BUSH WHACKED

Canon EOS Rebel XS, Promaster 19-35 lens @ 35mm, ISO 100, f/16, 0.4 sec.

  Getting off the beaten path is what this country was built on. The Pilgrims proved that by setting sail across the ocean without a clue as to what they were going to find. Lewis & Clark discovered the West Coast by blazing a new trail across the country. We have been to the moon and back because of our attitude towards going into places where no one else has.
  Sunday morning, Tim Owens and I stumbled upon a waterfall that if we weren't the first people to see it, there weren't many before us. This would not have happened had we stayed on the road.
  After photographing along the Tellico River all morning in the Cherokee National Forest, we were driving along River Rd back towards Tellico Plains, TN when we paused by a bridge that a small stream flowed under and into the main branch. We could barely see a couple of small cascades and decided to pull over and take a look.
  There were no paths created along the river so we had to "bush whack" our way along the river bank. There were some wonderful little rock formations and shelves along this small water way. Finding access to photograph them was difficult due to the downed trees that were laying everywhere along and across the creek.
  As we moved further up river, the cascades started getting larger and more picturesque. It was fantastic.
  As I was shooting a flat rock that made a beautiful shelf cascade, which I will post shots of in a later post, Tim had hiked up further and came back and got my attention. He said, "Jerry, you gotta see this". I climbed over a few fallen trees behind him and about 75-100 yards up the river, blocked by huge rocks on both sides of the river was a 20-25 foot waterfall that was just spectacular.  We tried every angle we could to move around the huge rocks that blocked access to this waterfall but just couldn't figure a way to get any closer.
  Had we been on the other side of the river, we would have had an easier time and possibly gotten better access to it, but neither of us had our waders and it was too cold to wade through without them and we would have had to walk all the way back to the road and cross to get to the other river bank. We were stuck to photograph our discovery right from where we were at.
  It was quite heartbreaking. We may have been the first people to witness this gorgeous cascade, but couldn't get any closer to get the kind of photographs that this wonderful waterfall deserved.
  So we took what shots we could get of the waterfall and hiked back to the car knowing that we would be back sometime to try and get closer. This morning, I checked out every web site I could find to see if this waterfall had been named and marked but could find anything on it. If we didn't discover it, there were probably less than a handful of people who have been there before us.
  We were very proud of our discovery and even more satisfied that we took the time to venture off the beaten path and were rewarded in doing so. Can't wait to go back and explore this great find some more.