Today was our last day for waterfalls on this trip. It was a great day to visit the waterfalls. We enjoyed being able to drive to these falls rather than having long steep climbs.
Our first stop was a challenge. Have you ever been where there was no cell signal, Garmin did not know the roads, and every other road was closed? That was the start of our day. At first we had cell signal, but all the roads we were sent to were closed. Then we tried our car’s map which is basically a Garmin mapping service. All we got as a response from Garmin was strings of numbers rather than routes.
We finally resorted to the old fashioned way – a phone call to the state park to ask for directions. Their response was turn off your phone because you will lose your signal before you get here. Turn off your car GPS because it does not know where we are. Write down these instructions. They said it is not the shortest route, but it is the easiest route to follow.
So, we did as they said and followed our written instructions. It was refreshing and somewhat tense to rely on old driving and remembering skills to travel to a new place in the woods.
We found our way to the first place in an hour and a half rather than the initial estimate of about 15 minutes. The drive was worth it. Here we are at DeSoto Falls. named after the explorer Hernando DeSoto. Apparently, what is now Alabama was part of his Florida exploration.
We made it!
Upper Section of DeSoto Falls
Lower Section of DeSoto Falls
While we were at DeSoto Falls, we met a family that had just been at Little River Canyon. They gave us verbal directions to follow. Not quite as risky as DeSoto’s “I’ll know when I get there” attitude, but still not how we planned our day.
The instructions were good. We got to the preserve. At the visitor center, the ranger gave us a paper map and marked the places we wanted to see with a pink highlighter. Not high tech, but very effective.
Our first stop in the canyon was Little River Falls.
Route 176 follows the edge of the canyon from Little River Falls to Grace’s High Falls and then to the end of the canyon. There are several overlooks along the way. One is called Hawk’s Glide. There is a very good reason for this. There are numerous hawks flying around the canyon.
In a fitting bit of irony, we saw a hawk at this overlook, but were not able to get a picture of the hawk. At a later overlook, we saw several hawks and were able to capture one with the camera.
It took a long zoom and a little luck, but here is one of the eight hawks we saw at this overlook. We continued our waterfall quest by driving to Grace’s High Falls. We were told that Grace’s High Falls, at 112 feet, is the tallest waterfall in Alabama. Not a world’s record, but a tall waterfall none the less.
Because the falls is in a remote part of the canyon, we cannot see its full height. It was impressive even with a partial view. We finished the woods and mountains part of our trip when we drove to Huntsville Alabama. Tomorrow we learn about rocket science and space travel at the US Space and Rocket Center.