Rain-Thunderstorms-High Winds & Hail

That's it, nothing more.
We've had this type of weather for the last ten days and the same is predicted for the next week.
SeeYa when the sun shines again.

Road Trip Finds

We're about 20 miles south of downtown Louisville and since they are gearing up for Thunder on the River this weekend and have a bunch of road closures and detours we decided to just do some exploring south of the city.

I guess you could call today's trip a Grave trip because that's what we found, some extremely interesting grave sites. Our first discovery was at Long Run Cemetery located about 15 miles east of Louisville. This was the site of one of the first Baptist churches in the territory and the foundation is still present in the center of the cemetery. The main draw to this cemetery is that Abraham Lincoln's Grandfather who he was named after is buried here.

Notice the original spelling, you could have been driving around town in a Linkhorn.

While we were walking around the cemetery we found four more Revolutionary War Veterans buried here, Lincoln's Grandfather was also a Rev. War Vet.

And then we spotted another marker that was The Great Uncle of Harry S Truman.

But we're saving the best for last. Just under a mile west on Simpsonville, Kentucky, on US-60, is a much newer cemetery, this one was dedicated January 26^th 2009. It's small and only has 22 stones but it marks the mass grave of 22 members of the 5^th U.S. Colored Cavalry who were massacred here on January 25^th 1865, by a group of southern guerrillas.

Click to enlarge

In Memory of 22 members of the 5th USCC

For History or Military buffs, there is a very interesting web page that tells the story of the massacre and the effort by locals and ancestors to make this monument come about.

5th U.S. Colored Cavalry at Simpsonville, Kentucky 

Be sure to scroll down on this site to the story of what happen.

The 5^th USCC was also present at the two Battles of Saltville a year earlier. In the first battle a large number of troops (40-80) that were left wounded on the battlefield were executed by Confederate troops.

Another great day of wandering through history.

Just Taking it TennessEASY

We left Knoxville a little over a week ago and have been sitting around in Crossville, Tennessee, at one of our favorite relaxing parks, nothing special just a nice area for day trips and a quiet campground.

Of course we did have to sit through that monster storm that hit the Midwest last week.  We got four inches of rain, winds gusting up around 50 mph and a few tornadoes touched down about 20 miles north of us. Other then losing power for about 20 minutes and a few more gray hairs we came through it OK but listening to a weather radio and looking at the map is not my idea of a quiet evening. A short week later and we're setting record highs yesterday and today.

We did take a day trip around to Rock Island State Park, Twin Falls, and Falling Creek Falls State Park.

Here's a few picture and descriptions. After all that rain the falls were going full blast.

 Three different views of Twin Falls, this one is looking down stream.

Twin Falls are probably my favorite waterfalls I've been to.

This view is from right across the river.
 The amazing thing about these falls is that they come right out of the side of the cliff, their is NO river up there.  They were formed when they built the dam and it flooded an unknown cavern.

And this one is down the trail looking back up stream.

This is the Old Textile Mill in Rock Island State Park.  Normally there is an island and waterfall here but with all the rain and the dam open you couldn't see either one today.

An old pump house that feeds the mill.

Normally there would be fisherman out in the river and there would a ton of rocks but today it was like a white water rapids.

After lunch we drove about 20 miles over to Falls Creek Falls State Park.  A short walk takes you back to Falls Creek Falls which is the highest falls east of the Mississippi.  A few years ago we were here during a drought and there was no water going over the falls at all.

Another little drive and short hike takes you to this falls which I think is named Desolate Falls.  There is another trail here that will take you to a suspension foot bridge that crosses the river just down stream from the falls, but it looked a little to muddy today.

The Dogwood was starting to bloom.

Back at camp we found that we had some new neighbors, Jim (Call me Pat) & Nancy Patterson.  After BS'ing with them for a while we found out that they also enjoy the sport of Geo-caching, although on a much grander scale then us. We started in 2002 and have a little over 500 finds, Pat & Nancy started in 2006 and will shortly go over 10,000 finds. We picked a nice weather day and jumped into the car and spent the day chasing down caches in the area.  We found about 15 and had a nice lunch in town before calling it a day.

Some of the places we found while Geo-caching.

The Old Stone bridge in Cumberland State Park, right by the lodge.

This is the Mill House on the back side of the dam bridge, no it's not a DAMN bridge, it's a bridge and a dam.

This area was Homesteaded in the mid 1930's, over 250 homes were built, many still being lived in and all were built from the Tennessee stone that is quarried around here and in demand world wide.

This is the Crabtree house and is now a museum.

Notice that Pat is trying to retrieve a cache with a pen, this is because a minute earlier when he stuck is finger in there he got stung by a bee. 

Pat and Nancy are off today to Nashville to get ready for a NASCAR Race, and Cathy and I are going to sit around for a few more days visiting some friends in the area and our favorite little dive restaurant in town Sister's.  It doesn't look like much but all the food is homemade, tastes great and is cheap or should I say affordable.