Temperatures: High of 70 / Sunny - Partly Cloudy
Black Flies Status: Increasing in quantity, but maintaining only slightly annoying status
Grass Situation: Floatman's side growing tall and leaving mine to look desert-like!
Fern Growth: 6-10" sprouts
Foliage: 70% forestation transparency
Mother's day at TC was beautiful. The weather was simply fantastic! Completing a few things just after the sun came up over the mountain peak was a good decision and by the time those chores were out of the way, I was ready to use the free time to do some exploring. And in prefect timing, Nick was awake and ready to join me. The girls were still snoozing or at least attempting to snooze, so we let them be and went on a nature hike.
A few trips ago I had taken a walk NE from camp into the forest and traveled along an ATV trail SE down the ridge line. In the process, I discovered an old dilapidated deer stand, captured some "fog in the valley photos" on my crappy cellphone camera and stirred up a few grouse. It was a quick trip, but it peaked my interest in finding out how far south the trail headed and to where...so this time around with my son at my side, we headed past where I had turned back the last time around. Along the way Nick's keen eye pointed out a baby toad. How he picked it out amongst the leaves was fairly amazing to me?! And, as it always is the case, along the path we were getting wrapped in stray webs strewn across the trail. Some we saw, others we felt. Thankfully, most of the responsible arachnids were of the small and harmless variety!
Twenty minutes into our southward march and the faint sound of rippling water could be heard whispering with the wind through the leaves of the trees. As we approached closer to the end of the trail and the beginning of a steep descent, it was obvious that we had walked close enough to see the mighty Allegheny River. I didn't realize that a trip this short could get us this close! Nick and I gazed across the steep incline and momentarily considered whether a decision to climb down was wise. We both concluded that it wasn't. My reasons were based on resources (we had no water on hand) and as the morning warmed I was growing thirsty and Nick because he was tired! LOL! Maybe next time!?
At this point, I had a relatively good idea where we were due to the fact that scouring google earth images was hobby of mine for while when the property was first purchased. The need to explore a little was on my mind, so deciding to navigate a different path back to camp was the natural choice. At the end of the trail we had just descended was another nice deer stand and at that point the trail hung a u-turn and climbed the opposite side of the ridge. It was tough going in a few places along the path. Nick and I stopped to re-charge and catch our breath a few times and during those pauses I visually inspected our surroundings. In one particular stretch, not to far from where we reverse our course back toward camp, I noticed that I could still hear running water. The sound carried the acoustics of WVa. plunge pool type streams. A bit further up the path, two clear lines of running water made their path across the hard packed soil and disappeared into the leaves of the slope. I dipped my hand into the water and immediately recognized that these were springs by the ice cold temp of the water. Not to far up a steep embankment was where one was emanating and I was curious to see the bubbling/gurgling of the exact spot where the water percolated from the ground. Finding it was really neat! It all clicked when we jumped across the second stream heading down into the valley below and onward toward the Allegheny. What I had discovered was an unnamed spring fed stream. And, where this is cool running water, there is most certainly native brook trout! I hope to discover them the next time out...
The last leg of our trek was filled with another neat finds like the oil drum cut in half and sunken into the middle of a stream so that the camp that owned it could take baths or cool off in the middle of the day, the 8' long black milk snake sunning himself on the twisted girder of an abandoned mobile home trailer. With what we discovered and enjoyed, I'd say our hour long trip together was a great experience. I look forward to winding my way back down to that stream and giving a few trout some sore lips!
After breakfast we had a convergence at camp in what must have sounded like a war. Several of our neighbors came over and together we put a couple pounds worth of lead into the solid wood door that is now part of our target backstop. Jen and Carly sat on the deck and did their thing while the rest of us tested our marksmanship under the rays of the bright afternoon sun. Nick and I enjoyed ourselves, although the girls we either bored or tired of hearing the pow-pow of ammo discharging. Sorry!
Here's a couple videos for your viewing pleasure. The first is of a shooting bench that I'm going to build at home and bring up to camp so that we can stop using that flimsy plastic tables that are horrible to shoot for accuracy upon.
The second is Part-I of ??? of our Banner Camper Re-roof project. What I'm doing in this video is removing the loose "peal and stick" roofing that the previous owner had placed over top of the original galvanized version. The perimeter prepping and cleaning will allow the edge of the domed roof that I'm constructing to be bonded and sealed with "Eternabond RV Roof Tape" once the new white peal and stick roofing is applied. The PNS roofing comes in rolls and requires a 1/2" slope for every foot of roof. My roof is 8' wide from screwed edge seam to seam. So I will build a peak in the middle that is 5" tall and that will slope to the roof edges of 1.5".
This should help the material last quite a bit longer than what I'm removing. This stuff really isn't intended for a "flat roof" installation and I'm surprised that the interior roof is in such good shape considering. I purchased the 36" wide versions of the peal and stick on amazon and I'm figuring (with overlap) that 3 runs of 3' wide material will complete the re-roof once the subskeleton is built.
