Gobey in August

Cardinal Flower growing in Sang Branch creek

Gobey in August 

Kenny & Dana Koogler

Sunday August 26, 2018

Gobey Photos starting with frame 96

  Back in Spring we went four-wheeling and exploring at Gobey.  Kenny had  been before, but it

was my first time.  I loved it this Spring.  We went back a second time later in May.  It was not nearly as pretty seeing as how the Spring wildflowers were finished blooming and the Emory River was now dried up to holes of water.    We have been intrigued by it just the same and have been wanting to learn all there was to see.  I recently figured out we were very close to a lookout tower, but had not

gone to see it. We didn't know of it until the past week or so.   We also wanted to go back after August first when they reopen the gates to travel.    Sang Branch had been such a glorious Spring wildflower trip.   I was just sure it must be holding onto some secrets for late Summer.   I wanted very much to find out if I was right?    We needed to do something close and something we could 

curb shortly because we had plans to come home and eat supper with Adam, Crystal and our grandkids.     I told Kenny we would have to avoid what I call rabbit hunts.  Aimless spells of wandering just for curiousity's sake.   

     I had not been completely thrilled about the idea at first.  I wanted to go where we could fill a day

of great views, beautiful Summer wildflowers, butterflies, riding, tunnels, swimming holes and all kinds of fun stuff.     I sat down Saturday night to see what we might get into while in the area?

In no time my perspective changed and I realized we could easily fill and overflow a day in Morgan County.    Now we really wanted to go. 

    We headed out to Gobey early Sunday morning.  We parked and unloaded deciding that we'd try Sang Branch Trail first.  Next we'd move on to finding the Pilot Mountain Lookout tower.  Both of us
wanted to see both, but we were extremely curious about what that trail would be like in Summer. 
We set out in that direction.   On the way Kenny realized he had lost a strap to hold the cooler in place.    We had passed the most beautiful, enormous field of New York Ironweed.   I asked him to drop me off there to take photos while he went back to retrieve the lost strap.  He obliged me.
I walked down through a farm field absolutely full of New York Ironweed that was eight feet high.
Amidst the deep purple spires were also found bright yellow clusters of wingstem.   I also saw lots of
white dots of Virgins Bower clinging to the plants down low.   Cardinal flower was growing in the middle of it all.   The edges of the field were lined with spotted jewelweed of deepest orange and
pale jewelweed of light yellow.   I stood in the middle of all that beauty listening to the songs of
morning insects, quiet and then the low mournful sigh of a passing freight train.   Around me the blue mountains and hills shone in the mist of a new day. It was a little piece of Heaven on earth.

 Above and below... the season of purple and gold has begun!

    Kenny arrived to pick me back up so I had to get going.    I spied a late trumpet flower in the fence row as I left the field.     He had found the missing strap and so we motored on. 

      We soon came to the turn for the first gated trail.  Sang Branch is gate #1.  They are closed May 15th thru Aug. 1st, Not sure why, but the gate stood wide open today.    The Emory River here flowed with water and Sang Branch came down to meet it. The river looked more like a creek and the creek like a tiny trickle of water.   It is still a pretty spot. A dry stone wall runs along both side of it for a distance until it enters the woods. 

 Above: Looking upstream on the Emory River
Below: Looking downstream on the Emory.

       We pulled up into the trail and were astonished at the Joe Pye Weed towering nine feet tall here.

Butterflies flitted everywhere.   New York Ironweed, sundrops, cardinal flower, blue lobelia, and green headed cone flowers were other Summer wildflowers present in the field and in the stream.

 Cardinal flower was profuse in the stream along its edges.  Fox grapes grew interspersed with the cardinal flowers.

 Fox grapes growing at Sang Branch. Still green as grass.

Tall Joe Pye Weed and Greenheaded Coneflowers were thick.  Sundrops are also in there, but they are hard to pick out in this view.  A little bit of honeysuckle persisted here.

Above:  Blue lobelia was all along the stream and up the trail.

