May have found me a new project. Red River Gorge is right next to where I grew up in southeastern Kentucky and I've spent a good bit of time there over the years.
The Red has lots of good hiking and climbing, and it regularly draws crowds from all over. Within the climbing world it's particularly well known, when I'm out traveling and want to give someone and idea of where I'm from I just tell them near to the gorge.
Did I mention a project? Seems some moneybags types have gotten them the bright idea “to create a tourism destination in Eastern Kentucky, such as a modern, well-planned Gatlinburg.” Have you ever been to Gatlinburg? Finest monument to consumerus vulgaris I've ever seen, if tourist traps were self replicating that would be Gatlinburg. (West Coast folks, think Estes Park, Colorado but with Confederate battle flags and a local median household income that's about 2/3rds less)
Anyways, they're planning on building a resort to bring in those tourist dollars. Sounds good, right? Much like the coal mining it is nominally intended to replace, it'll be great. For the operators, everyone else still gets fucked.
I'll spare y'all the details of how but if you want more info, that can be found here.
Project, right. Think it's time I spent some quality time in Red River Gorge. There's a local group (see link above) trying to put the brakes on the worst of this, I'm hoping to help them with some photos as well as documenting The Red and the people there.
Should be fun. How often do you get a chance intentionally shoot 'this is how it looked before it all went to hell' shots?
Until I can make it down there to get some new shots, here's some photos from the when I was down there last year.
