Red Fork Falls and Beauty Spot

A small tease just before the main course

The top of the falls is deceptive. It almost appears as though you could go down the face of the cascade. Evidently, many have tried and been badly injured or worse. We preferred to look and go around.

Based on the moss and liverworts, this must be a continuously wet cliff suggesting more water than we saw this day.

The falls is 100 feet high with a deep little pool and the base.

I enjoyed the bright, mossy greenery.

I like to explore. Can you tell?

In tumbles over the metamorphically foliated rocks in a narrow draw with overarching trees, feeling more isolated than it really is. 

This rock sluice below the falls was mesmerizing. From the top of the falls to several hundred yards downstream, the creek bed is almost nonstop bedrock with scarce gravel in one or two pools. In fact, the last pool we viewed was a solid rock bowl without any gravel or pebbles in it. The bottom had a bluish tint surrounded in the shallow by a thin layer of mud. Evidently, the current runs deep and keeps the bottom clean of silt and sand.

The yellow birch leaf looks shellacked as though for a leaf collection on the boulder surface. Note the identifying characteristics of double serrated leaf margin, little protruded point, and veins like a Beech tree.

Cascade a short distance downstream

... and another

... and another

We clamored up a tributary for perhaps 150 yards to see what other water paths of interest were there. Usually you think of water determining creek beds, but the slants and cracks of the rock definitely predominate the path finding of the water here.

The shelf fungi had a color and texture like calcite formations in a cave.

I appear to have chosen the easier side of the creek to ascend.

We found this unique little falls before turning around.

I see this little shamrock-looking plant in wet environments in the mountains fairly regularly, but I don't actually know what is called.

Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata)

Rattlesnake Plantain just past blooming

A break in the trees along the gravel road opened up a memorable view, because the light green peak is Hump Mountain near the town of Roan Mtn, TN, my old stompin' grounds.

Bottle Gentian

Beauty Spot is a very accessible, open view. On any Friday, Saturday, or Sunday evening it seems as though half the local couples come to watch the sunset.

The view east is toward the more mountainous NC.

The end of a beautiful Sunday of worship and exploring. 

I don't know why I didn't take any pictures of the little hike up Unaka Mountain. Come to think of it, I did- Bottle Gentian- but I should have taken a few images of the melancholy spruce stand on the peak. The trunks are not large but somehow it looks old and undisturbed. These mountains are beautiful, and I enjoy sharing them with my young friend who is from the West Coast. They are so different than there and yet so similar in how the point to the infinite, powerful, kind Creator.