4th of July!

Tren and I took the new Jayco up to Lake Fork for the 4th of July weekend. It was a great trip! The Jay was perfect!! We went down to Browns pond, the creek part of it on Saturday. We made the long walk down and crossed fresh wolf tracks and a monsterous bear track. YIKES!! When we finally broke through to where we could see the creek, I hardly recoginzed the place! The creek was now filled with sand. Many trees were missing or laying in the place they had been ripped from the ground. Looking to the right, the creek was torn wide open and a ways off where you would go through the forest to get to the gorge, was piles of trees that had been washed down. It looked like, what I would imagine, was the scene after a tornado or hurricane.

This is standing on the bank looking across from the upper side of the log we would jump off of into the water. Notice all the sand in the water now, instead of just deep water?

This is looking down stream where there used to be the little "rapids" and where it was easier to cross. Look at the trees that are still standing and see the bark scraped off by passing trees?

This tree laying down used to be standing at the base of the stump of the tree we would stand on to jump in.

Just an example of how high the water was...

If you look closely at this one, you can see Tren in a blue shirt on the left of the picture and Zeb in a black shirt on the right of the picture. And again, look at the missing bark at the water line.

We could not believe the destruction. It was unreal. We went to the gorge and also barely recognized the place. I didnt take any pictures there. The rocks had been moved and there is now a very nice "honey hole" for fishing. After fishing the creek, Tren and Zeb went for a solo ride down to check out the pond itself. Here is where it all came together...

Brown's Pond 7/3/10:

The dam broke:

I hadn't heard that the dam broke. My mom said she saw it on the news. I just couldn't believe how much one "pond" could have an effect on everything. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. Im thinking we'll need to take a trip down there again.