Hiwassee refuge: endangered?

Interesting posting on Knox Views about a new development next to the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge which may affect the whooping crane visits there.....

You know it's cold...

...when the rhododendron leaves look like this.


...and the edges of the branch have white decorations.


It was beautifully sunny, though, finally.


Rare view of the house from across the valley.

Sentinels

North Shoal Creek Falls

We'd seen directions to this falls, and heard them from the road once when we were exploring nearby. But saw them for the first time yesterday:










North Shoal Creek runs into Apalachia Lake just a few hundred feet past the falls.


Nearby, some huge rock formations with giant bonsai-like trees growing from them.

Hiwassee Dam Opry

On Friday nights, there's music at the community center, from local pickers and visiting bands. We went last night to see Ducktown Station, but there were also a great family of gospel singers, the Wilsons, and others.











(Apologies for the slight blurring but I can't bear to use a flash, so energetic fiddling or picking, or other movement, comes out mellow. No photo of the Wilsons here, too bad. They are cute kids.)

Sandhill Cranes

Once again, no new photos from me, so here's a link to someone else's:

Knox Views has R.Neal's photos of the sandhill cranes at Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge, and says they've just arrived. Take a look, the photos are great.

Good thing they're here, just in time for the inaugural cruise of Blue Moon, which has been delayed a bit....

Yes, it snowed

...but I didn't get any pictures. Dealing with computer problems so the most I saw of it was flurries along the road to and from the repair shop. We had only a little accumulation here, enough to coat the grass in the shady places in the yard, but that's it. There was much more in the mountains to the north and east of us, I hear.

Some really nice snow in Boone, though, according to Marie's recent photos on Blue Ridge Blog; Fred First and Doug Thompson also got shots of lighter accumulation in the Virginia mountains.

The computer? Still down but working on the backup laptop. Will try to get some new photos soon....

New Year's Day

Some pictures from the top of Brasstown Bald in north Georgia:


It was a beautiful morning, but you can see the cold front arriving.








Left from the Tour de Georgia race last year?




Couple on the trail.

I'm still devastated by Google's dropping of photo uploading software Hello! and Bloggerbot. I have tried uploading from Picasa using Blog This, and it won't connect. I can load each photo to the blog using Blogger (very slow!), or link to Picasaweb, but Picasaweb photos bog the blog down. So now I'm uploading to Flickr again, and linking directly. Next I'll redo the photos I loaded the other day.