Picking Roses In Eastern Kentucky On Thanksgiving Day 2024!

 

Yesterday, Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 2024, my wife Candice and I chose to travel to Prestonsburg, Kentucky, for the Thanksgiving Day Buffet at Jenny Wiley State Park Lodge rather than cook a Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us.  When we are away from the house and have the time, I nearly always try to walk or hike somewhere while Candice waits for me in van at a safe parking area and reads.  Since it was fairly cool and damp, I chose to not hike in the woods near the lodge. There are several fairly good hiking trails in the park and I have used them quite a bit over the last few years. We have also attended other holiday dinners at the lodge with members of my extended family over the years. I went to Big Sandy Community and Technical College to walk on their paved walking path near the Big Sandy River instead.  I have walked there numerous times and actually enjoy that walking path since it is mostly paved with an unpaved gravel loop around a grassy area near old US 23 or North Lake Drive.  The paved area is a big loop with one fairly good uphill which overlooks the river.  Between the river and walking path, there is also a fairly large, relatively flat grassy area which can also be used for walking if it isn't too wet.  There is also a consistent population of black squirrels in the trees around the walking path and along the river bank.  I only saw two squirrels yesterday while I was there and never clearly established that either of them was black since both were on the ground near trees and probably at least a hundred yards away when I spotted them and they immediately ran up the back side of the trees.  

 

I only saw one other walker while I was there yesterday and he only made one loop before disappearing.  He was wearing shorts and the temperature was only 40 degrees or so.  I suspect that he might  have not been enjoying the shorts.  But, to my amazement, I spotted a few late fall roses blooming on some plants which are situated at a little memorial rock garden between the college parking lot and the hiking path.  The rock garden is dedicated to some former employee whose name I don't remember.  There were also some beautiful flowers on several small shrubs at both the rock garden and near a swing which is situated at the opposite end of the grassy area in the center of the walking path.  Since it was already only forty degrees with a subfreezing forecast, I chose to cut one of the roses and several of the other flowers for Candice who was waiting for me in the van.  It was a pleasant surprise for both of us to learn that all these flowers were actually still in bloom on Thanksgiving day.  It also amazes me  how many people choose to totally ignore signals such as these flowers about the fact that global warming is very real and very dangerous for the planet.  

After my walk, we drove up old US 23 from Prestonsburg to Allen where I showed Candice some of what is left of Allen.  Then we returned to the lodge for the buffet.  It was acceptable but a bit overpriced.  There was ham with pineapple served in thin slices, fried cat fish which the lodge serves at nearly all of their major events, turkey served sliced and/or shredded, some turkey dressing which I chose not to try, some fairly good shoe peg corn and carrots, and banana pudding, pecan pie, and pumpkin pie for desert.  The lodge was fairly crowded with what was almost universally an older crowd. It was an enjoyable day all things considered. 

Hornets Are Everywhere This Year!

 

For the past month or so, I have been fascinated by two large hornet nests which are located near a state highway near my home.  It is Kentucky 1000 and I have actually written a blog post in the past about the large amount of wildlife sightings I have had along that road.  In fact, today as I was driving on that road, I saw two separate groups of wild turkeys, one of about half a dozen and the  other of three.  But these two hornets nests are located along a telephone line which services the neighborhood.  One, literally at the top of a hill along the road, is attached to the top of a telephone pole.It is a large nest and I would love to have been able to add photographs of these two nests on this blog post.  But my cell phone will not focus closely enough to do a clear photograph of the nests.  I don't currently own a working high quality camera.  The second nest is about the same size of the first, located about 200  yards down the hill from the first about 50 yards off the road in an overgrown farm through which the telephone line passes.  It is located on a guide wire to the pole instead of on the pole itself.  

I first noticed these nests a couple of weeks ago when my wife and I drove up on two young men in their late teens or early twenties who had stopped their pickup truck in the middle of the road so they could throw rocks at the nest on the top of the pole which was not the smartest thing they ever did.  I have kept an eye on these two nests every time I drive Kentucky 1000 ever since that day.  But to my surprise, yesterday, September 6, 2024, my wife and I suddenly discovered that we had an equally large hornet nest  on our house under the eaves, attached to both the brick wall and the fascia just above and to the right of our back door.  We had literally been going in and out that door and under this large hornet nest ever since the hornets began building it, God only knows how long ago. Also, about a week ago, I had been having conversation under the hornet nest with a FedEx driver whom I know pretty well who regularly delivers medication to us which Candice receives monthly from the drug manufacturer. We had stood there and talked probably ten minutes within five or six feet of the nest and neither of us noticed the hornets.  I can't wait to tell the FedEx driver about it and show him the photographs below which I shot before I sprayed the nest. 

 

I knew immediately this nest had to go.  Hornet stings can be incredibly painful and very dangerous to the victim's health even in low numbers. With the number of hornets in this nest based on the number we were seeing on the outside of the nest, we knew it had a very large number of  hornets in it.  I immediately quit using that door, checked my supply of wasp and hornet killer, and went to my local Dollar General for another can to supplement the partially used can I already had. I waited for darkness just before bedtime before I attacked the nest.  My wife Candice is in a power wheelchair and I knew that with her neurological condition only one or two stings from hornets could possibly severely affect her, or even kill, her.  She wanted to be up, in the house, near that door when I went outside to attack the nest in case I got seriously stung so she could call 911 for me.  But I told her to be certain that if I got stung, no matter what happened, she should not ever come out that door if I had been attacked by the hornets. 

 I sprayed the nest from as closely as I felt safe in doing it and used nearly all the contents of both cans of wasp and hornet killer and thought that I had probably killed all the hornets.  This morning as soon as I got out of bed I went to check the nest and did not see any hornets at that time.  But this afternoon when I was considering tearing the nest off the side of the house, I saw a couple of hornets flying into the nest which means that all are not dead and tearing it off the house is a really bad idea.  I will go to the store again tomorrow, since we have commitments today, and buy more spray to finish the job of killing all the hornets.  If these hornets had built a nest in a tree somewhere near the boundary of our property, I doubt that I would have bothered to kill them unless the location presented a danger to me when I was doing yard work. Hornets, like all forms of wildlife, do have a niche in the environment in which they provide a necessary service to the entire ecosystem.  If they are in a nonthreatening location, it is not necessary to kill hornets or most other forms of wildlife, even if they are venomous insects or snakes, or apex predators.  I hope I never again have a hornet nest on my house.  

