2004

9-1-04: Around this time of year, Eric's sister and her family came to visit. We brought the kids up to Franklin Falls to play in the water. There were lots of other kids there (the ones that belong with us are Hope, to the far left, and Maya, the young one to the right).

9-1-04: Later, I made the longer hike up the Denny Creek trail to the next set of falls – Keewulee falls. They are about 3 miles up the Denny Creek trail.

9-1-04: This is the ancestor of the tiger lilies that you see in gardens. This flower is about an inch in diameter, but you can definitely see the family resemblence.

9-1-04: Foamflower. These are tiny little flowers that grow along the edges of the trails. Once you get used to looking for them, they're everywhere – but this was the first hike which I'd noticed them. The flowers are less than half a centimeter in diameter.

9-1-04: The next hike I took was to a place called Dirty Harry's Balcony. This is a plantain. I liked the cup-shaped flowers.

9-1-04: Dirty Harry's Balcony is a hike up a logging road from the turn of the century. Dirty Harry was a logger whose practices made even the other loggers blanche. He made a business of buying land that no one else wanted to log, and figuring out ways to get the trees off of it. The logging road barrels through streams and rocks that raise the hair on the back of your neck to picture wagons and early trucks careening down the road. The road's entrance is so overgrown, now, as to be barely visible. I found it by virtue of a good map and some other hiker's sticks that they had left on the ground nearby. It would be a harrowing drive but is a fairly easy walk.

9-1-04: Dirty Harry's Balcony is the view off of the black rock chimneys that jut from the south side of I90. They look like charcoal-brown columns against the green of the trees from the highway. They also look like they drop straight down! They nearly do, on the highway side – but you can pick your way along the trail and come up to them from the back.

9-1-04: My pack and walking stick, left in a precarious position to illustrate the vertical terrain.

In order to see the next set of photos, move the mouse so that the arrow on the screen moves into the blue field that says next page. The arrow might change into a hand when you do this. Once it's inside the blue field, press the left button on the top of the mouse.