Copperhead Falls

Today's adventure took us to Copperhead Falls in Abbeville Mississippi. Much like the trip to the creek for the fossil hunt except this lovely little outing took us down a back road to an area near a bridge where we parked along the roadside and walked down a steep rocky slope. At the edge before we got to the creek, the kids discovered the remains of something and had to investigate. After a short time, they came to the conclusion that it was definitely not human and it was okay to continue on with our adventure.

I of course had to take a moment to photograph the two beautiful butterflies resting on part of the spine of the dearly departed stinky critter. Moving on, we worked our way down a rather steep, rocky bank that went down. There we noticed several pairs of shoes on the edge of the bank that lead to a pretty little shallow creek that was ankle deep. The stream meandered left and right around several sandy and clay banks with rocks of various sizes intermingled.

As we walked upstream over and around the rocks along the creek bed that was winding left and right  and around corners, the stream wove its way through the wooded landscape going over rocks, under fallen trees and around the sand and clay banks.  Eventually we heard the rushing water of the waterfalls.

Now, I don't want to deceive you  into believing that as we rounded the corner we came across these fabulous rolling falls that you may be imagining. It is Mississippi after all and the landscape is still relatively flat, these are small low falls that were rambling over the rocks in the middle of the creek that created small pools that poured into other pools.

I have to say, that there weren't any areas that I would call particularly deep and I wouldn't say that there was anything at any point that was particularly treacherous, but because of the clay and algae covered rocks, I would warn anyone who might be unsteady or carrying any kind of special electronics like phones or cameras to be a little cautious. There were a couple of times that I lost my footing and almost drowned my camera. But, I digress...

It is a rather beautiful and unique site and I was very happy to experience it. We came across other people enjoying the day and hanging out. We explored the area and kept walking around a few more corners to see just what lay around the next bend. Eventually the creek became too overgrown to continue and we turned around.

We came across lots of different types of native plant species and some invasives growing along the bank also. A huge beautiful Green Dragon(Arisaema dracontium)-a relative of Jack-in-the-Pulpit-was standing tall right at the entrance with a beautiful group of berries still green at this point.

The intoxicating smell of kudzu flowers was amazing. It was probably my favorite smell along the way...a whole lot better than the decayed critter near the roadside entrance that the kids took an interest in and had to examine to figure out what it was. There was also beautiful orange spotted jewelweed(Impatiens capensis) lining the banks with their little spotted orange flowers dancing on the breeze.

One of the kids noticed a tree that had either berries or some type of seed pod that looked like they could have been mulberries, but I wasn't sure because our mulberry tree at home has already fruited sometime in May and it seemed late to me.

There were quite a few critters to see also, snakes, dragonflies, damsel flies, butterflies, minnows, frogs, and algae in different colors. The snakes were harmless water snakes, but it is always important to maintain a safe distance and give them their space. The small snake in the water had just caught a snack and was on it's way to find a safe place to eat it.

The kids played at the falls for a while longer and eventually we headed back toward the car. It was a great day and a great place to explore. We will definitely be back occasionally to enjoy this space hopefully seasonally so that we can see it at different times of the year to watch the changes of the season within the space.

Our Travels: Nashville

This week we went to Nashville to play because Matt had to go to a conference. I've never been to Nashville, and always thought it would be a great place to go. I have to say that I really enjoyed the trip, but without being knowledgeable of the area and things to do, it was difficult to find things to do and places to go that fit all of our likes especially in such a short time. We were there for about two days.



Our first stop was at the Parthenon and Centennial Park. It had a few interesting art exhibits of oil paintings and photography, and I found the history of the building and restoration of the Parthenon to be fascinating. I've know it was there for many years, but I had no idea that it had so much history behind it. We toured the building and walked around the grounds for a while watched the fish and turtles and birds in the landscape and found a historic train engine and plane.

We headed out to find something for lunch and ended up at a great place called The Pharmacy(odd name, but the food was excellent). Although we didn't order any there was also an impressive list of Bier(beer) and there was also an old-school soda fountain. The food was great and, the service was too even though it was extremely busy. The kids had burgers and fries, and Matt and I split a Biergarten Platter; it was a sampling of Wurstchen. We had Jaugerwurst, Currywurst, and Kielbasa. It was served on a bed of sauerkraut, with a couple of mustards and we chose German Potato salad to go with it.

At this point we had to bring Matt to his first meeting and try to find something to do. We tried to find something and decided that driving aimlessly in that town was a little stressful. I did stop a couple of times to take a picture here and there, but we decided to check into the hotel and figure out what options there were.

We ended up waiting for Matt to get back from his tour/meeting and went out to the Chinese Lantern Festival that just happened to be there. I was really excited to see this. It was a really beautiful display of delicate frame structures covered in silk and lit from the inside making an amazing collection of lantern figures.

The next day, we started out and went to McKay's Book Store. This place was huge...we could have probably spent the rest of our time there and still not seen everything. But we had to get Matt to his next place and figure out our day. So we left with our stash of books and dropped Matt off at his trade show.

Then we went to Fort Negley and walked the grounds and got a nice view of the Nashville Skyline from the top of the fort. We learned a little about the Civil War and the fortification of Nashville when it was taken over by the Union soldiers.

The kids got tired and hungry and we left to go on our next place but we couldn't decide where so I picked the Opry Land Hotel. It was huge and unbelievably amazing. It ended up taking up a lot of our day. It has some of the most beautiful indoor gardens that I have ever seen.

There were 4 huge gardens with trails, canals, waterfalls, fountains, beautiful tropical plants, trees, and palms. It was a beautiful walk, and we only saw part of it we didn't make it through all of the gardens.

Overall, it was a fun little stay, I just wish we were better prepared with a plan and an idea of how to navigate the town...maybe on a return trip. It was only a 4 hour drive.

Exploring Our Woods

We went on an adventure this morning exploring our(and our neighbor's) woods. We went in search of a plant that I have seen in the past but hadn't noticed in a couple of years. Apparently deer really like this plant so it is hard to spot because it is usually stripped down every year from the browsing beasts(and I do say that with affection I love them, they are beautiful...but why do they have to eat all the good stuff?)

Anyway, the plant we were searching for is called Euonymus americanus. Some of its common names are American strawberry bush, Strawberry bush, Hearts-a-burstin, or Bursting heart. It is from the staff tree or bittersweet family(Celastraceae) of plants. It is one of our North American native species.

This very distinct and unusual shrub has dark green stems, bright green oval lance shaped leaves that have almost no stem and are pointed on both ends. The leaves will turn red in fall. The flowers are small greenish five petal flowers that kind of float above the leaves on their long-ish stems. The fruits and seeds are odd hard little round capsules that are a pinkish red and bumpy. When they are ripe and pop open they reveal bright orange seeds that hang on to the bottom of the capsule usually in groups of 4 or 5. It can grow to be between 2-6 feet tall. The pictures I was able to get are difficult to really see what the plant looks like, because the deer have mostly eaten all of the leaves off of the plant. But now I know that I didn't lose it and will be able to protect it next year.

Some of the other things we found on our explore.

 A frog:

Lots of caterpillars and bugs:

Interesting mushrooms/fungi:

Lots of moss that was fuzzy to touch:

Lots and lots...and lots of spider webs and spiders:

We found some but most of them found us.