Flying by the Seat of Our Plans

Micah invited Lucy and I to join him and Steven for a hike to Panther's Den, which is one of the closer hikes to home.  During my last trip to Bulge Hole with Laura and Lucy prior to the stay-at-home order (post in the works), I tried to use the our new Olympus point-and-shoot (upgraded from TG-5 to TG-6) for some wildflower closeups, with mixed success. I had since done some reading and adjusting of settings in the camera and was excited to get out and see if I could improve. It was forecasted to get up to near 80 degrees, which was a sharp contrast to the last hike when it was substantially cooler.  Using the Ergo in the winter, I had learned it would make Lucy and I hot, so we both wore short sleeves for the trip.  I also had to plan on how to keep the milk cool, and Laura and I discussed a few solutions and came up with what we thought would be a winner.  We forgot one crucial step though... The hike started out well.  Both parties arrived in our sepa...

Micah and I were off on another hike with Lucy to give Laura a baby-free work day.  This time, I was eager to go to Cane Branch Falls in the Burden Falls Wilderness.  I had planned to take portraits of Laura there last year as part of her photo sessions, but we ran out of time.  I wanted to go visit it in the spring when there would surely be some water running. We figured that the falls would be a quick hike as it wasn't far from the road and it was a small waterfall that wouldn't give us too many angles to photograph.  Honestly, we didn't have any high expectations for the hike and had planned to drive to some other waterfalls to fill the day.  We left our lunches in the truck and headed north on the trail for a while.  We were wrapped up in conversation and passed the turn off the trail to do down into the rocky glade, so decided to bushwhack over a hill to get there.  We ended up at the top of the glade on the north side but were able to find ...