Red River Gorge, Cont.

I woke up off and on on Friday night to the sound of rain, then quiet, then rain. Plus, it was about 35 degrees. Which is good 'sleeping' weather, in my opinion, but with the rain trickling under the tent, made for a chilly night. In essence, I was laying on 35 degree water! Sometime during the night I was finally able to rearrange Lawrence and I to a better position that was more off the wet part and more on the dry part. I think it was about five am or so that all of a sudden, the night forest sounds 'turned on'! Ya know, crickets, owls and such. That's when I knew that the rain was over and good weather was headed our way!

Phillip had better success getting the fire going in the daylight. The sunshine and warm fire really lifted everyone's spirits! Phillip cooked a fantastic breakfast of eggs and bacon. Friday evening, it took Archie all of about two minutes to get his shoes, socks and coat soaked through, so we made a Survivorman-type dryer.

Lawrence is warming his bum here:



Then we were off to explore! Our first stop was Sky Bridge. Red River Gorge boasts around 100 natural bridges. Here is one of them. You might have to click on it to see it bigger, since we took it from far away.



Here we are climbing and exploring Sky Bridge!



We took the mile-long trail from Sky Bridge to explore more rock formations. Archie really liked the nooks and crannies of the rock ledges.





This is the place were Archie and Phillip totally ditched Lawrence and me. They just left us for about 45 minutes or so to go off to 'see something'. They finally showed up bragging about going off on an adventure. I was worried about them having dropped off a ledge somewhere. But they showed up eventually. As penance, Phillip had to lug Lawrence around on the next trail so he'd not do anything too adventurous or dangerous!


There were also a lot of tiny little waterfalls due to the rainy weather the previous day.



After Skybridge, we hiked another trail to view the Angel Windows. Here I am in one of the 'windows'.

Phillip and Lawrence peeping through one of the rocks at me.

Phillip and Lawrence looking through the Angel Windows:

Archie is under the waterfall:



After our hikes, we headed back to camp for a bite to eat and some relaxation. Archie brought along his guitar, and Lawrence enjoyed attempting to eat the campsite gravel.



No, we didn't sock Archie in the eye. Nor did we push him down a ravine. He has black eyes because the smoke from the campfire kept following him around and making his eyes water and he kept rubbing them with dirty hands. Here he is enjoying his smores.

The boys were properly worn out, as you can see. With the exception of the jerk-face who kept talking very, very loudly on his cellular phone while wandering around the campsite, we had a much more peaceful evening.

Easter morning was as beautiful as Saturday was. Will post a wrap-up next.