SURROUNDING® THE HUMAN FERRET!

SURROUNDING® THE HUMAN FERRET!

            I love my informants.  They know so much and are willing to share it!

            I thought myself proud, navigating the decades and landscapes with my USGS 7 ½ minute green paper topo sheets, and their companion Geologic Quadrangles which I had learned to read and interpret.

            “Old School,” I’ve been taught by those that now know better.  Why, I even thought that I was exceptionally “hip” using the Terrain View on my smartphone map app!  Pretty good, but not good enough.

             I now know about Lidar Multidirectional Radar, Aerial Photography with shots from four cardinal directions, Google Earth Satellite Impressions overlaying terrain landscape mapping, multiple layers of USGS digital mappings, and smartphone apps like “Gaia” and “On X.”

            Tim Stoops is my informant on this voyage.  He is a caver, a prominent member of the Louisville Grotto of the National Speleological Society.  That’s where I met him, at caving festivals such as “Cave Capers” in Southern Indiana, and the “Speleofest” in Central Kentucky.

            But Tim is also an outdoorsman and an author.  He specializes in bushwacking across rugged country. “Stoopwalking” he calls it.  Going “where no man has gone before.”  Well, that’s not true, as  Stephanie Stoops can attest to.  But read his excellent book on adventure in the Hoosier National Forest of Southern Indiana, and you will see what I mean!  [“Hoosier’s Hidden Hikes, an Explorers Guide to the Geological Treasures of Hoosier National Forest”].

            Tim Stoops has now turned his focus to Eastern Kentucky and the Daniel Boone National Forest.  And I’m ready to learn his technique for stoopwalking.  Specifically in that region south of Berea, Kentucky in the same range of knobby mountains and tight valleys that front up against the Cumberland Plateau and gave us the Red River Gorge cliffs and valleys.  That he knows where to go and how to get there is impressive.  He truly is a “Human Ferret” seeking hidden adventure!

            Today, Stoops drives his 4-wheel drive, rugged Hyundai automobile while I ride as his sidekick researching obscure databases on my roving laptop databases and the 35 years of stories published in The Kentucky Explorer.  He drives forward, and I pay for the gas.  What’s not to like about that arrangement!

            Okay, let’s get going.  Take a look at your DeLorme Gazetteer or smartphone map app.  We are headed to that rough area between Berea, McKee, and Ravenna, Kentucky.  Very groovy!

             For this episode let’s go to Pretty House Arch in Jackson County! To get there you’ve got to want to be there.™ I could talk about it but that would be insufficient. So here are four YouTube Videos that will allow you to take the journey up, across, and  along with us!

             Just click each link or the picture below and you with be taken right to my You tube page! (reggie van stockum)

1: Pretty House Arch Hollow! (click HERE or on the video picture below!)

2) The Pretty House Arch Cliffside Trail! (click HERE or on the video picture below!)

3) Under the Pretty House Arch! (click HERE!or on the video picture below!)

4) On Top of Pretty House Arch and the Overlook! (click HERE! or on the video picture below!)

Pretty Groovy!  Kind of Nifty!

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“To get there, you’ve got to want to be there!”™