Flying by the Seat of Our Plans

It's that time of year again!  The time of year when we can see the Milky Way core in North America.  We can always see the Milky Way since we are in it, but the most photogenic part is only visible up here in the warmer months. Normally, I travel to dark sky sites in Missouri or SE Illinois, but in keeping with the spirit of stay-at-home for COVID-19, I decided to go to Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, which is five minutes from my house.  There's a little bit more night pollution there, but I figured I would see what I could get to come out. My primary tripod broke last week, and I finally ordered a nice, tall, strong tripod.  It was set to arrive Wednesday, so I planned to go then, during the new moon.  The weather mandated that I move the outing to Tuesday night, so I improvised, using hardware in my garage to mount my ballhead to a vintage Travelite tripod that my dad gave me.  It was a cobbled-together rig, but it would work for a night....

We have lived five minutes from the Crab Orchard Lake spillway for nearly six years.  We have never visited the spillway itself.  I have spent time in the woods right next to it and we have walked part of the levee with Lucy, but we never made it down to the spillway.  I wasn't even sure if you could get to a viewpoint because it looks fenced off from the road. Last week, we had a really nice afternoon and Laura was out fishing.  It was about time to feed Lucy, so I warmed up a bottle, clothed her in clashing layers, and drove us down to the waterway.  We took the little footpath around the fence to the levee and sat on the concrete wall during the sunset.  I hadn't brought my camera gear but knew that I wanted to go back soon. A few days later, Laura and Micah were looking for a spot for an easy walk with the stroller so I suggested walking the levee to the spillway.  Laura dropped me off at the creek so that I could have a head start sh...

It had been raining and raining that week, so we decided to go to Bulge Hole EA.  It has been referred to as the "valley of many waterfalls" in the Shawnee, so we figured we'd find a few with the recent rains.  It has been 24-36 hours since the last rain, so the flow was a bit less than anticipated, but most of the falls were still running. We didn't even make it far off the old forest road trail before we found little cascades and an awesome formation where water was running across the bedrock, carving braided channels throughout.  It was the first time that we had ever really seen water running like this over bedrock since the bedrock in this region is often only exposed atop bluffs, where water doesn't collect much.  The combination of mosses, lichens, rock, and water made for an especially textured landscape. We crossed the "creek" and started to parallel the valley north on the west side, stopping for some spring beauty fl...