    We continued into the forest on the trail.  It was deep and dark in a hemlock glade.  Barely any water in the stream here.   Nothing blooming to speak of.  It was rather boring scenery wise and flower wise.    The rank vegetation of Summer heavily encroached the trail making it like a green tunnel.    Tiny poplar trees, sweet gums, sycamores and beech trees were thick anywhere from the diameter of a pencil to thick as a child's wrist.    Too thick for any of them to be very successful in growing.   It is clear that this area is one that has been disturbed in the past due to logging or some other man-made activity.      The trail continued and eventually opened up some.  More of the same types of wildflowers bloomed here as were present in the stream.    The higher we went the less there was to see in bloom.      I found it to be a real perfunctory ride since there was disappointly little blooming.  The black pond way up high was still there, but had hardly any water in it.  I had hoped for some orchids blooming ,but none did.    

   Finally we came to the rock forms above the trail.  Here the ground was soft and squishy.  Water seeped from every nook along the trail flowing down, Not enough to be a stream, but enough to drip and make a muddy mess.   I can't help wondering when some of these large rocks are going to have the ground softened up enough that they roll down into the trail or on down the mountain? 

      We approached Ross Gap and as we grew close we got briefly stuck on a log. The RZR bottomed out.  Kenny tried to jump over it instead of using the work around made by others.  A few minutes with the winch and we were on our way again.   

 Below: Sang Branch trail as we approached Ross Gap.  It is a rather pretty scene.

Below: Ross Gap itself was full of weeds way higher than our heads.  It is not a place that makes you want to stick around in Summer for sure.  

Below: One of the things that was noteworthy about this trail was the presence of massive grape vines. They are the size of trees in their thickness.   

       We did not linger at Ross Gap thanks to the weeds and how ugly it is during Summer.

We turned and headed back down the mountain.  We thought we'd head on and find the fire tower next.     We went down Scutcheon Creek Road heading toward Hwy 27 and missed a turn.   We had to double back.   Once we got to the cut across trail for the tower we motored on pretty good.  Until we encountered a massive tree freshly fallen over it.   It was lapped down over the entire trail with no way around it.    It was our sign to turn around and leave.  We would have to try again another time to find it.  There are at least two or three other approaches, but we did not have time for them today.

     On the way back to the truck we spotted a spring that is set up with a bucket and a pipe.

Someone's engineering project beside the road.   

     It was a little bit of a let down, but I was still pleased to have gotten to keep a plan. 

We had both wanted to find out what the trails were like after August 1st reopening.    We now knew what at least one was like.  I had held out little or no hope of actually following through the way things have shaken out lately.    

    We had so much we wanted to see out in this area.  I have decided to post a page about what we did NOT finish today for my own benefit in the future. It may prove useful to others for trip planning.

There is far more to see and do in the area than the tiny bit we did today.

Below is the only video I shot today.  It is a walk through all that field of New York Ironweed.

**Edited to Add**  February 1, 2021

Heard from a reader Michael H, who reached out to say that ATVs are not permitted on the right side of Gobey toward Frozen Head SNA.   The gated roads are left open for hunting purposes only during certain times of the year.  They allow hunters to use ATVs to retrieve kills, but other than that it is off limits.  We were incorrect in our interpretation of the signage out there.   We can still go riding at Gobey, but will have to contain it to the opposite side.  The riding on the side toward Frozen Head is actually VERY limited anyway and certainly not worth getting in trouble over.  The good stuff we're finding out is on the opposite side and there we will stay. 

Gobey Exploring in Summertime--June

Leather vase vine growing along Gobey Road

Gobey Exploring in Summertime--June

Dana & Kenny Koogler 

Friday June 15, 2018

  Kenny and I went out to Gobey for my first time this past April.   We had such a good time.

It was incredibly beautiful.   We were so intrigued by it we wanted to go back and do some more exploring.    We had a free Friday while Kenny was off from work so decided to try it.

We had us an adventure for sure.   One thing we wanted to do was solve the mystery of Where was the waterfall Kenny saw on a previous trip with Buck & the guys??  We tried today to figure that out.    I was hopeful for late Spring/early Summer wildflowers. I was filling my head with all sorts of possibilities in new and unexplored territory.  

      Gobey is a former mining community and when the mining left the community withered away and died.  Now the folks who are moving into the area are seeking solitude and thankfully for them... they are finding it. 