 

I have to add this update to my post since I went out this morning, September 8, 2024, under the assumption that all the hornets were dead, and intended to tear the nest down, throw it away, and clean the clinging residue off the soffit and fascia.  I got a stepladder and flat bladed grass edging tool and began tearing the well sprayed nest off the house.  Not long after, I saw a hornet fly away from an open area in the now well damaged nest.  I soon realized that I still had at least a dozen live hornets and a large amount of larvae in the nest.  I was also out of wasp and hornet spray so I went to my local Dollar General to get more to finish the job on the remaining hornets.  That store was out of the spray I needed so I traveled a few miles more to the Dollar General in Salyersville, Kentucky, and bought the "economy" two pack of spray and returned to spray the remains of the nest and the chunk of larval cells which had come out of the nest intact.  But I did take more photographs so those of you who actually read this post can see just how much larvae was in the nest.  I had also had to stomp and kill several, 8 or 10, damaged but living hornets which had survived the initial spraying and fell to the concrete back entrance. Also, while I was checking out at Dollar General this morning, the clerk asked me, "How are you today?" to which I replied "If I can finally finish killing these hornets, I'll be fine."  A women nearby heard us and walked up with her cell phone in hand to say, "Let me  show you what I found at my house a few days ago."  She had a photograph of a large, but smaller than mine, hornets nest laying the grass about 8 inches high.  She said,"I burned this one out." to  which I replied, "I don't want to burn my house down."  She also said that she had found that nest on her property just as it looked in the photograph, live and working  on the ground in the grass which is highly unusual for hornets. They prefer to be in high, sheltered locations, elevated well above the ground.  I think this nest on the ground  a few miles from my house further supports my statement at the beginning of this post that hornets are everywhere this year.  

One more short addendum is necessary to this post.  When I tore down the remains of the nest with the larval cells, I sprayed the larval cells heavily with wasp and hornet killer and left them on the ground overnight to completely die.  When I went out yesterday, September 9, 2024, in the morning to check what was left of the nest, the larval cells were gone and I realized that something had either eaten them, wasp and hornet spray and all, or had dragged them off to eat them somewhere else.  I looked around and found them several feet away with all the larvae and their cells gone.  All that remained was the empty cells in the photograph which surrounded the cells which had larvae in them.  I assume the possibly doomed culprit which ate the larvae, poison and all, was probably a skunk, opossum, raccoon, or fox since we have all those species in the immediate area and see some of them from time to time on the property.  I hope whatever ate those larvae can survive the wasp and hornet spray. 

"Birds' Eggs" by Michael Walters, A Great Little Reference Book For The Bird or Wildlife Watcher

 

I won't say that I am a "Bird Watcher" but I have fed birds on my property for years, own several bird related books, and can actually recognize and identify somewhere between 50 and 75 species.  I have owned this little book for about 20 years and received it when I was working in a facility for juvenile in the custody of the state and a charity gave enough copies of the book to the facility that every client and staff received a copy.  I have to admit that I have had few occasions to ever use it when I actually had a bird's nest or egg in sight to actually identify the bird.  But it is a fascinating book which is very dense in content and useful information.  It is published in a field guide size with water resistant pages and cover.  It would stand up to a lot of punishment in the field in the hands of a devoted bird watcher.  It was published in 1994 and sold at that time for $17.95 which was a stiff price for a book in those days 30 years ago.  It brags on the cover that it contains information about "500 bird species from around the world".  

It is well organized and beautifully illustrated with hundreds of photographs.  It has an introduction of about 25 pages which is broken into 8 or 9 short sections.  It is actually capable of turning an amateur into somewhat of an expert on the subject of bird eggs.  The first part of the introduction is labled "How This Book Works" which is a great way to start any reference book, and nowhere near enough reference books do that. Continuing the approach that the author knows he is dealing with probable amateurs, the next part of the introduction is labled, "What is an egg?"  How much more basic can you get?  The body of the book itself is broken into two major sections: "Non-passerines" and "Passerines" which will almost instantly provide many readers with a piece of information they did not have.  Passerine birds are those whose feet are adapted for perching on branches and other objects such as most song birds, raptors, etc.  Non-passerine birds are those arboreal birds such as pigeons, woodpeckers, and hummingbirds.  To be honest, it takes a bit of experience to distinguish instantly what the difference is between the two, but if you like birds and wildlife you will figure it out.   There is also a short glossary and a good index in the book which helps a great deal for the novice user.  

Each page of the book will have information about two or three birds and their eggs, and that information is clearly divided into separate sections on the page. 

These two pages are side by side (pages 94 and 95) and illustrate the varying number of birds and eggs which the book might have on a particular page.  The section for each bird contains a basic description of the bird, multiple photographs of their eggs, a short description of their breeding habits and a basic description of their range.  Yes, the book has information about numerous birds which the average reader will never see without going to a zoo where there will be no visible nests or eggs, or traveling the world with this and a general bird guide book in hand.  But it is an incredibly informative little book and fun to study, settle arguments with, and learn from for the person who believes like me that "there is no such thing as a useless piece of information...there is only information for which you do not currently have a use." 

I admit that the average reader who is not interested in knowing perhaps too much about birds might not be interested in this book.  But you can find it used on most used book websites for less than half of what it originally sold for and it is a fun toy for those days when you don't really want to "read" and just want to toy with an informative book with a lot of photographs. 

"Sibir" by Farley Mowat, Reflections On An Older Book About Siberia

 

For many years, I have read the works of Canadian naturalist and author Farley Mowat, and several months ago my wife and I read several of his books together which had been the first time she had ever been exposed to his wonderful writiing.  The only negative comment I can make about Mowat and his work is that after he had become widely and wildly successful for works like "Never Cry Wolf" and "A Whale For The Killing", some of his later works were less interesting, less exciting, and, of course, less popular.  But every book I have ever read by Mowat was still filled with occasional shots of his splendid writing and voluminous vocabulary.  When I was younger, I would often read his books with a dictionary by my side because I knew I would find some words along the way that I had never heard, some from his life as a world traveling Canadian, and some from his having been descended from Scottish ancestors who must have passed a great deal of their linguistic panache along with their DNA.  

