Hair Attitude.

 Hah! Fooled yah!

 

I like wash and wear stuff.

My Selfie while waiting for a to go order at Culvers. 

Hey, I think hair is overrated by the beauty industry. I think men are made to believe that women, all women should have glorious locks of flowing hair. Well, some do! And some don't. Personally, I wear a baseball cap most of the time when doing anything outside.

Over the many many years of life, I've had many do's.

The colors have changed, from dark lustrous hair to some brownish stuff with lots of glistening silvers that really shine when I am in the sunlight.

But in the end, there I am, that person that wanders through the woods with a baseball cap or a winter hat.

My hair is there, it can be a bother, a hinderance, or a royal pain in the tush.

The girl that does my hair knows that I'll go home and put on an old baseball cap and wander out into the woods. 

What was hubby's reaction? I brought him a Mushroom Swiss Burger with fries and a soda. He grabbed the food with delight and then stopped and casually said...

"It looks nice."

Hair? It really doesn't matter to me that much because in the end...I'm the one who always ...

Prefers Hats!

Hiking with Charlie

This has been a tough week in a few ways but I won't go into those details. I was able to eek out a couple of hours to grab Charlie and take him with me to KVR [Kickapoo Valley Reserve].

I was surprised that I was the only vehicle in the parking area. In fact I'd passed several parking spots and hadn't seen anyone. Imagine my glee when I shared this information with Charlie. Poor Charlie wasn't exactly being gleeful. Sometimes he gets a wee bit worked up and a little car sick.

I needed a short quick Nature Fix so I chose Weister Creek.

We were not disappointed.

Pano of an ice 'cave'

Charlie and I climbed up into the cave on the top right and set up the camera and stood inside. I have wanted to do this for a long time. Photos rarely give anyone the true perspective of what we are seeing.

If you are wondering what is on my head. Well, it is my Skunk Hat. It has a face and a tail. It is definitely my most prized hat of all time. My regret is that it I can only wear it in cold weather.

By February, depending on the temperatures, I would be standing behind a wall of ice and the sandstone behind me would be slick with dripping ice. The Reserve actually offers tours on their website but cautions that a person should be in pretty good shape as the hike is demanding.

Climbing into these areas can be a bit tricky.

Charlie and I had some snacks here before moving on to the second formation.

This set of caves produces some of the most interesting ice colors I've ever seen. The ice reflects tones of blue, green, and yellow. The cave at the top generally becomes a wall of ice. This is only a small portion of this rather large area.

Charlie and I had another destination in mind. We wanted to walk the old equine trail and gaze at the Weister Creek ice.

The water is low this year, but thank goodness there is still seepage from the hillsides.

Yet we were still not at our destination. We had to take the 'super' secret old equine trail to one more place.

We spent a while here listening to the water run over the rocks and investigating the animals prints in the sand.

Charlie saw me pick up my backpack and he scurried up the next leg of the faint trail. I called him back, laughing. He knows these trails as well as he knows his own yard.

He trotted over and looked up at me with his soulful eyes. If it had been up to me, we'd have gone on exploring until dark.

The short days with all the shadows and light were amazing. I explained this to Charlie as we headed home.

He was disappointed and explained to me that the smells he found were simply amazing. 

I like hats. Hats.

If I could have been and Indian Brave, I would have been. They had cool hats.

 I've always been a Hat person. I love hats. 

Many times my parents would let me dress in whatever I wanted to go out and play.

I think my mom took away that red furry thing on my head eventually. She thought it was nasty. I thought it fit me perfectly. I was more of a Wild Thing than a child.

I loved that nasty scrap of fur on my head. It disappeared.

Sometimes people gave me hats and I'd wear them a bit, but I always liked picking my own.

My Skunk Hat is my most prized hat. Rich bought it for me for Christmas.

And I have my fall/spring hat.

Or my Fox Hat with a Tail. I love having a tail on a hat. This hat is for subzero weather.

My chores hat.

I've nearly worn this one out. When I hold it up to the light I can almost see through it.

