Close up of the split log discussed in the last blog entry, with Kentucky’s Bee Line passing almost directly through this separation.
3 grouped trees (species?) near the uphill end of the Bee Line. The mysterious rock piling is to their left, just on the other side of the line running next to them.
The rock piling itself. Difficult to take a great picture of, but I’ll try again soon. It looks like it could be the dirt covered roots of an overturned tree, but although there’s an old tree trunk nearby and pointed in the right direction, there’s still a separation between it and this mound. Plus we have all those rocks on top of the dirt mound, if that’s what it is. Could it be rock all the way through instead? It still could be that a dig is in order here. Am I scared? Certainly!
What appears to be the base to the bottle that was shattered at an unknown date in Kentucky. It has turned into quite the miniature terrarium in the meantime, and I hated to move it because of this and disturb the still quite green and alive moss and plants growing within. Its position is a couple of yards off and perhaps also below the Bee Line a bit, behind the gap between two trees that may mark its true beginning.
Moving away from Kentucky, then, I continued to hike clockwise around the west side of Wealthy Mtn., soon coming across this rock outcropping with its own small cave or enclosure…
… but *nothing* like what was only about 20 to 30 yards beyond this: one of the very few, legitimate caves I’ve found in the Blue Mountain area on my many, many hikes. The sucker is about 20 feet deep, and prism shaped — that is, its front entrance and back wall both make pretty even and symmetrical triangles, with straight side walls and a level floor connecting them. The cave is also fairly wet inside, and I didn’t feel comfortable entering even on a bright, sunny day like this. Perhaps it was the foreboding poison ivy growing all around the top and sides of the enclosing rocks that put me off, when no other examples of that species were found anywhere in the immediate area that I saw. Upon returning home, I was also *quite shocked* to also find an “orb” in one of my two pictures of the cave itself, and shaped, for all the world, like a *coin*, similar in dimensions to a Roosevelt dime but whose “face” appears more like Eisenhower on his commemorate 70s dollar piece. Hucka D. and I talk about these and other possible significances of the “Prism Cave” or “Coin Cave” in a post just below.
A picture of the blowing poison ivy adorning the top of the cave. Quite dense and a seeming warning of danger.
Keeping on in a clockwise direction around Wealthy Mtn., a distance of several football fields brings us to another ridge of rocks, which appears to be just above the upper end of Green Oz Creek and on the edge of a long and basically impenetrable rhododendron bramble separating me from it.
Sadly having exhausted my days off this particular week, I left Sue in charge of all the loot at Lion’s Roar, and promised to return and reunite him with exploring companions Stan, Spit, and Sid. I dare not back out on this vow for fear of consequences.
Sunklands 