After spending the night at the Loft Mountain campground, we headed south and stopped at Yankee Horse Ridge.
We hiked up a short trail to an old restored railroad bed. Back when this area was virgin forest, the saw mills laid railroad track by cutting trees in a long road and laying track in the spaces just logged. The newly cut trees would be placed on the rail cars and taken to the mill. As the crew proceeded to cut more trail, the train returned with rails and the process was repeated.
When the area was logged over, the valuable steel was removed, rail by rail, and returned to the mill to be reused on the next logging rail section.
The short rail section was uninteresting, but the falls above the railroad bed were very attractive, with falls that produced a rainbow of light.
My favorite shots of Joan are when she is concentrating on taking the perfect photo. Please look at the photo on the right (you may click it to see a larger version). See if you can see her “tell.”
The Loft Mountain area had some elevations to nearly 4,000 feet so we began to see some lovely fall colors.
