Blue Ridge Birthday Party

This weekend he headed up to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a night in a cabin with Birthday Girl, Liz. We spent some time trying to fly fish in the murky Toccoa River right behind the cabin and Derek pulled out a small Brown trout. I tried my hand from the shore and only got the line tangled. On Saturday we went to Stanley Gap and hike short trail where we saw some waterfalls on part of the Benton McKaye Trail. Then we hiked along a stretch of Stanley Creek. On Sunday we tried to find another spot to fly fish and wound up taking a small forest road into public National Forest land. Lauren and I were worried that our car wouldn't make it all the way. So once we got to a place to turn around we left the car and got into Liz and Derek's. It drove all four of us plus 2 dogs and 2 fetuses all the way to the forest service gate and then we hiked down to a secluded stretch of the river where we hung out for awhile. Spring is great in Georgia but it is quickly tuning into summer with temps in the mid 80s recently.


View Blue Ridge in a larger map

Blood Mountain

This Saturday we went north into the Blood Mountain Wilderness to climb to the top of Georgia's 4th highest peak by the same name. It was our second time there but the first trip in a few years. We found a 5.5 mi loop hike that climbs just over 2000 ft from a parking lot just past a popular destination on the Appalachian Trail: Neels Gap. It's a beautiful, windy drive up to the trailhead and a pretty scenic hike with great views from the top. There are actually three trails you take to complete the loop. It begins on the Byron Reece Trail and then splits so that you can take the AT up for a steep ascent or take the left fork and stay on the Freeman Trial until you meet back up with the AT on the backside. Then you can hike the AT up and over Blood Mountain back to Reece and the parking lot. This is what we did. It was a good option for a pregnant woman out in the nearly 80 degree heat. The top of the mountain has plenty of spots to sit and relax, eat lunch, and take in unobstructed views. There's also a shelter at the top for thru-hikers. One fun thing to do if you're hiking toward Neels Gap is to ask the people you run into if they just came from Maine. Everyone loves that.

You can find good directions and a description of the hike here.

Soap on a Rope

I have not been posting a lot lately but several things have happened. One thing I have been doing is trying to get outside climbing while the weather is prime. I've been able to get to Rocktown, GA a few times and have been working on a fun classic there called Soap on a Rope. This photo is when I tried it on Feb 27th. I did not get it that day. But after we went to Cloudland Canyon in March we went there for the day before heading back home. That time I was able to get it on one of my last tries. It felt good to finally climb it.

Here is a video of someone doing it more easily. Maybe Splashback is next...

Cloudland Canyon

This weekend we went up to Cloudland Canyon to experience what they had to offer in backcountry camping. There are a number of sites with electric and sanitary for your RV as well as tent pads if you just wanna park and sleep. Previously we've visited their 'walk-in' campsites which are slightly closer to the the car than the backcountry sites. The park is frequented mostly by day tourists outs for a scenic hike. THe West Rim Trail (5mi) is described on the park map as among the 'most scenic in the nation.' While it is scenic, I suspect they mean the Dawg Nation. We found the backcountry loop of sites (2 mi) to be pretty quiet and to have some surprisingly good sites. Sites 1-6 are along a stream that was flowing during our visit in early March. Sites 7-11 are less desirable but all feature amenities like picnic tables and individual or shared outhouses. We took site 6 which is a little further back into the backcountry loop but was large enough for our two tents. Sites 1 and 4 also looked very good. The fire ring at six is superb and proximity to the stream is great. For dinner we fashioned a grill out of leftover aluminum foil and sticks. It worked well.

The weather was perfect for camping. not too cold at night but cool enough. The next day we headed to Rocktown, a nearby bouldering area.

GSU Visualization Wall

Georgia State University's new Petit (read Petite, though it is anything but) Science Center features a 200 million pixel visualization wall that can be used by teachers, classes and student for new approaches to displaying, examining, and manipulating visual information and data. Th whole wall is divided into four parts which can each feature a different piece of the overall presentation or can be used in coordination for a huge wall of images. Above, Google Earth displays the extent and star fertility of the Nile Delta. Notice where you can actually see the curvature of Earth of to the South West (far left of image).

Weather Again

To provide some contrast to my last few post.

Another Day of Work in Atlanta Postponed Due to Weather

Icelanta

Atlanta and the Southeast are at a standstill due to snow and sustained low temps (plus no means of taking care of the situation). We can't go to work because the roads have not been made suitable for cars (as you'll see). Many people have ventured out to play in the snow and the news agencies had made a habit of displaying residents mobile picture and video uploads on their websites and twitter pages. Here are a few of my own from the event and another that gives a pretty good idea of what we're dealing with here. Above I tried to make a run down a hill at Brownwood Park on top of an REI box. Below I'm using the liner for a dog crate to cruise down my driveway.


This is one of the cooler videos I've seen from the recent snowstorm that has had us home from work for three days now. This is on the major road through Downtown, Midtown and Buckhead called Peachtree Street.

Christmas

We are finally back from a 10-day, several thousand mile trip up to the northeast to visit with family and ring in the New Year. It was a great trip that allowed us to spend time and visit with a number of people. We stopped in DC on the way up and on the way back down but only saw one of our many friends who live there. We were in Hampton, CT, Newport, RI, Warwick, RI, Pawtucket, RI, Woodstock, VT. We had good weather up and back but got snowed in for a few days while in Newport. We took a wicked drive along the coast and saw some pretty serious surf for Little Rhodie. it gave us the chance to break in the snowshoes we had brought with us for Vermont. Christmas was great, I got a new bike tire which I have really been needing. It was great to spend some time with the family and to relax after the last couple busy months.

In Woodstock we stayed at a great B&B called The Woodstocker that feels like a really nice backpacker hostel and is run by a globe-trotting British couple. It's just down the road from the town center where Lauren lived for a year after college. Woodstock is like the little villages people set up in their windows around the holidays with the fake snow. You feel like it probably has a town crier. On New Year's Eve we went to a great restaurant located in the nearby Inn at Weathersfield (highly recommended). We also did some snowshoeing up to the top of Mt. Peg one day and then on New Year's Eve we did a longer hike to the top of Pico Mountain. No snowboarding this trip.

Ngrams

Similar tothis post on Lexicon I was shown a new tool from Google today that can search the texts of over 5 million books going back centuries and in a number of languages. The New York Times covered it here. It goes much deeper than the Facebook tool to examine cultural tends and is pretty flexible for refining your query. The data is even available for download and use by anyone. Below are a couple of posts concerning the terminology of planning and some more recent trends in the field.




One of the key questions with this data is which books are likely to be skipped or prohibited in this cataloging and what are the trends among them? And then more importantly, what trends to these book represent or add to? That's all probably covered in this paper but I haven't read it yet.

Another important difference from the Lexicon tool is that you can not look at trends in seasonality. The data that comes on in books isn't as spontaneous as that captured in Google searches, Facebook wall posts (recently removed), or tweets.