Bucket Listing 2013

We're filling our bucket quick quickly haha! My muscle man decided to jot down a list of 'bucket list' items he'd like to do in 2013, and since his birthday comes at the first of the year, he took advantage of the warm-ish weather to go ahead and (almost) knock one of the items off the list! He really wants to go exploring in a cave this year, and we had heard there were some 'off the map' ones at Desoto State Park in Alabama. So after a little sweet talking by me to the park ranger, we had our (literally!) hand drawn map in hand and off we went! No such luck in find the real cave, but we did get half-way there with a (man made, but several hundred years ago) cove/overhang in  the rock wall =D

First though we went to the park's namesake waterfall, desoto falls, which has a man-made dam just before cascading over a gorgeous rock face... Here's the view you get from the normal, easy to walk from the parking lot overlook: (I only took my 50mm lens with me, since I knew we'd be in possibly treacherous areas and didn't want to risk my expensive--not to mention heavy to carry on a several mile hike--lens...so my angles were quite limited)







And then here's  the view from the mile or so hike that we thought would take us down to the river's edge after swinging toward the waterfall (it didn't.. but still, very glad we took the detour, this view was absolutely amazing!!!) If you look really closely you can see little people off to the left side, that's where the first photo was taken.

So, slightly disappointed that the trail didn't take us down to the water after the gorgeous overlook, we tried again to figure out where the trail the park ranger had drawn for us was... We finally found it, but were way too tired to hope that we were right and continue on down river and away from our car... Instead we walked around between the two trails, which gave us some really amazing vantages and it's also where we discovered the little welsh cave (named apparently because welsh settlers carved them, I think I remember the ranger telling us).

See that little person at the bottom left? That's my muscle man, about 20 feet away from the rock face that goes up so far you can't see the sunlight!! I wish I would have had my regular lens to really capture how huge it was! I was also concerned my battery wasn't going to last, so I didn't take many photos in case we did find the big cave and I wanted to use a battery-draining flash to light photos in it...

And here's the whole expedition group!! We even brought the dog along with us, he absolutely loved exploring! =D Granted, he was so excited when we finally got home from our journey haha, his poor little paws were exhausted after 2 days of hiking!!













From the very back of the cave to the opening, I'd say it was probably a good 30-40 feet? Lol I'm really bad with distances, but suffice to say it was quite large! I think all three of us sat down on that large rock to the left with plenty of room to spare... The 50mm lens really didn't do it justice, but I was very glad to have a lighter weight camera than my other lens, which is a beast...

 Oh, and then we decided to stay for the night because my muscle man wanted so badly to find the cave, and we figured that since we had found the unmarked trail that was close enough to merit staying, and I certainly wasn't going to tell him no on his birthday trip!! But that's another story for another day =D