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Angel Falls Overlook, Big South Fork NRRA.
Fog moves down the gorge as backers enjoy an evening riverside fire in this moon lit scene.
180 image stack of 25 second exposures.
Among my favorite arches, split bow arch is inside Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, Kentucky.
The Big South Fork of the Cumberland River National River and Recreational Area during a summer day.
Big South Fork NRRA
Kentucky
My favorite Kentucky waterfall to photograph. Compositions are endless and recent rainfall has a major effect on it's flow. One could visit a hundred times and never get the exact same images.
Twin Arches was a pleasant surprise. The arch in this photo is half of the Twin Arches of Scott County, Tennessee. It rests within the federal Big South Fork National River Recreation Area. It is called South Arch because it sits to the south of its bigger sibling of the north, appropriately named North Arch.
Scott County skirts the southern border of Central Kentucky.
It doesn't look that wet but it was.
If this were out West, a cowboy explorer would probably have dismounted his horse, looked at the landscape, and named this place after the first thing that he related to, Horseshoe Bend. But here in Appalachia, Eastern Kentuckians, probably miners, named this spot of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, Devil's Jump. It's a cultural leap.
Looking upstream from the Devil's Jump overlook. There had been a steady rain during the evening, but if finally stopped shortly before nightfall.
An old inland sea left behind compact sand, which eroded to become arches and canyons on its western (Utah) and eastern (Kentucky/Tennessee) shores. One set of arches and canyons are in a desert landscape and the other set of arches and gorges are under cover of a dense Appalachian forest, which is one of the richest and oldest biomes on the planet. The arches in the West on the Colorado Plateau are famous. The eastern ones on the Cumberland Plateau are not.
Shhh, don't tell anyone. I like having this beautiful place all to myself. If you come, watch out for bears.
Kentucky's Daniel Boone National Forest and Big South Fork National Recreational Area and River are as if the mesas, bluffs, arches, and sculpted sandstones of Utah's dry Canyonlands were consistently sprinkled with rain and covered in lush forests. It's magical walking in these woods—spring, summer, fall, and winter.
I watched a moist cloud funnel through a gorge, hiding the canyon and river below. Canyonlands, mesas, arches, and sandstone rock formations here are covered with ancient forests.
South Arch of the Twin Arches
Big South Fork
Tennessee
Tennessee must have gone to Utah and stolen a couple of arches. This is the South Arch, whose opening is 76 feet across with a clearance of around 45 feet. About three hanfred feet around the ridge is North Arch, whose opening is 92 feet across with a clearance of 70 feet. Conditions weren't good for photographing the North Arch, so the South Arch will have to do for now.
Big South Fork NRRA
Yamacraw, KY
A very finicky waterfall in the Big South Fork. This is different every time one visits it, more so than any other falls I know of in Kentucky. I also found out how great of a wildflower hike this is in the spring, sort of. I was about a week late for the peak, but I still saw Yellow, Southern Red, and Southern erect Trillium, Geraniums, Dwarf Crested Iris, Cream Violets, just to name a few species.
Far Easteners and a British author called it Shangrila, thinking it was hidden in the Kunlun Mountains. But the mythic place actually was much further west. Appalachian locals simply called it Hootin' Hattie Knob, a place of eternal shindiggery.
This is the setting sun from East Rim Overlook at Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area. That is the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River in the gorge below. Although winter solstice officially hit at night East Coast time on Dec 21; nonetheless, December 22 was virtually tied when it came to being the shortest day of the year (within a second).