Geeky Wednesday: The Big Rock

Since my fabulous muscle man took a few extra days off from work last week to celebrate my birthday and the 4th, we decided to go out on Tuesday for some fun exploring! =) Not wanting to get too far away from home, we chose to run up the road to where we're getting married =D The muscle man has only been once, and the times I've been it's been all business, so neither of us has really had a chance to see the whole property, and it's pretty massive! Just adjacent to the chapel is a summer camp, so there's plenty of trails and such that the campers use, and a natural rock face for climbing too!

But we started our little journey over on the chapel side of the property, getting a closer look at what's left of the old home site that used to be on the property. (At least I think that's how the story goes... Our tour guide-the property's curator and manager-wasn't there, he took a long holiday weekend too!) Whatever the story behind these little half walls and chimney, and the well next to it, they are gorgeous! Definitely hoping some of our wedding guests find their way over to it, it's only a little way behind the reception building =) 

From there we headed out to the lake, and to the little boat house. It's for storage for the campers, and an arts and crafts house too! If you've ever watched one of those 90's summer camp movies, this place would have been right at home. I'm so jealous there wasn't a camp like this where I grew up =P

The muscle man wanted to bring the dog along for our little outing, and he loved it! It was definitely more of a workout than what the dog is used to though... See that rock jutting out from the corner of that second photo?

This rock.. no biggie, looks pretty close, right?

Well we had heard there was a trail that took you over to it, so off we went! Luckily it was a pretty wide path, thanks to the campers, but mostly, it was far enough away from the water that there was excellent tree cover, and shade! We went mid-morning, but it was still absurdly hot! But after passing the dam (which was super pretty and had this amazing iron release valve at the bottom) we finally made it to the rock, and found nice little arrows directing us the safe way to scale to the top!

Remember that boat house/crafts center?

At this point, I was really regretting the decision to leave the 50mm lens on my camera, instead of my more versatile 18-200... but I was still able to get some fun shots!

 The dog was so brave, and surprisingly nimble on the rocks too! He just kept hopping along like he'd been up there a hundred times, he only hesitated occasionally when he was about to step onto a narrow ridge that had a deep drop on the other side =P









And there's that 50mm problem creeping in... Combined with the fact I was shooting from the hip, and that the dog was moving... But still, I mostly got his snout in the shot, and I just love that DOF, so I'm keeping it!

I didn't take my tripod either, so I was really pleased to be able to get a shot of both of us on top of the big rock, despite the fact you can't really tell we're so high up on a massive rock, sitting feet away from a sheer dropoff...

 Then it was time to head back, since we didn't exactly come prepared to repel off the rock, we really had no reason to keep baking ourselves in the insane heat, so down we went.

But I was able to convince my tired muscle man to go a bit out of our way to go to the bottom part of the rock face for a few photos =D I love rock faces, they make for the most amazing backdrops! It's really a shame the rock is so far away or I'd probably wind up over there on my wedding day for some pics (even though supposedly there's a golf cart path to it, it's still quite a bit away from the ceremony, and it's going to be hot enough in the middle of August without running all over the place haha)

Overall it was a fabulous little excursion, it was great to be able to go all over the property and have the chance to find some great spots for pictures for the wedding, but even more impressive was that rock! I've been to the mountains in TN and such before, but this is just a massive rock, jutting out near a gorgeous lake... With no rails or anything to keep you in a certain area. I can only imagine how much fun the campers have repelling off of it, but I was quite content to keep both my feet firmly planted thankyouverymuch =P