Calf Feeding at Cave View Farms

Pick a calf. Any calf. The one below is about 12 hours old and had trouble standing.

The bottle has warm milk and holds half a gallon. It's emptied in about 60 seconds.

Christmas Decorations

Yep, this is it. All of it.

Holiday Visitors

Screech Owl in the Front Yard

As I pulled in the driveway tonight upon arriving home from work, my headlights lit up the spruce tree beside the house. There, sitting quiet as could be, was a tiny screech owl. He's about four inches high. I called Debbie on the cell phone and told her to quietly come out and see. She came out and softly approached him. He didn't fly away, but merely turned his head to stare at her. He stayed long enough for me to go inside and get the camera. He even stuck around for about four or five nice photos with the flash going off. When he finally flew away, it was, as you can guess, completely silent, no flapping or anything -- not a sound. He never screeched.

Okefenokee Pics

Now that she's back in the lower 48, Catkim called in her promised graduation present: to go canoeing in the Okefenokee Wilderness. She left hubby back in Fort Benning, and drove down to Grandma's. The next morning she and I spent an extraordinarily enjoyable day exploring my old stompin' grounds, the Suwanee Canal area of the Land of the Trembling Earth, south of Folkston. Below: Yes, he's real. Yes, he's alive. No, there's no fence or anything. This is the wilderness. We came a lot closer to many of them, but I didn't get pics from the back of the canoe -- I kept the paddle in my hand for safety purposes in case we had to skedaddle or something. Cat has some great pics of the lizards up close and personal. This was one of the bigger ones we saw. He's probably about 12 feet long, I'd estimate. This is the entrance to Chesser Prairie. Notice how low the water level is, even for December. Below: Oh, carry me baaack, to the lone prair-ieee. The pictures don't do justice to the wonderment out there, miles and miles and miles away from any civilization. This pic is taken just outside of six-mile hammock...

...where we stopped for lunch. We only saw two other people, both fishermen, all day long.

Below: Open water of the canal. It's only about two feet deep here. Gators on both banks all up and down this 3-mile stretch. Cat got some great pics of a pair of raccoons and a close-up of a green heron.

Gorgeous bald cypress trees standing in the water. They are one of only a handful of conifers that lose their needles in the autumn.

The call of the wild. Egrets, herons, kingfishers, eagles, we saw it all. Except snakes.

Spanish moss. Yes, that's a gator at the water's edge. We saw over 100 of them in the first hour and a half (within a mile and a half of starting out), then we quit counting...

It was cool (about 60 degrees) and bright sunshine, perfect weather for gators to come out of the water and sun themselves.

And so they did.

Four days! Four whole days!

My new cell phone outlasted its 1-year warranty by... FOUR (4) days! It gave up the ghost today, and the lady at the store said it was purchased on November 22 last year. Four extra days past the warranty. Whoo hoo! It would really be nice if someone, somewhere, would take enough interest in these malfunctioning electronic gizmos to actually send them to a factory repair center to find out exactly what it is inside them that goes wrong when they've been sitting around me for a few months. Like many people who have received strong electric shocks in their lives, I can't seem to keep a piece of electronic gear anywhere near my body for very long without it ceasing to operate properly. A few weeks, or a few months, or at absolute best, one year and four days, seems to be the limit, whereas other folks keep their equipment working for years and years. But alas, no one cares. "Just buy a new one", they tell me. Like the beaver said when he saw the stream...

Florida water...

Grandma, standing on the Main Street Bridge (officially named the Alsop Bridge) in Jacksonville at sunset back in early October.

Fall in the Shenandoah...

This fall wasn't spectacular, color-wise. In fact, this fall probably would rank in the bottom 2 or 3 worst autumns since we've been here. But I was able to find a couple of nice shots, while on a 12-mile hike from the bottom of Madison Run Fire Road, into the Madison Run Wilderness area, up the fire road to Skyline Drive, over the Rockytop Loop Trail, and back down via the Austin Mountain trail. Yes, this is a black bear, running away from me. You have to look hard to see him. That's his year in the top center of the picture. The pictures are out of order, since Blogger doesn't upload them in the order I specify. This is sunset over the Shenandoah Valley, from the Furnace Mountain Trail on the south side of the Madison Run Wilderness Area.

Some spots of color here and there.

The fire road is uphill all the way, six miles, from the base, to Skyline Drive. The trails coming back, however, are up and down, up and down, and relatively steep, too, although the net altitude change is about 1800 feet.

In spite of having a freeze a week earlier, this wildflower was still in bloom.

Some more color...

Looking southeast towards Trayfoot Mountain.

