Red River Gorge (State Park Kentucky)

Für einen meiner Kurse musste ich als finales Projekt eine Website erstellen. Ich habe mich dazu entschieden meinen Blog ein bisschen aufzumöbeln und ihn abseits von den (beschränkten) Design-Möglichkeiten auf blogspot ein bisschen persönlicher aussehen zu lassen. Das Projekt ist Geschichte, und natürlich hat es dafür auch englischen Content gebraucht. Nachdem ich zu faul zum übersetzen bin: Hier de erste (und wohl Einzige) Blog-Eintrag auf Englisch.

One amazing thing about the US of A is definitely the beauty of the national parks. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to visit them yet (my time will come!). Nevertheless, I went to a state park in Kentucky last weekend. It was called Red River Gorge and I recognized mainly two things:
1) National parks must be THE shit, because this state park already was gorgeous. And it should be at least one step less amazing than a national park, logically.
2) Visiting parks in the United States and staying there overnight is definitely more adventurous than back in Germany.

Ok, free-climbing and cliff-diving were definitely fun. And adventurous. And probably not very smart. However, the most exotic and thrilling part was the camping.
I used to camp a lot. I camped in Germany, Austria and Italy. I camped on highly frequented touristic places and I camped while kayaking in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, as far as I remember there always have been designated camping areas. Not here. The only restriction is that you’re not supposed to camp within 300 feet (roughly 100 meters) off a trail. So you just go into the wild, look for good places and camp there. Different than where I come from, but only slightly exotic. However, the real story comes with the night.

We collected a lot of firewood before the sun set and lighted our camp-fire (completely legal, take that Germany!). First of all, the darkness in the middle of nowhere was astonishing, even though there was a campfire. I will not say that I never saw something like that before, but at least not very often. Thus, the stars were amazingly clear in the sky.
And we were not alone.
We all knew there were bears in the Red River Gorge, like in almost every bigger natural forest in in the USA. We talked about what not to do if a bear attacks (don’t run away and don’t climb trees!). However, we did not want to meet a bear or another big predator. So we did all the things there are to do: store everything which is food or can be mistaken for food some place far away from your tent. 150 yards at least. Don’t just throw it on the ground, but put it inside bags and hang it at branches of trees. And just hope that is enough. Wrestling a bear might be the best story ever, but the chances of surviving to tell the story are rather small.
Well, we obviously survived, and even if it might disappoint some people: we have not been attacked by a bear. Nevertheless, there were loud and (hopefully) non-human noises not far from our tent. Bears are not the only predators. Bobcats are also living in this area, and they might not be as deadly as a bear, but they can definitely harm you.

So we ran around our tent making noises to scare whatever made this strange noise. I guess there are no animals in the world which like noise.
After whistling and shouting at each other, we finally went to sleep. It was cold (roughly 35F/ 2C) but we made it through the night, and there were no incidents except for drunk teenagers who obviously liked the idea of a night hike. At least they were definitely loud enough to scare every animal within 500 feet.
The next day we did one final hike, jumped into ridiculously cold water and finally went back home. Red river gorge was definitely an experience. I hope it's not the last one of its kind.

PS: Solltet ihr ein Zwischenergebnis meiner Website-Gestaltung sehen wollen könnt ihr das hier tun. Der kitschige Look ist gewollt ;). Sobald ich fertig und zufrieden bin, wird das Ganze eventuell diesen Blog hier ablösen.