If you are wondering why I don't wear stocking caps ... I just don't like them.

I went to replace this hat and darn it.

I could only get this style in white. Not my choice, but it is warm.

A fall/spring hat that is just fun. It keeps the hair from getting in my face. My go to town hat. I can pretend to be fancy.

And then my super warm Mongolian [not real fur] hat. I wore this instead of the Fox hat while hiking the Reserve. Rich always points out that hunters might see the fur as something to shoot at. 

I wore this in very cold weather with some wicked wind chills.

This week this is my favorite hat.

For summer? I have a collection of Baseball caps. My favorite one used to be a black plain hat that has faded to some ugly brown now.

Look at it this way. I don't have to worry about bad hair days. I can have them all of the time and cover it up.

I like hats.

Guess I will always be that way...

Ice Hunting part II

After breakfast, we packed our backpacks and made sure that Rich was comfortable. He said he was going to lay down and nap.

So the Gang and I + Dogs, headed towards the Kickapoo Valley Reserve. KVR had their annual Winterfest going on and we went past the building and headed out to the area that I'd explored in mid December just days before Rich's hospitalization.

Those who run the reserve have put up some signs that would help a person locate the 'Ice Caves', but if you are a person that understands how our peculiar landscape works, you'd have no trouble finding the ones that are popular and the ones that others usually don't know about.

We wore ice cleats or Yak Traks. With all the snow melt and rain we'd had earlier this week any trails would be ice packed. Extra traction really does help.

We took Scout and Charlie and they had a blast. I was amazed at how athletic Charlie really is with those short stubby legs of his.

Here is a pano shot much like one I did in December. Except there is Daryl in the middle-right of the photo for perspective.

When walking up on this place you become literally stunned by how large it is and how incredible it is.
I stood with my friends and asked them if our eyes were deceiving us like I felt it had last month.

Doesn't it look like there are floating islands of trees? I thought it was just how things looked in the camera.
But we all agreed, it was bizarre and beautiful.

We came in above the second formation. The 'caves' are large enough to stand in. The warm winter and the recent rains have melted the old ice and the recent cold snap is freezing the water that is coming through the rocks.
In the above shot, there is Daryl again to the right and to the left is Charlie...or is it Scout? I can't tell!

Well this should give you some sort of idea what it was like. In a really cold winter, this would be a wall of ice of multiple colors from all the minerals in the land and rocks.

Charlie is inspecting a cascade of ice that has fallen in the last warm up.

Below...just other cool shots.

In this area, we stopped and ate some snacks and the hot chocolate I carried in the tiny thermos was so delicious.

We traveled along the ridge top and then descended into the valley next to the creek. This was not a creek like the one in our little valley. This was a proper creek.

We stood looking around and then noticed the ice on the sandy 'bluff' of the creek.

The colors were amazing and you could see where the water had been higher during the first part of the week.

I picked up Charlie as I was afraid that he'd get out on the thin ice along the edge of the creek.
My friend Amanda snapped a shot of us.
I love this photo!

Further down the creek we spotted some odd colored ice.

I called it 'Sherbert Ice' ....really, it looked orange!

To get a proper shot of this ice, we'd have had to walk around back to the parking lot and then follow another long trail to get across the creek to see this.
It really would have been worth it.

But we headed back to the vehicle and headed home, so we could rest and eat supper.

After dark we planned on a night hike with head lamps.

I didn't get many good shots, I didn't dress warm enough for some reason. However watching the clouds and the stars above was worth the bit of chill I had.

There is nothing that beats a night hike with friends....
Here are a couple of shots... and how we set up.

My shot didn't turn out very well for this experiment. In fact it sort of came out quite ugly. However I did nab a shot of the ice wall in our creek. You can see the water slowly seeping over the ice that is already there. I had my friends use their headlamps to light up the area.

And then there is the utter failure of a shot of the creek just using a crescent moon.

All was not lost however.

I loved discovering the Orange Ice.

And in one of the ice caves I found an intriguing ice shape.

I'll leave you with my favorite shot of the weekend.

Ice Sculpture: