Natchez Trace Ride September 2012

Coming up shortly: Natchez Trace Parkway from Natchez, MS to Nashville, TN, Sept. 21st – Sept 29th. 800 miles to get there. The Trace is a 444 miles ride through exceptional scenery and 10,000 years of North American history.

We’re spending a week on the road for the ride, Lois on the BMW F650GS, and me on the ST1300. Lots of places to see, and many neat places to camp. Stay tuned.

Olympus working on a new Pro Level DSLR

is what the rumor says at the moment. The E-5 (I love my E-5) came out in late 2010, and Olympus is getting ready for the 3-year cycle for new DSLR camera addition.

I haven’t had the Olympus E-5 too long, and haven’t really used it that much yet due to the oppressive heat in the south, but I don’t think I’ll outgrow the E-5 any time soon. It’s a terrific camera, and when mounted behind the Zuiko 12-60 or Zuiko 50-200 High Grade zooms, it really shines. it would probably shine even more mounted to any of the Super High Grade Zuiko lenses.

Read more about the new Olympus Pro body story here.

CampStoc 2012 at Moonshine Creek Campground in The Great Smoky Mountains of NC

Every year as usual, well except last year, a few of the Honda ST1300 riders from near and far meet up for a few days of camping, good riding and story telling around the campfire. This years CampStoc was held at Moonshine Creek Campground in The Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.

I rode up on Thursday May 24.th along Hwy 9 and 11 in South Carolina, cut up through the mountains on US 178 to Rosman, NC and followed the Blueridge Parkway for a few miles before heading into the woods where the campground was located. A few had already arrived when I got there. Pitched the tent, and settled for the night.

Crawled down in a creek on my way to Clingmans Dome on Friday May 25.th. Didn’t have a tripod with me, so had to make a little rock pile to rest my camera on to make a 3-4 sec exposure possible..

 

On the Parkway towards Waynesville, NC. The temp had already dropped to about 65 degrees.

 

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This is how it looked like after most of the gang had arrived. Most of them on ST13’s, one on a Yamaha 1200 Super Tenere and a few others. Very nice campground.

 

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Burning hotdogs for night snack.
 

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And of course pizza, boxes and boxes of it were brought in.

 

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Stories were told…

 

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And listened to….

 

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Ran Parson Branch (again) from Cades Cove to to US 129 Deals Gap. Pretty straightforward dirt-run, but it can bite you in spots if you don’t pay attention.

httpv://youtu.be/4A5bmmJe_u0

Good times. Going back in the fall.

Purple Martin Season has started

We built a new T-14 14-compartment martin house for this year. Sitting about 15 feet up on a 3 inch square aluminum pole with winch for maintenance, it looks very nice. All thats left now is to get it filled up with purple martins. Since we don’t really have a established colony yet, we are depending on sub-adult martins to start building. They arrive a month or so later than the adults. We’ll see what happens.

T-14

Next to the house is a rack with a 24 gourd capacity. We currenlty have 12 gourds up. If the rack starts to fill up with martins, we can always add a few.