This book we are discussing was published in 1970, and came about because Mowat was invited to come to Russia by a Russian writer who also lived in and wrote about the extreme north of the country, Siberia, one of the coldest climates on earth with the possible exception of the peaks of the Alps and Himalayas.  Naturally, Mowat took the man up on his offer and eventually made several trips to Russia and Siberia.  In spite of the cold war, and because international concerns were different in those days, Mowat said that he was always well received and well treated wherever he went in the Russia, and particularly in Siberia.  I have been motivated to remember and write about this particular book, because my wife and I are currently reading a much less scholarly book about that region, "Last Of The Breed" by Louis L'Amour which I picked up on a whim in a Goodwill store because it was uncharacteristic of L'Amour's western writing.  I had also picked up two other L'Amour books for the same reason, already read and written about one of them, "Yondering" which is a collection of his short stories.  "Last Of The Breed" has led me back to this Mowat book because, to his credit, L'Amour had done some reasonable amount of research about Siberia before he wrote his book about an American pilot who escapes from a Siberian prison and is attempting to cross Siberia to Alaska in order to escape.  

Issues such as those in the L'Amour book never arose in Mowat's experience in Siberia although the two men do write about several similar aspects of the region which was far less developed in the times Mowat traveled there than it was in 1986 when L'Amour wrote his novel. The vast majority of the region was what is known as the taiga, a vast forested area which was replete with wildlife and few people.  Mowat was being guided on his visits by Yuri Rythkheu, a Russian nature writer and naturalist whose works were motivated by many of the same concerns which motivated Mowat.  The two became close friends over the years they knew each other and corresponded regularly, and in those times, Russia was considerably less repressive than it is today.  Mowat was allowed to travel extensively in the country, was often given official welcomes by local government officials and greeted much like a celebrity might have been even in America at the time.  He came to love Siberia, the Taiga, the people, and the vast wildlife of the region, and writes about it with a great deal of the same emotion and general protective concern he wrote about his native Canadian north.  The people he eoncountered in his travels there were much more open than Russians are today and, at times, Mowat found himself invited into homes and even involved in fairly wild parties.  

I have also known a few others of my friends and acquaintances who have been privileged to travel to Russia in the past including a nurse practitioner who went there as a  young nurse with a Christian based medical entourage and claims to have bribed an airport security officer in order to be allowed to take some medications into the country which she said the officer claimed were not permitted.  Nearly forty years ago, I also knew a few people who traveled to Russia as part of a group sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group.  But none of those people were ever received in Russia in the open hearted way that Mowat was.  This is a fascinating book despite its age and good reading for anyone who likes to learn the history of other places in the world.  If you can find a copy, read it.  You won't be disappointed.  And, you might even like "Last Of The Breed" by Louis L'Amour. 

The Wildlife Of Kentucky Route 1000

 

Kentucky Route 1000 begins about a mile and a half from my house and I have driven it regularly for over 31 years.  It is only about 7 miles long and intersects with US 460 at its eastern end and Kentucky Route 191 at its western end.  It runs up what is sometimes known as the Right Fork of White Oak Creek, over the hill, and down a small branch of Caney Creek where it connects with Kentucky Route 191 at the Caney Grocery, an old wooden building approaching a hundred years old which is filled with assorted antiques and sells good sandwiches and pizzas.  The Kentucky Department of Highways has four classifications of roads in the state and Route 1000 is in the last and lowest classification.  The classifications are number 1 through four and those classified as fours are what are described as "the set of highways not in the first three systems, including frontage roads, bypassed portions of other state highways, and rural roads that only serve their immediate area."  That is a great description of Kentucky Route 1000.  But that description leaves out the entire best part of driving Route 1000, the wildlife diversity it regularly produces to the attentive driver.  

 

Nearly every time I drive across Route 1000, I see some kind of wildlife.  There are always small animals, squirrels, rabbits, opossums, raccoons, and sometimes a ground hog.  And ground hogs are much more rare today than they were before coyotes spread all across the southeastern United States.  Sadly, coyotes have nearly obliterated ground hogs in many areas of the country because ground hogs dwell in earthen dens and are very easy for coyotes to dig out and kill.  But in one place in particular, actually in front of a house, I have seen a few ground hogs, probably multiple generations of the same line of descent, dwelling in the vicinity of a culvert which crosses the road at the edge of that yard.  The photo below is of a small buck eating birdseed in my driveway about a mile and  a half from Route 1000.

 

In some ways, it might be easier to list the animals I have not seen when I am driving on Route 1000.  I have never seen a bobcat, a bear, or an elk on Route 1000.  But bobcats are primarily nocturnal and with the many small farms and woodland on the road, I know there are bobcats all around.  I have never seen an elk on Route 1000 but one was seen a few years after elk were placed in Southeastern Kentucky not far from Route 1000.  This county is actually one of the buffer counties which the Department of Fish and Wildlife  added into the design of the entire elk program to prevent them from spreading into primarily agricultural areas and doing damage to crops such as corn, grains, etc.  I have never seen a bear on Route 1000 but a few years ago a man living a few miles from it, actually just across one of the ridges, killed a bear on his property and claimed it had attacked his dog.  The game warden at the time accepted but probably doubted the story of the attack on the dog but chose to not charge the man with killing the bear.  I have no doubt that we have bear in some of the deeper hollows on Route 1000.  The photo below is of a ground hog leaving its den.

 

But the real question becomes, what have I seen on Route 1000.  I see deer regularly, maybe not every time I drive the road, but on many occasions I see them.  I even see them at times in small herds of half a dozen or so.  I have, just in the last few days, seen four separate flocks of turkeys along the road grazing in the fields with gobblers strutting in front of the hens in spring mating rituals.  I have no idea how many species of birds I have seen on the road or how many species of birds regularly live in that part of the county.  But I have documented about fifty species of birds on my own property a couple of miles from Route 1000 so I know there must be in excess of that number along the road, in the fields and the woodlands in that 6 or 7 mile stretch.  So, let's talk about the somewhat unusual bird sightings I have seen on Route 1000.  Just a couple of days ago, I saw the first Canada Goose I have ever seen in this immediate area in a neighbor's field on Route 1000 and within sight of US 460.  About a year ago, my wife and I saw a Great Blue Heron feeding in the creek within a few feet of the road.  I slowed down almost to a stop to get a sight of it and it flew slowly up the creek in front of us as I drove behind it for a quarter mile or so.  It kept to the edge of a mowed hay field near the stream and the timber but flew slowly along until it found a spot it liked in the creek as far as possible from the road and disappeared behind a clump of willows to resume feeding.  The photo below is of a recently hatched but dead common snapping turtle I found in my yard. 

