunday and Monday morning, with only a minimal of water leakage. Unfortunately, one of the areas that leaked was the zipper to the door. I haven't figured out a fix for that yet. My son had the same problem in his tent. 3) Keep track of all of your things. Don't leave anything in the showers. They will get thrown away. I spaced it on the first night and forgot to grab my shampoo, conditioner, and soap out of the shower stall before heading to bed and they were gone when the cleaning crew came through the next morning. Oh well.....

4) Unless you're a purest, having access to electricity and a laptop can be of great help, particularly during the two rainiest days of a drought-filled month (it's a little like washing your car...go camping, it will rain!). We were able to watch the weather and judge the best opportunities to go to the amusement park. And finally, 5) Make sure you unpack and wash everything when you get home, just in case you have any tag alongs and to reduce the potential for mold to set in.

We did get to do some hiking between our area and where the camp store was located. Lake Rudolph is rather hilly, so it was definitely a bit of a workout heading up to the store and then trying to keep from falling coming back down (the paths were covered with gravel). I would have liked to have done more, but there wasn't enough time and the weather was generally not working in our favor. Oh well, maybe next year!

A Hiking We Will Go - Indianapolis Parks

I've always been lousy at keeping a diary and unfortunately, the blog thing is not going much better. I'm going to have to work on that, I admit.

Just to bring in possible readers up to speed (not that that will take much) I'm new to the worlds of hiking and camping, so this blog is going to be all about my various misadventures. My boyfriend and I have been doing the hiking thing now for a little over a month. He's trying to make a breakthrough as a nature photographer (see his work at http://www.photograp3r.com/) and I'm looking for a little natural inspiration in my artwork, so choosing to go hiking has been a real boon to the both of us.

Until this last weekend, we had been pretty much restricted to local area parks and nature trails, which don't get me wrong, Indianapolis has a great collection of! We've visited three parks so far. They are, Southeastern Park, Eagle Creek Park, and Holliday Park. All beautiful in their own distinct way. I have been doing some photography of my own (not nearly as good, but I hold my own), concentrating mostly on floral and fauna. Of the three parks we have visited in Indy, I highly recommend Holliday Park, which I mentioned in my last blog, as the most visually interesting, although Southeastern Park has some really nice creek bed areas and pathways. Unfortunately, Southeastern Park also taught me my first big lesson...Beware of the tall grass! I know, I know. It's something that's ingrained in most of us as children, but our first trip to Southeastern went on without so much as a hitch, so I just wasn't thinking about the possible repercussions of walking in tall grass near a creek bed until it was too late. My son was with us for this particular trip and had the most skin exposed. The chiggers found him an easy target!

Now I know some of you are screaming, why aren't you wearing some sort of bug repellent? We were. I had sprayed Deep Woods Off on my son and myself, but evidently wasn't as thorough with it as I should have been when I did my son. I came out of it with only a couple of bites. My son got them all over his knees! With a lot of restraint and a thorough shower when he got home, he was able to bring them under control and be rid of them within a week, but was none too happy about it. Needless to say, we have chalked this one up to experience and have tried to be more thorough in the repellent treatments ever since.

The Amateur Hikist

Introduction

All my life I've wanted to take up trail hiking, but could never seem to find the time or ambition to do so. Recently, I've put that interest into action and started hiking around some of the local parks located in Indianapolis, Indiana, my home town for the last three years. There are some great treasures to be seen out there that I had never known about until now! My blog, "The Amateur Hikist" is about my various adventures (more like misadventures), some of the advice that I have found helpful, and some of the pictures that I have taken along the way.

For example, the little creature you see at the right is a darling little chipmunk that I tripped across while traipsing along the trails at Holliday Park. Cute, isn't he?! He sat there, quite still, on a tree root and just watched me watch him for about five minutes. This was the closest I could get before something (probably more like someone) scared him off.

Next is a stone manuscript and a fabulous statuary ensemble, found in the same park, called "The Ruins". This find was completely unexpected. We came looking for nature shots and found some great architectural features instead. Turns out these pieces were originally from a building in New York that had been slated for demolition. The artist commissioned for this work was Elmer E. Taflinger, an Indianapolis native. The whole installation is a beautiful piece, but the waterworks are no longer functioning. In essence, it has become its name, a ruin, which is a huge shame. Hopefully someday the Indianapolis parks department will see fit to refurbish it and bring it to life again.