Turkey Foot

Sept 17,2008

I couldn't have asked for a better day weather wise. The temps were in the low 80's with a nice cool breeze. The day got off to a late start due to some problems finding a gas station that had gas.I thought I was going to have to turn around and go back to the house, but I found a station in Moulton with gas. With a full tank of gas,I finally arrived at the Sipsey picnic grounds around 10am.Thinking that my problems for the day were over with I loaded up the pack and headed down the trail. Boy was I wrong.

The trail is very weedy for the first little bit and there is some dead fall to clime over.Once you make it through that the trail is in good condition until you get to Turkey Foot Falls the spot were everyone climes down to the creek has become very slick and there is a rotten pine tree across part of it with no real hand holds its dangerous. The campsite has a large tree down which looks to fairly new making a nice setting area in front of the fire pit. The Falls were flowing but were very very low.

After taking a moment to check out the area and plan my shooting angles, I start unpacking the camera gear. This is the point were Murphy shows up, I discover that in my rush to pack things this morning I have left a major piece of gear at home. Somehow, I manged to leave the base plate for the tri-pod. with out this I can't attach the camera to the tri-pod making it imposable for me to shoot long exposures. After much cursing and swearing, I was determined to find a way to shoot with out the tri-pod and still do a long exposure. My solution to this problem was to sit the camera on one of the rocks and then use a smaller rock to stabilize the lens.good thing there isn't a shortage of rocks in Spisey. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I made it back to my car around 1pm

On a side note, there are no longer two fee boxes. the new box is right were you turn to go into the upper parking lot. Also Sipsey is flowing but is low.