 

On two occasions in the last few years, I have encountered female common snapping turtles crossing Route 1000 either before or after laying their eggs. In both cases, these turtles were actually only a short distance from the ridge which is an odd place to see a snapping turtle even in spring egg laying season.  One of them was probably an eighth of a mile from the ridge in a spot where the little creek isn't three feet across and not at all deep.  This particular turtle was headed back to the creek after laying her eggs near a house which is actually not unusual since I have had common snapping turtles hatch on my own property of an acre or so.   The second snapping turtle was actually just exiting the highway literally at the top of the ridge when I saw it and I suspect it was headed to lay its eggs since there is a small farm pond on the far side of the ridge about a hundred or so yard from where I saw that turtle.  I suspect if she had already laid her eggs, she would have been headed back in the other direction toward the pond. 

On New Year's Eve 2016, I actually drove up on a Bald Eagle eating on a road killed opossum about a hundred yards from where I recently saw the Canada Goose.  The eagle flew up into a tree near the road and I drove past, turned around at the intersection of US 460, and returned to sit and watch the eagle in the tree for a few minutes as it waited for me to leave so it could return to its meal.  That is only the second eagle I have ever seen in this county.  A few years ago, in broad daylight, literally across the road from an occupied home, I saw a coyote standing at the edge of the road.  But as I approached, it quickly darted over the embankment and disappeared into a field where cattle are pastured.  As I recall it was spring calving season and the coyote was most likely looking for fresh afterbirths from cows.  But the owner of that house also owns guineas and the coyote might have been stalking a guinea which I did not see.  The photo below is not the actual eagle I saw but I figure this post deserves a photo of an eagle anyway.  

As I said at the beginning of this blog post, I am never surprised by what I see in terms of wildlife on Kentucky Route 1000.  If I ever see a bear, an elk, or some other highly unusual animal or bird on that road, I won't really be surprised.  If you are in the area with nothing to do, take a quiet, slow drive across Kentucky Route 1000 and you can probably be surprised by some bird or animal you haven't seen in quite a while. 

More Observations on Reading "The River of Doubt" by Candice Millard

 

It is a very short list of books which I have ever mentioned more than once in this blog.  This is the first that I have chosen to write about twice other than a couple which I have chosen to discuss in multiple posts centered on brief, compelling segments of such books.  But this book is so powerful, interesting, and worthy of extended attention that I chose to write this second post about it.  Go get it! Read it!  You won't be disappointed!

Theodore Roosevelt In The Dakotas

Most literate Americans will remember that Theodore Roosevelt was a former President of the United States but many might not know that he was also a well respected naturalist and explorer in addition to both his careers in politics and military service.  After Roosevelt left the White House in 1909, he ran once more in 1912 as the candidate of the Progressive or Bull Moose Party.  He lost that election in a landslide for a variety of reasons including having invited Booker T. Washington to dinner in the White House as the first African American ever given that honor.  After this loss, Roosevelt suffered serious depression and eventually decided to go on a long, dangerous adventure in the Amazon.  He and his son Kermit had spent a long period on a big game hunting expedition in Africa and both were accustomed to life in extreme physical conditions.  Roosevelt went on a tour of several South American countries and was eventually connected with Colonel Candido Rondon who was a Brazilian military officer who also served as the director of the country's effort to design a route for and construct a national telegraph line into the most remote communities of the Amazon Basin.  Rondon was also the first person from the developed countries to discover the river he had named The River of Doubt.  This river had never been explored and its actual route or the mouth of the river were not known.  It was truly and uncharted river which might or might not turn out to be a major branch of the Amazon.  Rondon and Roosevelt were installed as co-commanders of what was officially named the Roosevelt Scientific Expedition.  They handpicked a group of professional explorers, naturalists, and native laborers to join them on the expedition to float down the River of Doubt and map it's route, study its wildlife, and determine where it actually terminated.  

Theodore Roosevelt & Candido Rondon

Candice Millard was an excellent person to write a book about the expedition.  She is a former writer and editor for National Geographic and has traveled and performed writing assignments in many of the most remote areas of the world.  She is also an excellent researcher and utilized a vast amount of written records about the expedition to complete her book.  She depended heavily on the journals of Theodore Roosevelt; Kermit Roosevelt; Colonel Rondon; and, George Kruck Cherrie, an American ornithologist who had several different species of birds and animals named for him because of his work both before and after the Roosevelt Expedition. Cherrie was generally conceded to have been a self-made man who arose to international fame after having gone to work at 12 in a sawmill. Millard also utilized official records of the American Museum of Natural History, the Brazilian government, and communications between the principals of the party and their families and friends.  

George Cherrie

The book does an excellent job of describing the near disasters and one or two actual disasters which struck the group and their 19 native laborers on this trip into a thousand mile long river filled with unmet local tribes including some of which practiced cannibalism; the many dangerous species of flora and fauna along the river; and, most importantly, the myriad deadly and debilitating diseases of the unexplored jungle.  Along the trip, the expedition discovered that they had been very inadequately supplied with equipment and food for the trip by the old friend Roosevelt had allowed to act as the purchaser of equipment.  They lost their canoes one by one, eventually carved out dugouts similar to those used by the local tribes.  One by one, they became infected with deadly Amazonian diseases and Roosevelt was nearly dead by the end of the trip.  In fact, his disease required several months of recuperation after the trip before he was back to full health.  Their native workers had also been poorly chosen and one actually murdered their most qualified native worker. He then absconded into the jungle to be seen one more time and being abandoned to the jungle by the two leaders.  Another native worker drowned in one of the many cataracts along the river.  One very dangerous tribe of natives made contact with the expedition and killed Rondon's favorite dog before deciding in their somewhat archaic method of decision making to allow the expedition to pass through their territory without further molestation. By the time the expedition managed to make contact with Brazilian rubber gatherers near the end of their trip, they were starved nearly to death, left with only the most minimal clothing and equipment, and probably would have perished if they had been required to remain on the journey for just a few more days.  

If you like books about exploration, discovery, adventure, and success in the face of nearly impossible odds, this is the book for you.  It is a relatively easy and engrossing read.  It will hold your attention from cover to cover and will give you a close look at one of the most interesting presidents ever to live in the White House.  It is also likely to leave you with the impression that Theodore Roosevelt was capable of performing tasks which most, if not all, of the subsequent occupants of the White House would never attempt. 

