This morning we arrived very early at Old Man's Cave, hoping to miss the heat, rain, and holiday crowds, and on the first half of our hike we pretty much had the place to ourselves. By the time we'd turned around to hike back from Whispering Cave to Old Man's Cave, though, the hordes had descended, hundreds of people and their dogs.
They were nice, mostly, both the people and the dogs, and I don't begrudge anyone their time in the woods, but the narrow trails got crowded with young people in a hurry while we made our plodding way up and down steep slopes and across mud pits. We took some grocery bags with us to collect trash and easily filled two, making the experience a little nicer for those who came after us, but it's annoying to have to think about picking up other people's discarded water bottles and candy wrappers and even a pair of muddy T-shirts.
Recent storms had knocked down trees and scattered leaves all over the trails, and rains saturated trails and created waterfalls where we'd never seen them before. At Lower Falls it's not unusual to see people wading out through the shallow pool to stand under the trickling waterfall, but no one would have dared to do so under today's deluge. The sound of rushing water filled the gorge and propelled us onward, up and over rocks and through mud and under overhanging rocks and branches until we were soaked through and worn out.
And then we did what I kept wishing everyone else would do: we went home refreshed. (Taking some of their trash with us.)
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| I don't know what this is but it looks cool. |
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| Devil's Bathtub. You should hear the roar of the water. |
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| No one was standing under these falls today. |
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| That's the trail. Lots of mud and debris. |
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| Wild columbines near Whispering Cave. |
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| These rock constructions near Whispering Cave make me very happy. |
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| They're tucked under a ledge. |
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| Whispering Cave. |
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