     We parked at a different place this time and got started. I wanted to go up Greasy Creek first so we did.   I had hoped the waterfall would be up there.  Turns out it was not.  
Didn't see too much up that way.  A few old roses blooming from bygone days.  Pale pink and deep pink/red.   Orange daylilies.    It was quiet and pretty, but nothing exciting.  

Representative shot of orange daylily

beautiful deep pink seven sisters roses blooming in the hedgerow


    Well, Greasy Creek was a wash.  No waterfalls or much exciting there. We went back down and tried another road up the mountain.   It was also rather non descript.  Just more gas wells.
We saw a huge, dead Russian wild boar.  Someone had killed it and left it.   There were some views from the mountain that were pretty.

Big dead boar

 Above and below views of the surrounding terrain.  Not real exciting, but it is a pretty day.

    We went down another road back Greasy Creek and did find these old structures.

 These three images in a series are all from the same abandoned homestead in Greasy Creek.

  We saw some leather vase vine growing by the road and some orange butterfly weed.

 Leather vase vine

Butterfly weed

     We continued prowling and finally came round to a fellow and his dogs who were out by the road.  We stopped to talk to him to ask him some questions.   We asked about the area trails.. where they went and if he knew where a waterfall might be?  He was very friendly and helpful. He indicated that the road up past his house was actually part of the trail system. He shared some directions with us which we tried to follow.   He also said there was a falls up the road right by it.  That turned out to be the waterfall Kenny was thinking of. We finally found it, but it hardly had any water coming over it.
Once we got going up the trail it got rougher, but still passable.   The further we went the more weedy and overgrown it became.  We did not want to take the left trail toward Brimstone today.  We were trying to make a loop of our ride.  We both began to get uneasy with the snakey, high weeds and the uncertainty if we were even on the right track?   We figured one of two things. 1.Either it was the right path and it was a LOT further to make a loop than we'd imagined or 2. we were on a wild goose hunt .. having completely missed a turn.  We went back and took the only other spot we figured it might be.   That turned out to be a crazy idea. It was not a trail at all, but a cut made for accessing the gas line.    It was steep and scary. At first it was just me scared, but then once we got down there and it got worse and we had to turn round and go back UP it.. Kenny was scared too!  We managed to climb back up to the main trail and were very relieved.    We pushed on and turned at the next spot.
It went up toward a power line and part bore off into thick woods.   We were in the middle of the forest with nothing around and ran upon a house being consumed by the forest.   Nearby sat a dog house in near perfect condition like Fido moved out yesterday.  A child's big wheel trike sat in the woods abandoned.  It was an eerie feeling.  We turned and got out of there.  We'd just go back the way we came which was a sure thing. 

     

Here is a view taken from the really steep trail just before it dropped off the mountain even more steeply.  The view from here and the drop off made us gasp and mash the brakes. The photo doesn't even come close to showing that.  I will see if I can find a clip from the Go Pro that demonstrates it better. There is evidence recorded on the Go Pro of us believing we were done for!

       We finally came out at a church and an old, overgrown barn. It was one of those neat looking old fashioned style barns.  It is getting in poor repair and there is a lot of abandoned farm equipment sitting round in the woods.

 Above and below: old barn being overtaken by the weeds and forest.     I am not sure what type roof this is called, but I like it. I want to say gambrel roof, but that may not be correct as this style is rounded.

    

   We finally pulled over in  a shady spot and had lunch.  We headed up the road further. 

All the side trails heading toward Frozen Head State Natural Area are off limits until Aug. 1st. 

It was limiting for sure.   It was really hot and I was growing discouraged at the way the day was shaping up.   Such a stark contrast between the first trip in Spring versus now in Summer.  

We are in the doldrums of wildflower season where there isn't much to talk about. 

 I looked over at one point and saw this old rose bush still blooming and all tangled around in the trees.  It was as pretty as ever. The people who planted it long gone.  It was a pretty stretch of forest with the old roses in the woods.

 Close up a cluster of Seven Sisters Rose.. the pale form.

Here was an especially pretty stretch of hemlock forest coming back down off the mountain.