Thoughts On Having Survived A Bad Winter Storm

 

Yesterday, Saturday, February 19, 2021, at about 4pm our electricity was restored after having been off since Monday, February 15, 2021, at about 6pm for a total time of about 94 hours.  The outage was due to a combination of 3 sequential winter storms or, if you prefer, 1 long winter storm with about 12 to 15 hours time off in the middle.  The first onslaught began as freezing rain which eventually turned to snow to leave us with about 4 or 5 inches of snow on top of an inch of solid ice.  We live on a hill with a markedly steep blacktop driveway which is about 130 feet long with a large paved parking area beside our house.  I have an emergency generator which I have had since our last major ice storm in 2009.  It is free standing and is not wired into the main electrical service as the best standby generators are.  I had some trouble with it earlier in the fall when I attempted to test run it as I have always  done about once every three months.  I got it out several months ago on schedule and it would not start.  So I finally got it repaired after having it worked on by two different other people who failed to do the job.  I had test started it on Sunday, the day before the storm was due to hit.  I chose to not run the generator on Monday night since it was already dark and I did not want to go through the effort to drag it, the power cord, my bevy of extension cords, etc. out of the storage building and basement. We used candles and a Coleman lantern to get by until bedtime on the first night.  On Tuesday morning when I got squared away I dragged it out, started it on the second pull which was a relief and set it up as I usually do with cords running to one lamp and the television in the family room, the refrigerator and microwave in the kitchen, and the big 21 cubic foot freezer in the basement.  We would eat breakfast and supper with the generator on, watch about 3 hours of television morning and night, and ascertain that the freezer was still staying sufficiently frozen since we have several hundred dollars worth of pasture raised chickens, two boxes of wild caught frozen fish, a bushel of frozen peaches, and a passel of other frozen fruits and vegetables.  That is far too much to allow to thaw and go to waste no matter how good your home insurance may be.  I also took the contents of the freezer compartment of the refrigerator and placed it in a large Styrofoam ice chest, carried it outside and leaned it against the rear wall of the house, covered it about a foot deep with snow and left it to wait for the return of power.  If you have your own power outage problems in the future, this is a great way to save what you have in the refrigerator if you don't own a generator.  Just put a tight lid on the food in a solid ice chest, cover it with snow outside your home in a safe spot, and uncover it as you need items until the electricity comes back on.  It never fails. 

But my biggest personal issue in such a disaster is that my wife, Candice, is in a power wheelchair and sleeps on an alternating air mattress due to a long term neurological disability.  The main power on her wheelchair only has to be charged every few days unless she is going outside a lot which she had no intentions of doing.  But she also uses an alternating air cushion in the chair which has to be charged every day as does our cell phone.  I had neglected to get all my gasoline cans filled before winter hit and only had about five gallons of gas.  We also do not have city water and our driveway is long and steep  as is the state highway from our driveway to US 460 about 100 yards away. Our water pump is 220 volts which makes it impossible to run both the pump and the 110 volt outlets at the same time on the generator so we never run the pump during a power outage. But we are planning to buy and install a propane powered standby type generator this coming fall and have it wired directly in the electrical system of our house by a licensed electrician for all the obvious safety and legal reasons. YOU SHOULD NEVER WIRE A GENERATOR INTO YOUR HOMES ELECTRICAL BOXES UNLESS YOU ARE A LICENSED ELECTRICIAN!  THEY CAN KILL A LINEMAN IF THEY ARE RUNNING IN AN OUTAGE!  I keep commode flushing water in jugs in the basement for any possible emergency and we always have lots of staple foods in the freezer and in canned goods.  We also have a set of propane logs in the family room which heat the family room and kitchen area and keep the rest of the house warm enough to be able to stay safe in most winter weather. Food was not an issue but Candice's needs are always primary.

I got out early on Tuesday morning after firing up the generator and walked to the bottom of our driveway to try to begin the job of clearing a road to the highway.  I realized when I saw the state road that it was not at all likely to thaw that day since the temperature was not projected to rise above freezing.  But I started working on the driveway immediately since I knew it was going to be a big job.  But I did not figure out just how big the job was until I started shoveling.  What I found was that aforesaid several inches of snow on top of an inch of solid ice.  A heavy duty plastic snow shovel will not begin to deal with that kind of ice.  Also, due to the steepness of the driveway, in a rain there has always been a lot of runoff down the driveway.  In the freezing rain, it froze in a thin layer on the surface of the blacktop and later the remainder made that hard inch layer which makes it very hard to break completely free since that first little layer bonds the whole thing to any small openings in the blacktop.  

As I was shoveling at the edge of the highway, I spotted our mail woman driving past and being followed by a sheriff's cruiser with two deputies inside.  I stopped the deputies who were out making visits to the known ill and elderly although we have never been on that list since I am able bodied.  I inquired if they knew anyone who could bring me some gasoline and drinking water which I made clear I was willing to pay for.  They told me they would contact the local disaster services and see what they could do.  A couple of hours later as I was eating lunch, one of them called me and said, "We are on the way with two cases of water and ten gallons of gasoline.  Meet us at the highway."  They came to the house with the supplies and I paid them the reimbursement.  They refused to allow me to buy their lunch.  We now had enough generator gas and drinking water to last us about three days at our rate of use.  