Diagnosis: Rheumatoid Arthritis

The diagnosis is now official. The 26 blood tests, the x-rays, and the MRI all agree with the doctor's supposition: I have rheumatoid arthritis, it is most likely an after-effect of the Lyme disease, and it's anybody's guess as to whether it's temporary/recurring, or permanent. My joints are as stiff as a board any time I sit still for more than about 10 minutes. My hands are so involved that my right hand is actually deformed when I close my fingers. The doctor said I've lost about 40% of my gripping strength, and about 40% of my movement in my legs, arms, and almost 50% mobility in my back. The totally ironic thing is, I contracted this IN MY OWN BACK YARD! I hike the world over. Even as a mid-fifties old geezer with a round pot-belly and asthma, I do a lot of walking. I walk all over towns and villages when I go to Europe. I hike all over in the woods -- from Ashdowne Forest in England, to the Black Forest in Germany, to the Ardennes in France and Belgium. As you can see from the posts on this blog over the last couple of years, I hike Yosemite, I hike Yellowstone, I hike Sequoia and Kings Canyon, I hike Denali in Alaska, I hike the Everglades and Okeefenokee, I hike all up and down the Appalachian Trail, I hike the wilderness trails in the Geo. Washington National Forest and Shsenandoah National Parks. Then, while mowing grass in MY OWN BACK YARD I pick up a tick which I never saw. And get Lyme disease. If I had the vocabulary worthy of a Marine sergeant, now is the time I'd be using some of it. The doctor wants me to keep walking and keep doing physical therapy. He says that if I let the stiffness slow me down, my joints will freeze up completely. So he's recommending pain killers and anti-inflammatory stuff. Sheesh. Just when I think my asthma is over (now that the cat passed away last June), this kicks in. As the wise beaver said, when he saw the stream ....

French Horn Players...

I just discovered, by reading the Wikipedia entry on the French Horn, that Ewan McGregor, who played ObiWan Kenobi in the Star Wars episodes 1, 2, and 3, is a horn player. So is Jon Stewart, the political satirist. The sound of the French Horn is called "heroic". Apropos. And I also learned that the instrument most referred to as the French Horn is technically a German horn. Hmmm...

Blue Ridge Tunnel -- South Entrance

It's getting harder and harder to walk, but the doctor says I must, so I'm looking for every opportunity. Do a Wikipedia search on "Blue Ridge Tunnel". The original tunnel was constructed as a railroad tunnel to the Shenandoah Valley, way back in the 1850's... well before the Civil War, and a dozen years before the invention of dynamite. The original tunnel runs almost a mile through solid rock under the Blue Ridge. When it opened, it was the longest tunnel in the U.S. It passes under Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, I-64 and US 250. A newer, wider tunnel was cut to the south in 1944. The original tunnel is now abandoned. For the last 15 years or so, I've wanted to hike to the original tunnel, but I didn't know exactly where to find it. Today, on the way back from the Virginia Beach ARRL convention, I was on the ham radio and heard a fellow on the air (K4LFP) who was on foot ... hiking back from the tunnel! He gave me directions, and I met him in the tiny town of Afton just as he got back to his car. He showed me the trailhead. It's not much of a trial, but you can generally make out the old railroad bed, which is overgrown now with trees and brush. Just under a mile from the parking area, bingo, there it was. The trail requires a lot of "cross-country" hiking through brush. Even with my long khaki pants, my legs are all skinned up from thorns and stickers. My hiking staff did double duty as a sort of machete, as well as a "feeler" to find the muddy spots and holes under the brush. But Al's directions were spot-on, as they say. The tunnel is flooded about a foot or two deep with crystal-clear cold water. Since it isn't maintained anymore, the cracks in the mountain are all dripping, and the dirt and leaves have slid from the mountain above the entrance and this has created a barrier which dams up the water in the tunnel. I didn't want to go wading, so I just took this picture from the entrance. There were all kinds of frogs and water fauna at the entrance. Here is a freshwater lobster, or as we call them in southern Georgia: a crayfish. He's about six inches long. After visiting the tunnel entrance, I clambered down (slid, really) about 200 feet, down the steep south slope of the mountain, where I found the entrance to the "New" Blue Ridge tunnel. This new tunnel was opened in 1944, and was a good bit wider and taller to accommodate war materiel. On the picture below, the old tunnel is to the right and up the steep slope you see on the right edge of the picture. Click on the picture below to read the inscription over the entrance to the "new" tunnel, which actually is now over 65 years old. I didn't want to go too far into the new tunnel, because unlike the original tunnel, this one is NOT abandoned. Trains run through here. Fast trains. But I did slip inside about 50 feet to take this picture of the light at the end of the tunnel. I then walked the mile back to the car along the current tracks, which run parallel to the old railbed bed, about 100 feet down the mountain to the south. And sure enough, just before I got back to the car, here comes the Amtrak, doing about 60. I'm glad I decided against venturing into the tunnel.

Little Calf Mountain Summit Hike

After returning to the car from the tunnel, I drove up to Skyline Drive and headed north to Beagle Gap, elevation 2506 feet ASL. I always feel better after I've been walking for a while, and since the doctor says walking is good for the arthritis, I like to do it as much as I can. I hiked up the Appalachian Trail going north, about a mile up to the unmarked trail which leads westerly another quarter mile to the summit of Little Calf Mountain. Gorgeous hike. The sumac is just beginning to turn color. There are lots of apple trees here, dating from 75 years ago or more, before the park was established, back when this area was mountain farmland. No idea what the two bugs are, but the blossoms are goldenrod. Achooo. These aren't blueberries, because this isn't a blueberry bush. I don't know what they are, but they are growing on a tree that's about 30 feet tall.

Below: Looking southwest towards Humpback Rocks.

Looking southeast from the meadow at the summit of Little Calf Mountain.

Notice the sign. According to Internet sources, this is elevation 2960 feet give or take a little. So the climb is just under 500 feet of vertical elevation from the parking lot at Beagle Gap.

The sumac was gorgeous crimson.

A classic monarch butterfly caterpillar, eating his milkweed.

Below: the scene from McCormick Gap Overlook, milepost 103 on Skyline Drive, a few miles south of Beagle Gap. This is looking north towards Turk Mountain.

A super Sunday afternoon hike, especially following the discovery of the Blue Ridge Tunnel.