Come tomorrow I will be counting down the minutes until I can make like this B-52 and jet on out of here! I've got a five day weekend and some R&R lined up and it's making the clocks move twice as slow as normal but the wait is nearly over. We're going to go kick around Red River Gorge for a few days, get away from people and LMPD!
I grew up just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Gorge but we always avoided it like the plague (covid?) because of all the Buckeye and Hoosier tourists it drew. Damn flatlanders were always getting drunk and walking off a cliff or getting scared of the roads and refusing to drive more than 30 mph on roads we'd run 65 on. Up until a little after CCCP (USSR) crumbled the air force would practice low level bombing with B-52s like the one in the photo in the area. Eight jet engines at treetop level and reverberating off the surrounding hills will give you some different notions on what loud entails.
It has always amazed me how well known the Gorge is, even when I was thousands of miles away I'd still run into people who were familiar with it or had been there. One person I met described it as 'Arches National Park but with trees' and after wandering Arches a bit (the photo above is from there) I couldn't argue with that. Arches NP was actually a bit underwhelming, you couldn't even climb on the arches! (Natural Bridge State Park is adjacent to the Gorge, there you can hike across the Natural Bridge, a 78 ft long, 65 ft high natural sandstone arch)
We're going to be staying in a yurt while we're at the Gorge so that should be interesting. I'm still slightly dubious, my understanding of yurts didn't involve them being permanent structures. I don't know if there will be butterflies there while we are but I'm sure there will be bears... I wouldn't mind getting some photos of bears but I'd rather not have them getting into my lodging.
I have no clue if we'll have signal or internet while we're there, if y'all don't hear from me for a bit you know where I'm at!