On Monday night, about 8 o'clock, my good friend Aquila Derstine, a conservative Mennonite who lives about thirty miles away had called me as he sometimes does on a Monday which is not a church night for him.  We laughed and joked a bit and he asked me if I needed anything.  I said "no not really but I will need to come to your sister-in-law's bulk food store in a few days to buy some oatmeal."  I never thought another thing about that comment until Friday about noon when we heard a knock on the door.  I opened the door and found Aquila standing outside with a box of oatmeal, chocolate chip cookies, and dried mango which I buy to eat as a snack.  He had driven thirty miles from home to bring me that food because he said, "it is Anna's (his wife) birthday and I wanted to do something nice for her birthday."  He refused to let me reimburse him but we will take that up again in the near future.  If he and his sister-in-law both refuse the money, I will lay it down in front of them with the suggestion that they put it in the Mennonite disaster relief fund or some such charity.  To say the least, Aquila is a great friend and we have known each other nearly twenty years.  He also offered to shovel my driveway and I refused to allow him to do it since I am able bodied and had no reason to leave until I ran out of gasoline.  Aquila is very serious about his religion and has even adopted two small children in his fifties after having raised 8 of his own to adulthood.  In fact, Aquila and Anna have several grandchildren as old or a bit older than their two adopted children. Their oldest son Asa, his wife, and their three small children including one daughter only a few months old are living in a Mennonite missionary operation in Ghana and will be there for at least three years.  The youngest daughter was actually born in Ghana.  I have known Asa since he was a small boy and he practices his religion just as strictly as his father which is why he agreed to take his family to Ghana in the face of the Covid 19 pandemic. There are several posts on this blog about my Mennonite friends, their lifestyle, and a young female Mennonite author, Emily Steiner, who is also a friend of mine.  Each of these previous links goes to a different post about Mennonites, their lifestyle, and my friend Emily's books.  I am truly grateful to live in a community with people like the Derstine family and my numerous other Mennonite friends.  

 

I have left one of the most interesting stories from our power outage for last.  I called our electricity provider, Kentucky Power, almost as soon as our power went out because in our area we had serious advance warning that the freezing rain was coming, and we also have had several periods of multiple day power outages in the 28 years we have lived here.  It was rapidly growing dark, the rain was pouring and freezing as it hit the ground, and I knew we were in for trouble.  When I was connected to a live human at the power company, he was a very nice young sounding man who said he was working from a call center in Ohio.  We went through the usual questions an answers which are standard when you report a power outage and I was standing in front of the picture window where this computer sits watching the freezing rain and rapidly falling darkness as I talked to the man.  Suddenly, I saw a rabbit, which appeared to be about three quarters grown, come running around the corner of our house on the blacktop driveway and cross into the front yard out of sight.  Then what I first thought was a ground hog came running along the same area from the corner of the house into the front yard.  Even though we get lots of wildlife in our yard and in our sights year round where we live, this event was so unusual that i mentioned it to the young man at the power company.  My first guess was that it was due to the freezing rain having flooded the burrows the two animals were living in and said so the young man before I hung up.  He agreed with me that it was unusual.  But before I walked away from the window, the second animal returned from the front of house, where it was out of sight, carrying the rabbit in its mouth.  That was when I realized it was a mink and had been chasing the rabbit as prey.  It carried the rabbit back across the blacktop farther from the house than the original chase, crossed below a large maple at the edge of the parking area and disappeared out of sight presumably toward its den nearer the creek about fifty yards below our house.  In 28 years of living in this house, we have had fawns raised in our yard including five in one year by 3 different does; wild turkeys both being raised in and around our yard and eating bird seed in winter off the blacktop; a red tailed hawk making a kill on another bird in the front yard; raccoons, opossums, and skunks traveling to our front porch when we used to feed outdoor cats there; several red foxes crossing our property; baby snapping turtles being hatched from eggs buried in the outer reaches of our yard; and a large male coyote crossing the edge of our yard in broad daylight.  But we had never seen a mink in our yard and definitely had not seen a mink making a kill there.  Actually, I never saw the moment of the kill because the mink and rabbit were out of sight.  But I did see part of the chase and the end result of the mink carrying the dead rabbit back to its den.  I love being in a place where so much wildlife exists within my field of vision.  There are only three species which are common in our area that I have not seen in our one acre which happens to be in the middle of several large farms: bobcats, and I am certain they do pass through at night; bear which have been spotted within a few miles; and elk which have also passed by within a few miles.  I have also seen one bald eagle eating a road killed opossum in a country road about 2 miles from our house.  It is great to live in a very rural area even in a power outage with the exception that it takes a long time to get the power back on.  

Kingdom Come State Park--July 25, 2019

Kingdom Come State Park is the highest elevation state park in Kentucky and one of the most unique with respect to the natural features it holds.  It is just outside Cumberland, Kentucky, in Harlan County.  My wife and I visited the park on our long day trip on July 25, 2019, and I hiked for about an hour on an old road which passes from the park toward Whitesburg, Kentucky, fourteen miles away.  The one lane gravel and blacktop road extends 38 miles along the crest of Pine Mountain from Whitesburg to Harlan. It is sometimes known as the Little Shepherd Trail, a name taken from the book "The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come" by John Fox, Jr.  The road crosses through the park near the summit of Pine Mountain. The great majority of the road lies outside the boundaries of the park on what I suspect is primarily corporate land being held by coal and timber companies.  Only about a mile of the road lies within the park boundaries.  But there are rumors of an attempt by the Kentucky Parks system to use the road as part of a longitudinal park which would run from Harlan to the Breaks of the Mountains Interstate Park on the Virginia border in Pike County.  Kingdom Come State Park allows vehicular, but not ATV, traffic on the road inside the park.  Outside the boundaries of the park, it is my understanding that ATV's, dirt bikes, horses, and vehicles all travel the trail/road which is an absolute shame.  Dirt bikes and ATV's do nothing except destroy flora and fauna and severely disturb larger animals.  It is my considered opinion that those who use such vehicles to "see" the mountains and parks anywhere are simply too lazy to hike on foot, too uncaring of wildlife to stop disturbing them, and too unaware of the importance of the flora to stop destroying it.  But Harlan county has catered to ATV and dirt bike riders in order to gain more tourism dollars and have actually developed what they call the Off Road Adventure Area for such vehicles on abandoned strip mined land.  Since that land has already been mutilated, destroyed, and left a wasteland by the coal companies, in most cases, I have to admit that this ATV "adventure area" is the best answer for the problem.  It would be a wonderful  thing if all ATV and dirt bike riders stay off all other land in the mountains  and let the flora survive and the wildlife live in peace.  

Path To Kingdom Come Overlook--Photo by Trip Advisor

Now to my hike which was in the heart of bear country.  The Little Shepherd Trail, as it is sometimes called, does allow vehicular traffic and during the hour I was on it I did see three cars as I recall.  They were all driving slowly and safely. I probably traveled about a mile each inside the park and outside the park boundaries since I did a straight hike and a round trip. The trail begins at an overlook which does have protective railing, bear resistant garbage cans, and a small parking area.  I have to say that the microchip in my camera had run out of storage space during my long day trip, and I did not take any photographs on the hike.  I will try to post a few here from the public domain.  This overlook allows you to see the valley below over a portion which extends probably two or three miles.  It is a fabulous view but, since I was married at the main overlook of the New River Gorge National Park, I know it is not the best overlook you will ever see.  Also, since my wife is in a wheelchair, handicapped accessibility is important to us and the path to the overlook is not accessible.  It has several steps on a stone path leading to it.  There is also a small piece of land to the right of this path which could be easily converted to wheelchair accessibility with a bit of leveling and stone work. But for now that possible wheelchair route to the overlook is blocked by tree roots, rocks, and one tree which would make it too narrow without some effort to widen it.

