After Burgess Falls

After our hike to the falls, we went on the short Ridge Trail, which is a dirt trail that is, well, along a ridge.

In certain parts the trail goes close to the ridge and you can see the river and mother nature in all her glory. It's kind of hard to see too much, because it is not an area that is "kept," but allowed to grow naturally.

It was time to head back to the car, and on the way back to town, we stopped at a little country store where they had this:

I was so excited and had to have a scoop of cookies and cream.

The gentleman who owned/ran the store had a great view at work.

And a really cool windchime.


Pretty hungry from all that hiking, we went to lunch at KFC, that had a buffet! We didn't have the buffet, because they didn't have the grilled chicken on there, but I'd never seen a buffet at a KFC before.

We split up to freshen up a bit and then headed to downtown to look around. Nothing was open but the ice cream parlor, so we had some ice cream, which was pretty good. I had the "Garbage Can" flavor, which was vanilla ice cream mixed with seven different kinds of candy bars.

This is the sign for the ice cream parlor. It is a historic sign that the owners spent over a million dollars renovating.


It rained a little while we were at the ice cream parlor, so we hung out there until it stopped and then walked around downtown for a little. We saw this wall mural:

And explored what we could at the railroad museum.


Having explored what we could downtown, we went to a local park. On the way, we saw this barn. Yes, I know, it's just a barn, but in Texas, there aren't a lot of barns around any more. And I thought it was pretty cool looking.

This park had a whole lot of ducks, who were mainly just hanging around hoping to get fed, and these were not skinny ducks, either. At one point, a gang of four ducks tried to commandeer an automobile, or at the very least, get the driver of said auto to toss them a tasty morsel of anything. They stood in the middle of the drive, and then two walked around to the side of the vehicle and honked at the driver, who refused to give in to their demands. Irritated, but not giving up, they headed over to us. Rather than wait and see what these ducks could do, we walked on.






We agreed on having Mexican food for dinner and went to a local Tex-Mex place that was pretty good. The queso was white, and I've never seen white queso before, but it was cheese with a bit of a kick, and that's all good.

After hanging around for a bit after dinner, we went back downtown to look at the ice cream shop's sign all lit up at night. It was pretty cool-looking.

The next morning, before we packed up the car, we went to sample some of the local donuts, and took one last drive by the pink elephant.



Then we packed up the car and headed out, with Baltimore in the cross-hairs!

Burgess Falls PIctures Part Three

The last set of falls is referred to as the "Big Falls," and they do not disappoint. If you want to see the picture in a larger view, just click on it.


We saw this pine tree laying across the river. The stump on the right side of the picture used to have that tree on top of it. It was a very big tree.







After checking out the Big Falls from the scenic overlook, you can walk down a steep set of stairs to view the falls from the top edge.




After walking back up the steep stairs from the top of the Big Falls, you can choose to hike down a not-well-worn trail to the bottom of the falls. It's very rocky and kind of slippery, and completely worth the effort.








It felt so good at the bottom of the falls. There was a really nice breeze, and add the mist from the falls, and I completely cooled off from my hike down the side of the mountain/valley. But what goes down must go up, at least to get back to the car. Rather than take the trail back up, I decided to take a short-cut. I would have to scamper up about twenty-five feet of rock face, but what is a twittercation without a little adventure, right? After I made it back to the top of the trail to the bottom of the falls, I just had another set of stairs to climb to get me back to the main trail, and I got a couple of pictures from there, too.