Red Dot?

Cascade Lake CG site #P4
Pisgah Forest, NC

It was a nice sunny morning so we decided to kayak around the lake a bit and paddle up stream to Hooker Falls which is on the Little River that feeds Cascade Lake.  It’s a very nice paddle and the mountain water is cool and clean.  There were a few flowers in bloom along the steep shore.

 

Several bushes of Mountain Laurel were at water level and the bees were buzzing around them.

We saw a flock of Canada Geese fly over honking their arrival to the lake.

We even saw a family of little ones a short time later.  The first shot shows how well the adults protect the young ones.  You don’t even see the babies.

 

The lake narrows a bit where it turns into the Little River.  We paddled up stream (really slow current) to the Falls.  It’s not very far.  You can hear the roar of the water from a distance.  We went around a couple of bends, and viola, there’s Hooker Falls.

I know it’s only about 13 feet high, but the power and noise amazes me.  We hung around there a little while.

There were several people along the bank.  There is a very nice quarter mile trail from a nearby parking lot.  The little kids enjoyed seeing us in our boats.  Last summer, we saw some teenage boys jump over the falls.  Stupid.  I got up close and personal for a couple more pics before we started our gentle drift back to the lake camp.

Yes, it was a very nice day up until then.  It got interesting pretty quickly.  Ya see, we were between two mountains, and the shore is very steep.  Well we started hearing thunder echoing all around us.  You really can’t tell where it is coming from either.  We started to paddle some but the rain started.  We quickly pulled under some overhanging hemlock and rhododendron to stay relatively dry.  That was nice and the rain subsided so we paddled some more.  Then the bottom fell.  If you were looking at the weather radar, we were under a very red dot.  We pulled under some more overhanging branches.  It was lightning like crazy but the bank was too steep to try to get out.  We know better than to be on the water in a lightning storm, but we were stuck.  It was pretty intense.  We were soaking wet, and we were using our sponges to keep the rain water out of our kayaks so we wouldn’t sink.  It fell a flood.  I don’t know how long we sat there but we were just as wet as if we had gone swimming.  Rain water can be a little chilly too.  Several times, it looked like the rain was going to let up but the lightning was not stopping.  It finally let up and we paddled back to camp as quickly as we could.  Our neighbors said they were thinking about us.  They got caught in the rain yesterday.  It was good to see the campground.  This is our site right on the lake.

We got some towels out of the Suki and dried off a little outside.  After getting warm showers, we didn’t step back outside except to let Smudge do her business.  It was a memorable day, and yes it was fun too!