Kingdom Come Overlook--Photo by Harlan County Trails

The hike was in the heart of bear country and I was mildly apprehensive about the possibility of contacting a black bear.  But during my entire hour long hike of perhaps 3 to 4 miles round trip, I saw absolutely no wildlife other than a few butterflies and mosquitoes.  I saw no bear, elk, deer, coyote, coon, bobcat, possum, skunk, rabbit, or squirrel, and the area was one where I had thought I would see a few animals.  But do not take this as a blanket statement that no wildlife are in the trail area.  It was a hot day and I hiked in mid-afternoon when many animals might have been laying up in the shade between their morning and afternoon feeding periods.  The trail is nearly one hundred percent shaded so in cool weather you probably need long sleeves or a jacket. There is quite a bit of uphill and downhill along the trail and they can be fairly steep.  I would rate the difficulty of this trail as moderate due to the grades even though it is along an old highway.

The park also has a small man made lake which allows fishing and paddle boating with compliance to the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Regulations.  There are also a fourteen other short hiking trails inside the park with none being longer than a mile.  There is also a multi-use amphitheater at the base of Raven Rock which we did not see due to our intense schedule for the day.  Overnight primitive camping is allowed in designated areas with a fee. According to the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife "as part of the Fishing in the Neighborhoods (FINS) program, this lake is regularly stocked with catchable-size catfish up to four times annually. Additionally, this lake is stocked with rainbow trout in the spring and fall. Largemouth bass and sunfish are regularly sampled and stocked if necessary". The park does not have a lodge or restaurant and that is a shame.  But the park is well worth a visit especially if you like to hike, bird watch, or fish. 

The Benefits Of Regular Exercise

Today marks two consecutive months in which I have not missed a single day of getting at least 30 minutes of fairly strenuous exercise with an hour on most of those days.  On several of those days I have done both an hour of walking at some site or other within driving distance of my home and at least 30 minutes of time on my stationary bike at home.  During the two previous months, October and November 2018, I had missed several days and become rather inconsistent despite having known for years that even two or three days of non-exercise results in a loss of previous progress in physical conditioning.  But for two complete months, I have now gotten up every day and made certain that I got exercise.  I have exercised somewhat regularly for nearly a year but this is my most consistent period. 

Today, I received what I consider to have been a reward for that consistency.  As I was walking in Old Mill Park in my hometown of West Liberty, KY, I suddenly heard another man who was walking near me yell "there is a bald eagle".  Sure enough circling about 200 to 300 feet over our heads and directly over the park which sits near the Licking River was a bald eagle with its white head and tail both clearly visible.  It circled above us for a couple of loops and flew away to the northeast in the general direction of Cave Run Lake where I have had one other sighting of an eagle several years ago.  This eagle was also only about ten miles from my home and about 8 or 9 miles from a site where I had seen another eagle eating  a road killed opossum just over two years ago.  The man who first saw this eagle today and I shared our stories of eagle sightings in the past and moved on just as the eagle had.  But, if there is such a thing as Karma, I thought that my sighting of an eagle on this two month anniversary of daily exercise was my reward for putting in that time.  If I had been sitting at home avoiding exercise, I would have had no chance to see an eagle in the city limits of West Liberty. It is also another verification that bald eagles are reproducing successfully in Eastern Kentucky and their numbers are growing and their territory is expanding.  I have now had three total eagle sightings within 30 miles of my home, 2 of them in my home county and 1 in my own neighborhood.  That is exciting. 

We Had A Visitor Today, October 26, 2018!

We have lived in the same house in the country in Eastern Kentucky in a farming community for the last 26 years.  We have worked consistently during that time to protect, preserve, and enjoy the wildlife around us.  Over the years in our yard we have enjoyed visits from raccoons, skunks, wild turkeys, red and grey foxes, coyotes, opossums, rabbits, white tail deer, and untold bird species. We have seen a mother raccoon bring her litter of growing young to eat out of our cat feeder on the porch.  We have seen an adult coyote cross our yard in the broad daylight.  We have only missed seeing both young turkeys and white tail fawns raised in our yard a few years out of the 26.  We have had flocks of turkeys in a hard winter come to eat the bird seed on our driveway.  We have had as many as 5 fawns grow up in our yard in a single year.  And who knows what species we have missed seeing because they passed by in the dark?  We suspect that bobcats have regularly lived near us.  We have had eastern screech owls perched on our porch railing as the darkness gathered.  But today we had a rare visitor come by and I have the photos to prove it which were shot through the family room window.  A pretty nice 5 point white tail buck made a visit to the driveway and spent several minutes eating bird seed on our driveway.  It was pretty nice don't you think?  

White Tail Buck Photo by Roger D. Hicks

White Tail Buck Photo by Roger D. Hicks

White Tail Buck  Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Snack Time Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Hiking At Broke Leg Falls On Labor Day!

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

On Labor Day, Monday, September 3, 2018, my wife Candice & I traveled about 30 or so miles from our house to Broke Leg Falls County Park in Menifee County, KY, between Ezel and Wellington right on US 460.  Since Candice is in a wheelchair, she could not hike or even easily access the handful of available picnic tables since there are either steps or rough routes across grass to all of them.  She gracefully had come up with the idea for the trip so I could get some hiking in and continue my daily exercise routine.  She took a book and her reading glasses and found a shady spot in the edge of the parking lot to read.  I took our camera, which is possibly on its last legs.  I do not waste my time, money, or effort on an I-Phone since I really do not care to see the majority of people with their faces stuck in their phones in a multitude of places where they should either be paying attention to those around them or the scenery. I sure as hell have no intentions of becoming a part of that rampant desocialization of America.  I also somewhat despise the practice of taking selfies and have never done that and never will.  I use the internet every day of my life but last October on a 26 day road trip vacation across the south and southwest I was probably not on the internet five days total for any amount of time and did not miss it. But, anyway, I took some photographs of the area around Broke Leg Falls and will add some of them here.

