Mouse-ear Coreopsis growing along a trail
Scott County and New River
Kenny & Dana Koogler
Saturday May 17, 2020
I wanted to go see the Kentucky lady slippers, but did not want to go by myself. Kenny graciously agreed to go with me. He'd been working in that area for a week or more. I hated to ask him to drive clear back up the road on a Saturday, but he assured me it did not bother him. I drove it many times solo when we were staying in Burnside, Kentucky for his work. It is a beautiful drive up the road to Huntsville and beyond. We love this area for hiking, exploring off trail, and four wheeling. You can't go four wheeling in Big South Fork except on about two short trails, but Brimstone is nearby and there are lots of old mining roads to explore.
Our grandson's birthday is coming up and we needed to go ahead and get him a bike. His man thing he wanted for his fourth birthday was a Spiderman bike. We decided on the way home we'd go by the Clinton Wal-Mart and pick one up. Gabe was born June 7th. He is going to be a big brother in the late Fall. He is going to be the world's sweetest big brother. He prays for this little baby already!
I tried to round up other stuff to do in the area besides wildflowers.
The only reasonable thing I could think of was that I had wanted to photograph the abandoned rail bridge over New River.
We went to see flowers. They were beautiful.
Below are several views of Kentucky Lady Slippers. They are native orchids. They are rare. I don't give out locations for things like this.
Other sights we saw today
Pretty green forest and an un-named small stream
We took a break and went for lunch and continued our day. Kenny took me down to where he'd been working to show me what he'd been doing.
He likes what he does as a crane operator. He had set a new cell phone tower so you can thank all the world's crane operators and crews for being able to make your phone calls out in the boonies or wherever you are!
Someone capable has to set those monsters and maintain them.
He took me by to photograph the New River abandoned rail bridge.
This was part of the old rail line that came from Brimstone to bring out coal and logs from the hollers. There was an incline at Dean and along Roach Creek. Several of the hollers had lines through them coming down to join the main line that ran from there all the way to Huntsville at least. I am still learning about it. Now I want very much to go back to Brimstone and Dean and photograph what is left of these places.
I really like New River so I told Kenny to pull down to the access for New River and I got out and waded into the river to get a better photo of the bridge.
Above: I'm standing out in the river taking this photo of the bridge. I was up to the hem of my shorts.
Now for some funny stuff that went on today that tickled us.
We pulled down to the river to find two men and a jeep. They had a trailer hitched to the back of the jeep. It was about seven feet long. They had managed to load a log onto the trailer. It was fifteen feet long. They were friends. They found the log while they were paddling the New River. They saw it the first time twenty feet up in a tree. It was hung from some flood event. It was either a foot log bridge or a sitting bench that had washed away from its original spot.
They noticed on a subsequent trip or two that it was no longer high in the trees, but was gone. One of them was building a house in Lexington, Ky. and wanted the log for a mantle. He kept looking for it and located it in a jumble of downed trees and logs in the river. They worked for an hour to free it. It took another hour to float it to the boat ramp. The friend lived about fifteen minutes from this spot in Oneida. He was the prosecutor for Fentress County. They were struggling with it so we did what little we could to help them. Kenny put his engineering skills to good use. He suggested a plan to them to help position it better on the trailer.
Long story short we attached floats to the log with bungee cords and they backed the trailer and log into the river. It floated and they were able to use a rope to drag it up onto the trailer a bit more. It popped one of the inner tubes!
It must have weighed a thousand pounds being water logged! They were real nice fellows and we had a good laugh at this project. I told Kenny "Look here! We've finally met a pair more crazier than we are!". To which we all laughed.
Once the man told me he was a prosecutor for Fentress County I blessed him.
You know he has a hard job. I laughed and asked if he remembered the man who drove through the courthouse several years ago? He sure did. He prosecuted him. He is now in the looney bin. They couldn't take it to trial because he was certifiably insane. He was an honest to God tin foil hat wearing crazy. I figured he was either in the nut house or Guantanamo Bay. They charged him with domestic terrorism, but when you are crazy .. it won't stick!
Seeing as how they only had to go a few miles up the road.. I am betting they made it. The log would still drag the road, but it was well secured.
We parted company and putzed around a little longer. Kenny saw a side road that headed in the direction of the river and the old rail bridge. He took my jeep four wheeling down through there. We were enclosed by weeds and brush.
The mud was thick. We rounded a bend and ran upon a white pickup truck sitting there. It was not impossible to go around it, but I did not want to proceed.
The antenna on the truck was going boinnnnng! I figured we'd run upon someone and were ruining their moment. Kenny turned around and got us out of there.
Paul Gamble.. Amanda... I thought about you.. Lewis and Clark!
We're the Pottawatomie County love patrol. 😆😆😆😆
We still had to face Wal-Mart so we pushed onward back toward Clinton.
We found the bike we wanted. Kenny got to raise Hell outside the store with a couple of other men who were protesting the fact Wal-Mart was making everyone enter and exit the store through one aperture. If you are supposed to social distance this is NOT the way to do it!
We had a typical crazy day in Kooglerville. Scott county is awesome.
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Dana 🐝