Well, my report of an excursion yesterday may have been overrun by actual weather events, if it is raining as steadily down south this afternoon as it is up here.
Yesterday my friend Jack and I took the dogs and trucks and ventured into the area southeast of Hampton Furnace that is the normal haunt of the mud trucks. We have poked around in this area during the wet season and encountered pools you'd need a ferry to cross. Yesterday the entire area was absolutely dustbowl dry. We ran across one forlorn young man in a yellow jeep, his face as long as the memory of the last storm, driving through a tiny hole with a little bit of not-quite-concrete-like mud in the bottom. It was quite a moving sight.
After looping around this area on 4WD road we headed southeast toward High Crossing, and then down Tuckerton Rd. to Hawkins Lowland Rd. Dry, dry, dry. Everywhere dust and desiccation. Hawkins Lowland Rd. was just passable all the way to Hawkins Turnpike/Bulltown-Hawkins Rd., if you don't love your paintjob, and don't mind bouncing over one huge exposed corrugated drain pipe. I would not do this stretch in a car, but there was no water anywhere on the road. Every hole dry as a British Peer's sense of humour.
We headed up the Hawkins TP and stopped at the bridge, where we let the dogs out a bit. I kid you not when I say the river at the bridge is maybe ten feet wide and less than a foot deep. There is about 4-8 feet of bank now on both sides that wasn't there last time I visited. There was still a nice trickle of very iron-rich water flowing from the little creek that runs in on the north bank just west of the bridge. I'll have to walk up and see where that comes from some time.
We headed out on Carranza with about a half-inch of dust on the trucks, dogs, us. Had to get home and have a beer to remember what wet feels like.
Yesterday my friend Jack and I took the dogs and trucks and ventured into the area southeast of Hampton Furnace that is the normal haunt of the mud trucks. We have poked around in this area during the wet season and encountered pools you'd need a ferry to cross. Yesterday the entire area was absolutely dustbowl dry. We ran across one forlorn young man in a yellow jeep, his face as long as the memory of the last storm, driving through a tiny hole with a little bit of not-quite-concrete-like mud in the bottom. It was quite a moving sight.
After looping around this area on 4WD road we headed southeast toward High Crossing, and then down Tuckerton Rd. to Hawkins Lowland Rd. Dry, dry, dry. Everywhere dust and desiccation. Hawkins Lowland Rd. was just passable all the way to Hawkins Turnpike/Bulltown-Hawkins Rd., if you don't love your paintjob, and don't mind bouncing over one huge exposed corrugated drain pipe. I would not do this stretch in a car, but there was no water anywhere on the road. Every hole dry as a British Peer's sense of humour.
We headed up the Hawkins TP and stopped at the bridge, where we let the dogs out a bit. I kid you not when I say the river at the bridge is maybe ten feet wide and less than a foot deep. There is about 4-8 feet of bank now on both sides that wasn't there last time I visited. There was still a nice trickle of very iron-rich water flowing from the little creek that runs in on the north bank just west of the bridge. I'll have to walk up and see where that comes from some time.
We headed out on Carranza with about a half-inch of dust on the trucks, dogs, us. Had to get home and have a beer to remember what wet feels like.