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Broke Leg Falls has a long and interesting history and I am certain that it extends well into prehistory as well. Since I am not very well versed in geology, I am uncertain just how far back in prehistory the area was formed. There are several commonly used travel and hiking websites which have pages devoted to the falls and I have provided links to two of those above. The website KYHomeTownLocator is one to which I have not bothered to provide a link because of their erroneous and condescending decision to list it as Broken Leg Falls which is not and has never been the correct name of the site.  It has always been and will always be Broke Leg Falls.  Enough said about that website and their condescending ignorance.  For many years, Broke Leg Falls was under private ownership and for awhile you had to pay ten cents to see the falls and there was a restaurant beside the highway run by the owners.  Then for  a few years, it was leased by the Kentucky Parks Department and operated as a state park.  Then, presumably because of low traffic and/or money losses, it was allowed to revert to private control.  Eventually, a few years ago, Menifee County bought the property and returned it to use as a county park.  The tornado which destroyed West Liberty, KY, on March 2, 2012, ravaged the trees around the falls and they are still not fully recovered.  The county wisely, and partly due to the difficulty of the geography, decided to leave most of the down timber around the falls to lay where it fell but cleared the paths and steps down to an area below the falls, built two picnic shelters, and set up a few other picnic tables after the tornado.

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

No one knows exactly how Broke Leg falls got its name but it is safe to assume that some person or animal most likely suffered a broken leg in the area in the early days of white settlement.  I have never seen or heard any claims as to any Native American name the falls might have had.  But I am certain that the tribes which commonly hunted in the area before the white settlers came had to have a name for such a unique place.  The major waterfall is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty feet high with a narrow, damp, and slick rock overhang which must have been used by both Native Americans and settlers at times. The overhang is not deep or dry enough to have been a long term living situation for either of those groups.  But I am certain that it has provided brief shelter in bad weather for thousands of years. The stream which runs over the falls is small and in places can be jumped across above the falls and most probably below also although I have never hiked the downstream area.  The stream flows from a small hilltop not far to the north of the falls and drops over a few small riffles until it arrives at the major fall.  There are a few pools of water which might be knee deep at times but are still not filled with fish, frogs or turtles.  The only wildlife I saw while I was there was a skink but there were several people in the area and some wildlife might have disappeared to avoid the noise and foot traffic.  But I also suspect that the falls are too high and the stream too small to support much wildlife of an aquatic nature or to allow it to return to the area after washouts.

Broke Leg Falls, Photo by Roger D. Hicks

  

Broke Leg Falls is a beautiful spot in Northeastern Kentucky, not far from Natural Bridge State Park, the Daniel Boone National Forest, the Red River Gorge, and Cave Run Lake and is well worth spending an hour or two hiking or having a picnic.  I actually met a couple from Northern Indiana who were on a motorcycle trip who had stopped to see the falls.  Visit it whenever you are in the area.  But be aware that there was no Porta-Potty on site and you would be well advised to go to the bathroom before you arrive.  There is also no overnight camping, no food available, and the area is thinly settled, but in a nod to modern business practices, there is a Dollar General Store at Wellington, KY, about three miles away which has a public bathroom and everything else you need to avoid starvation.

Broke Leg Falls Photo by Roger D. Hicks

Common Snapping Turtles And Their Quirks

Newly Hatched Common Snapping Turtle--Photo By Roger D. Hicks

Yesterday, June 9, 2018, while mowing grass in an area of my yard that I sometimes let get a bit rough, and wild, I uncovered a newly hatched, but dead, Common Snapping Turtle.  In more than twenty-five years of living in this house, this is the second occasion on which I have found baby snapping turtles in roughly that same section of the yard.  The first occasion was more than twenty years ago when I found several live, newly hatched Common Snapping Turtles in that area.  As you can see by the photograph above, a newly hatched Common Snapping Turtle is only slightly larger in diameter than a quarter and my wedding band.  At this stage and size, immediately upon hatching they are totally independent and self sufficient. For the first few weeks of their lives they will subsist on insects, worms, and possibly even some vegetation.  But don't let their need to hatch and survive on their own lead you to jump to the conclusion that a female Common Snapping Turtle, or any other female turtle, has no maternal instincts.  

My entire yard looks down on the roof of an abandoned house owned by a neighboring farmer and that house has never been flooded.  My yard sits about thirty or forty vertical feet above the level of Big Spring Branch and White Oak Creek at their confluence.  The edge of my yard is a rocky bluff which overlooks the state highway on which I live.  My driveway drops straight off the edge of the bluff to the highway and I have actually fallen on it once near the top while shoveling snow in winter and slid on my back all the way down its ice covered surface to the highway.  To say the least it is steep and I do not necessarily believe that a female turtle would be likely to travel straight up the paved driveway to the yard which is the only relatively easy way for an animal to make the trip.  Admittedly, there is a bit of a game trail up and over the bluff, through the brush and timber which I let grow there for privacy.  But for a reptile with short little legs and a hard shell that is not a walk in the park or a swift swim on White Oak Creek.  It is a long trudge of at least two hundred feet up a creek bank, across a paved state highway, and up a brushy, rocky bank to lay twenty to forty eggs which she will cover with dirt, grass, and leaves, and never see again.  The effort involved in traveling to my yard, laying and covering eggs, and making the return trip to the creek belies the belief that turtles have no maternal instincts.  The female turtles who have laid eggs in my yard have gone a long way to find a safe, dry place for their nests well above the water line.  We are talking about a reptile which lives primarily in the waters of small creeks and near their shores and I live in a house where I have never bought flood insurance.  In fact, my banks, when I was paying a mortgage, did not require me to have flood insurance.  

Adult Common Snapping Turtle Photo by naturealmanac.com

I mentioned in a post on Facebook earlier this spring that I had saved a presumably female Red Eared Slider turtle on US Highway 460 in Magoffin County Kentucky a few miles from my home.  At the time, I assumed she too was heading somewhere to lay her eggs.  Over the years, I have found many Common Snapping Turtles on highways all across the Eastern United States.  In the majority of those cases, they are females hunting a place to lay eggs.  However, there are times when they will make such moves to find a better food source or to escape a drying water source.  But, the bottom line is this: do not be surprised if you find a female, water dwelling turtle in a spot that is high and dry.