Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Mississippi Travelog #6
Foxworth, MS - Thursday, 26 Apr 2023, 1pm

Whew, this is getting long: three blogs now about Red Bluff canyon in Mississippi. And I'm going to stuff 6 pictures in this entry to get 'er done.

Once we climbed up through the creek at the bottom of the canyon our views opened up into this crazy, colorful badlands:



The bottom of the drainage was generally easily navigable. It was only going up the sides that would get steep. And going up one of the sides was what our trail map called for. We could see that trail— or, rather, we could see part of it. Another part of it had eroded away recently, leaving it impassable. So we explored various side canyons to see if there was another way out climbing up over the edge.



We had fun exploring around the bottom. The colors down here are so crazy. All the earth around us is dirt, BTW. Dirt in bright hues of yellow, orage, red, and even purple. Purple dirt!



Alas, we couldn't find a safe way up and out over the rim that wouldn't involve a lot of dangerous scrambling— on loose dirt, no less. Fortunately we had plenty of time this afternoon, having canceled redirected our previous plans so that all we have to do is get back to New Orleans tonight for a flight tomorrow. Thus we could explore all these canyons to our hearts' content and then retrace our route back out the bottom and climb back up the side of the hill.



Down below the canyon we walked along the railroad for about 100 meters from where the creek crossed it to where the trail back up the side began.

"Is this a live railroad line?" we wondered.

"Don't walk on the tracks; what if a train comes?" someone worried.

"Don't worry, if there's a train you'll hear it from a long way off," I responded.

Well, the answer to the first question is Yes, it's a live line. We heard a train approaching as we were about to start the ascent back up. We waited to see it— because, yes, we heard it long before it arrived. And surprisingly it was a Canadian train! That's sure far from home down here in southern Mississippi. (You can tell it's Canadian because of the CN emblem on the engine— Canadian National. And all the rail cars have "Sorry for the inconvenience" printed on them in English and French.)



Climbing back up the hill took some huffing and puffing. It seemed like it would take a long time but it didn't. The canyon isn't quite as deep as it looks from some angles. I don't think it took us more than about 15 minutes to get back up to the rim. And the views were beautiful.

Once back at the car we actually skipped opening the car and instead continued further around the rim toward the other side of the canyon. Up here there's a use trail that skirts around where the road has collapsed into the canyon and picks it up on the other side.



We got out to the remnants of the old road. It's actually the new old road.... The fragments here are from where they rebuilt the road further back after the original road fell into the canyon.

After checking out the views from the opposite side of the canyon we headed back to the car. At this point it was almost 1pm. We'd been hiking for almost 4 hours. That's twice as long as we expected to spend here. But the time spent has been so worth it! In beauty we walk.

Hawaii April Travelog #16
Hawaii Kai, Oahu - Mon, 11 Apr, 2022, 3pm

We're back from atop Koko Head now, eating a late lunch/early dinner at a Greek restaurant in Hawaii Kai. Taste amplificaton is making the food taste... merely good.... So this restaurant probably sucks. 🤣

We started the trek down the mountain after spending a while at the top.



The view back down the tram line wasn't as imposing as looking up from the bottom... or even looking up from a third of the way up. Still, it was like looking down from the top of a hill on a tall rollercoaster— one with an 880' drop— except with no rollercoaster. You have to walk down the tracks.

Coming down the mountain was "easy" only in comparison to the effort of ascending. Walking down the steeply inclined tracks, stepping from crosstie to crosstie, involved over 1,000 bone-jarring steps. On the way up I wrote about pacing ourselves by climbing 10-12 crossties between rests.... on the way down we had to pace ourselves, too, taking standing breaks every so often to let our leg muscles stop quivering.

On the way down we both avoided the bridge with angry bees. Our legs were getting rubbery and we worried that we lacked the stability to balance exclusively on the crossties. Plus, word of mouth on the trail was that someone a bit ahead of us had fallen right near the beehive (fallen = feet slipped and landed straddling a crosstie), riling up the bees to be angry at all intruders.