  We decided to head down toward the water to see what the Emory River looked like this time of year?   I figured it was low water and it was.  It had a few holes of water where there were fish still swimming though.   It dries up in this part of its water shed to where it is not a good place to swim.

We walked up the creek bed a short distance. 

Here is what the cascades on the Emory River looked like today. Still flowing but much less water.

Just below that cascade was a hole of water with fish in it.  

  

I waded up to the one part of the stream that had the most water and was the prettiest so far.  I stood enjoying the sound of the stream and the cool water on my feet and legs.   The river bed and banks had lots of colorful stones smoothed by the flow of the water.  

    I finally turned and walked down the river bare footed in the creek.  I finally got to a place where I decided to put my shoes back on.   I realized I was standing near an undercut rock putting on my shoes. I moved away to a better spot and finished.  I was on the look out for snakes.  I didn't have to wait long.  Kenny went up over a big rock and held out his hand to help me up and over.   I declined saying "No, I'll just step over here".  As I did so I looked just ahead of me in the boulders to see the familiar pattern of Mr. Copperhead.   I drew back. I took a picture. I took Kenny up on his offer of help and with that I was DONE! I wanted to leave outta there for the day.   Once I see a snake like that I can't help wondering where all the rest of 'em are hiding!  I figured our luck was run out and best to leave. Kenny agreed with me.

  Above: Copperhead behind the boulders.  It did not stir until we were on top the rock above it. Even then it just slithered up under the rock to get away. 

      Turned out to be a bit of a let down, but it is always a learning process with any new area.

Spring is awesome here.  Summer thus far is not so much.   We are going to try to go back one more time this Summer in August as soon as Sang branch and the other side trails reopen. See what's up there that time of year.   I'd also like to go back and photograph a couple of the old buildings during cold weather when it is not so snakey and the vegetation dies back.

 Above and below: I saw these sweet shrub blooms. I thought perhaps I had run onto the yellow variety of sweet shrub!?  I do not think so.  I think this is just how the blooms of the maroon type age. I understand they turn pale and fade. Below is one that is a pinkish shade.

       Lord willing, we'll be back to continue exploring Gobey in more seasons. I am betting Autumn color would be great. Snow would be pretty.  Who knows what might bloom up Sang Branch during Ausust? It's like the Lotto... you have to play to win! You never know who goan win dat thing.

Above: Daisy fleabane and butterfly weed intermingled along the road.  Rather pretty. 

  

  As It Turns Out--The Reality Check 

 No trip where we've questioned where we have 1. questioned where we are or 2. scared ourselves  is ever complete until we have come home and done a "Reality Check".  We got home and looked at the maps of the area.  It didn't take long studying them to figure out a few things. Kenny really put in the extra effort to figure out some of it.   The loop we tried to make: We were going the correct way, but the trail does    get weedy and very overgrown in Summer. It is also much further around to make a loop than we anticipated.    The trail we took that was so extremely steep that it scared us... was NOT a trail. It was just an access cut from the top of the mountain and the real trail down to a point for the gas line. It then disappeared completely. 

Had we continued down we'd have come to a dead end.   The house we found being swallowed up by the woods is actually visible on Google maps and is shown on Cal topo as a structure.

So it has been there a long while.   I'd like to go back and get photos of it sometime during the cold weather.   It belongs on Abandoned USA.  Had we stayed on that trail past that spooky old house we'd have soon come out at the bottom of Greasy Creek Road.  We didn't lack much.

  

I am embedding a Google map to give a general idea for those who may not be familiar with where I am speaking of when I say "Gobey".  It gives you at least some idea where I'm talking about.  

  

**Edited to Add**  February 1, 2021

Heard from a reader Michael H, who reached out to say that ATVs are not permitted on the right side of Gobey toward Frozen Head SNA.   The gated roads are left open for hunting purposes only during certain times of the year.  They allow hunters to use ATVs to retrieve kills, but other than that it is off limits.  We were incorrect in our interpretation of the signage out there.   We can still go riding at Gobey, but will have to contain it to the opposite side.  The riding on the side toward Frozen Head is actually VERY limited anyway and certainly not worth getting in trouble over.  The good stuff we're finding out is on the opposite side and there we will stay.