Once More to the Hills: Bee Rock, KY

You could make it from Spartanburg to Ann Arbor in a day, driving fourteen hours, but having a day to spare after the conference and not being especially masochistic, we decided to break up the drive and squeeze in one more hike along the way. We camped last Saturday night outside Corbin, Kentucky, and the next morning we drove to the Bee Rock recreation area in the Daniel Boone National Forest.

The BRRA is a popular camping spot along the Rockcastle river, and has a few trails winding around a large, waterpocked outcropping that I'm guessing is the namesake rock. For the most part, the Rockcastle river in those parts sluggish, practically devoid of a visible current, in fact.





But periodically, its bed narrows to tight rock chutes, creating rapids and, on the other side of the chutes, cascades.



Appproaching a pool between two of the chutes, I noticed a few bluegill finning along the edge; a little further out a gar coasted by, utterly unconcerned by the two pale forms looming over him from the bank. Maybe he figured he had safety in numbers. The water swirled a little further out in the pool and when we looked out, we saw another, larger gar. Scanning the pool, I saw at least fifteen, all these in a pool no more than eighty feed long and thirty feet wide. A few largemouth bass glided in front of us too.

Gar are notoriously hard to catch, since it's difficut to set a hook in their bony mouths. Some fishermen overcome this problem by trailing a piece of nylon rope from the end of a hook, which will ensnare the gar's needly teeth. Would the fur around the top of a large Muddler Minnow could do the job, I wondered? With my fly rod back at the car a mile away, I wouldn't be able to find out.

The trail brought a welcome respite from hours of sitting in the car the day before. It followed the river for nearly three miles before climbing toward the steep outcropping we had glimped periodically along the way.



Rocks and waters weren't the only notable sights on the trail. Wildflowers abounded there. I saw spiderwort, which I grow in my meadow, in the wild for the first time. We encountered a few that were new to us, such as the butterfly pea.



Eventually, the trail brought us to a ridgetop where we overlooked more of the river and some adjacent hills. Then it descended, passing through a small natural tunnel along the way. The entry:



A look back from within:



And the way out:



The trail dropped us at our car five minutes later. Our fun for the day--for the trip---was over. We would have another seven hours on the road, made tolerable by reading a Chuck Palahniuk novel to each other, and by the knowledge that for the first time in a week, we would sleep in a real bed. The time comes when humble cotton sheets look prettier than mountain laurel.