The sun was in and out behind clouds as we descended. In the pic above, where I'd reached the bottom of the tracks, the sun's behind a cloud. When it was out strongly it was hot on trail. I'm glad we began the hike before 10am, reaching the top around 11:30. People climbing up the mountain as we were coming down were drenched in sweat.

BTW the bottom of the rail was not the bottom of the trail. There was still a quarter mile or so of walking on dirt trails and an old road. Except it felt more like a full mile. I shuffle-stepped the whole way; my quads were already feeling fried. I know I'm going to be wrecked tonight.

Update: Yup, I'm wrecked pretty bad.

Hawaii April Travelog #13
Hawaii Kai, Oahu - Mon, 11 Apr, 2022, 10:30am

We made good progress up the first third of the Koko Head Tramline Trail. As much as the view up at the mountain above us seemed intimating the views back down behind us started to become inspiring.



That wasn't all, though. About a third of the way up is where the tramline crosses a bridge.



We knew about the bridge from the trail notes we found online. The notes said just to walk along the cross ties over the gap. What the trail notes didn't convey is that officially you're not supposed to do it.



But I'm a bad boy.

Another thing the trail notes don't mention is that there are bees.

Yes, bees. 🐝

Halfway across the gap there's a beehive down under the cross ties. And the bees don't like everyone walking over their home. That spot, unfortunately, happens to be right where a person wants a break from laboring uphill while balacing on the crossties. But I got through it.

Update: Keep reading as We Reach the Top of the Tramline Trail!

Last weekend we took advantage of the warm (60-ish) weather Sunday afternoon for a hike "in" the San Francisco Bay. I say "in" only half jokingly because while we weren't submerged in water, it was all around us as we walked atop man-made structures.

We visited the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Alviso. Or maybe it's in San Jose. It's hard to tell; either way it's like the part of Silicon Valley that time forgot.



Don Edwards NWR extends from the edge of what could reasonably be called where dry land meets the bay. From there it extends out miles across levees, sloughs, marshes, and ponds. It's a great place to go to see birds, especially marsh birds; and a great place to get a different view on the Bay Area. It's so near and yet so far from the hubbub of the urban area all around it.

The boardwalk section of the park shown above is just one little bit of it. And it was closed this visit. Instead we hiked a loop across a series of levees. They were closed, too, putatively for our safety. We figured we were more able to judge safety for ourselves atop well-trod earthen berms than weathered wooden planks, so out we went. And we were joined by a few dozen fellow law breakers.



The first stretch of levees in our loop has a few small piers you can walk down onto. With the water at low tide on Sunday, it was quite a drop down onto the piers. And from down at the pier the rushes obscure all the civilization ringing the bay. You could almost believe we were far away from civilization, with only the mountains in the distance and this Great Egret joining us.

We saw lots of birds, of course. Out in the larger ponds were scads of geese and cormorants. In the smaller sloughs, like above, we saw scores of Shovelers— a kind of duck— and a few Great Egrets. I even spotted a Black-Crowned Night Heron hiding among the rushes. They are predators but they are reclusive during the day while other, bigger predators are around.

I wasn't able to photograph the night heron this trip because I didn't have my "bird shooter" lens with me. I foolishly decided to carry just one lens with my camera. I was half right in that decision; I took my mid-range zoom and didn't miss the ultra-wide I left behind. But I was half wrong because, with all the birds, I totally wished I'd had my "bird shooter" telephoto lens. BTW, this blog entry from a nearby park shows a Black-Crowned Night Heron.



While I refer to this area as the part of Silicon Valley that time forgot, not everyone has forgotten it. A few of us still know how to find it. Well, a few dozen, at least, because that's how many people were out there with us. Including the pair of bikers on a different levee, above. In the distance, to the right of those green mounds, is Google's headquarters.

BTW those train tracks in the foreground are active. We saw two trains motoring through while we were hiking. The tracks are part of the Capital Corridor service (external link) that connects San Jose to Sacramento. This stretch of the line runs rails atop levees through the bay— an unusual route for a train! I might buy tickets on the train sometime just to see these unusual views of the Bay Area.