This post contains links to two trip reports and a collection of photos. The trip reports are from Bob Lerch and Chad McCain. This was Chad’s very first trip in Carroll Cave, and his report has some first-timer impressions.
This link goes to DropBox. All of the photos are credited to Dan Lamping. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vuur38tjuam6guq/AACWUBCTISl8nWgEIu2cDLOOa?dl=0
Date of trip: 28 March 2021
Participants: Rita Worden
Bill Gee
Kayla Heady
Charles Heady
Alexander Heady
David Heady
Rita Worden’s trip report
Many thanks to Kayla Heady and her crew for their help planting the little baby trees at the Pic Walenta Memorial Campground at Carroll Cave! The planting was easy enough, but the camping, campfire-ing, sleeping(what sleeping?) and just plain thinking were challenging due to near gale force winds the entire time. With Bill Gee’s help we planted 11 bald cypress near the frog pond, 25 red cedars for a wind break (ohh yeah) and 10 white oaks for shade. We also did some collective thinking-out-loud as to the location for the pavilion. After we left Bill mowed around the cedars and I returned w/ tomato cages for the oaks and some Deer-Off to discourage browsing by our Long Horn friends. I hope it works and will be returning on Friday to check on it all.
Trip report by Nathan Taylor.
Myself and my two sons (6 and 10) arrived at the silo on Friday, March 26, at approximately 7:00 PM. We set up our tent and spent some time wandering around the silo area. We spent a very windy night sleeping and ended up with the tent tied to the car to keep it upright.
Saturday morning, after some breakfast, we made our way to the schoolhouse. We pulled nails from a load of lumber and also sorted out rotted, broken, or otherwise too far gone lumber for burning. While we worked in and around the schoolhouse several trucks were working to move cows. A couple of them stopped to say hello. One who passed himself as the owner told me to take what we wanted from the schoolhouse but not to worry about cleaning it up or getting it all out as he would just burn off any trash or other material left behind. He also mentioned he had begun stashing some trash inside (we noted some piles of empty feed bags and other new detritus). I told him thank you.
Participants – Bill Gee (Trip leader)
Seth Colston
Kristen Godfrey
Nathan Taylor
Rita Worden
Grace Welch
Time in – 8:45am
Time out – 12:30pm
This trip is a prime example of how goals and plans can change even at the last minute. The original plan had been to run a biology survey and rescue cache service trip to far Upper Thunder River. We were going to have two trips in two days.
Participants – Bill Gee (Trip leader)
Hou Zhong
Seth Colston
Kristen Godfrey
Nathan Taylor
Time in – 9:50am
Time out – 5:30pm
In October 2020 during the annual bat census trip, we placed a bat roost logger in the Mountain Room. The main goal of this trip was to retrieve the memory card for analysis. We also installed new batteries in the roost logger, added some stuff to the Mountain Room rescue cache and searched for evidence of bats in an upper level passage.
