9/25/12
CRYSTAL
CASCADE FALLS
Last night the temperatures dipped into the 30’s and our
furnace hardly shut off all night. Another
beautiful brisk autumn day. Sun is out and we are ready to climb the
mountain.
We headed over to the Weathersfield Trail to hike to Little
Cascade Falls and Crystal Cascade Falls 1.1 miles up the mountain.
Vermont has been extremely dry this summer and both of these
falls are seasonal so we do not have high expectations of great waters
cascading down. However, by “Land of the
Waterfalls” standards, it would be listed as a “waterfall” as any water
trickling out of a rock is labeled “a waterfall”!
The trail is a continuous climb of 1.1 miles crossing Little
Cascade Falls whose water was seeping rather than dripping.. If you didn’t know it was a falls, you’d think
it was a pile of rocks.
The trail continues in a climb through spruce, hemlocks and
hardwoods to the gorge where a wooden ladder is placed to assist the climb up
over the gorge. From here the trail has
a moderately steep climb to Crystal Cascade Falls. We stopped to catch our breath and enjoy the
beautiful vista over the mountains.
Crystal Cascade Falls is 1510’ where the Ascutney Brook flows down across the rocks off an 84-foot sheer cliff
marking the stretch of the mountain’s ring dike origin. It is the exposed circle around the mountain
where molten magma oozed up forming the core.
There was not a lot of water flowing; this fall would best
be seen after the snowmelt or after a hard rain. However, there was enough water for Billy to
have his fun and drink his fill.
He
found a pool and laid right down in it to cool off from the hike up. Where we stop and catch our breath, Billy
never slows down so he expends a lot more energy than we do!
He was so excited running from puddle to puddle that I kept
him on the leash because his feet were sliding out from under him and I was
afraid he’d slide right off the edge down 84’ to the bottom…..not a good thing!
LOOKING DOWN OVER THE LEDGE 84 FEET
It is a beautiful panoramic view of the mountains laid out
in front of you. To get to the bottom of
the walls, you’d need to bushwhack your way down but you’d have the full
effect.
The views up here were beautiful and we spent some time
resting up and just enjoying the day. As
usual, the hike down was worse than the hike up! As steep as the climb was, the descent was
the same and it’s hard on the knees.
However, when we reached the bottom, we felt good and it was well worth
the hike.
OUR
LAST SUPPER CELEBRATION
Time is drawing to a close quickly here and we have no idea
how it went so fast. This has been a
fantastic summer mainly thanks to Mark and Lucy and the crew of Al, Ed and
Kelly. We have totally enjoyed ourselves
and are clinging to every day we have left.
Mark is from the Chicago area so as a special celebratory meal;
I ordered four pizzas from Lou Malnati’s Tastes of Chicago Pizza. I will never be satisfied with any other
pizza again ….. when I get home, I will
order more of these pizzas and have them in my freezer. They
delivered within 24 hours of shipment and we just popped them into the oven. So, we lit up a fire in the fire ring, Lucy
cooked up the pizzas, we broke out our Rowen’s Creek bourbon from the small
Willet’s Distillery and had a feast! It was a totally enjoyable evening to be
treasured.
SPIRITS INVENTORY
You can tell we’ve been away a while, our inventory of
spirits is way down. Most of the wine is
gone; bourbon supplies are way down most of the bottles empty. I think we could probably get into Canada
without paying duty on our liquor supply!
I will miss Harpoon IPA and Harpoon IPA Rye beer when we get home. Neither of these labels are marketed in
Florida. The Ginger Bourbon we picked up
in Charleston is long gone and I don’t think we’re going to stop there on our
way home …. We have a couple inches of Ancient Age and Old Weller so a trip to
Kentucky is in our future!
IT’S
BEEN A GREAT SUMMER!
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