The SEVEN of us headed out in the early evening. Naturally, I must describe the seven in detail: Jake, his wife Autumn, their daughter Emmelyn, myself, my wife Lori, our dog Shadow, and Blaze, the red-tail. Quite a group and, on a technicality, the most largely-populated geared up hike yet to be seen on the Ranger forum...though our wives were not in kit, so perhaps it does not count. *chuckles*
At any rate, we set out boldly as a pair of adventurers, Hobbit and Ranger with family in tow, from the location of the Historic Tunnel Mill after a brief bit of chatting with the owners/operators, who now seem fairly readily interested in Tolkien Reenactment, being experienced 18th cen. reenactors like Jake. We followed along an old path which showed some lovely original stone walls now overgrown with a shockingly bright green moss. Very much character in this place...you can feel it. The place is old...and gives off that vibe very nicely. It has the old forest written all over it.
We came to our destination in short order; a lovely 9-foot waterfall coming over a shale wall that has been extensively eroded out, leaving space for thirteen dwarves to sleep in the undercut bank behind the falls. Very cool. I don't know if we have any good pictures of the falls itself, but I'm sure Jake could get one...it's well worth seeing. The region as a whole is quite lovely, and heavily wooded.
Image stolen without remorse from the Tunnel Mill site: http://www.tunnelmill.org
We took Blaze off-leash to see if he'd go up to a tree, but he's been a little out of sorts lately...in attempting to find a proper flying weight for him, he may have dropped just a tad too low, so he didn't have much energy and wasn't going for it, so we let him take a break. Jake and I hiked down to the falls and then up and around it, and saw some lovely backwoods areas...which shadow followed us through all of.
Then, of course, we all headed on over to the pony for pizza.
Jake will hop in in the next few days, I'm sure, to throw up some pictures from our venture with additional information, but suffice it to say we have been given permission to use the site, with notice, for Tolkien Reenactment. The April Indymoot, I think, will remain at its current location due to the forests here being less dense than those at the Tunnel Mill site. We're expecting as many as eight to ten participants, so the more open forest floor will be helpful, as well as will provide for an easier setup of an archery range and practice of WMA, etc. Still, you can all look foward to hearing more about the tunnel mill site and seeing events hosted there in short order.
