Vacation #1 - Where my battery died last year

Ever have one of those moments when you REALLY, really want to have your camera so you can take lots of really neat photographs to share with your friends and family??  Ya, me too.  Right at this same spot you see pictured here.  Nope these are not last years pictures, nope they're new.  The first ones I've ever taken because..... Last year, when we visited this same location, my camera battery died about 17 steps outside the car, which was very, very far from any  electricity to charge my "oh, I won't need a spare battery" battery.   (Insert here, small, but repeated kicks to myself for being such an idiot)

As you can see, I've redeemed myself.  This year we went to one of my favorite places in the Hocking Hills State Park/Preserve area.  Its called the "Cantwell Cliffs", very beautiful, very full of cliffs.  A good place for Emily to ride in the hiking pack.  Which, she did for most of the way until we got down to the floor of the valley/gorge/canyon. 

We went a bit "off road" on one of the trails.  It wasn't that we were off the trail in an area that was marked as "resting from environmental damage", we just chose to take the trail that had been covered by a large, fallen tree.  The trail wasn't actually "closed", it was just only "open" to whom ever wanted to take the challenge of climbing over the fallen tree.  Which, as I said was quite "large".  As I now live to tell about it, you can know that it wasn't very treacherous and that the only injury I received was a moss skid mark on my um... self.

Anyway, moving on....

We tromped around for a couple of hours and saw so many beautiful rock formations and cliffs. The kids had a blast and so did we.  No one fell off any cliffs, no one was pushed off any cliffs, and so we consider it a successful family outing.
Recently I've developed a fascination with toadstools, mushrooms and forest fungi.  Don't ask why, because even I don't understand.  However, on this particular trek my fancy was thoroughly satisfied with many a specimen of all kinds of toadstools, mushrooms, and forest fungi.  None of them, however, do I know the name of.  Truth be told, I don't really care that much about that part of it, but I'm set on figuring it out because now that I don't know what they're called, I've found that I need to know or else someone will ask me and I'll say "I dunno, I just thought it looked purdy" and sound like a dope.  What if someone sees one of my amazing photographs and wants to buy it because they think its a gnarly xsanthis fungus??  And if I don't know enough to confirm it then they'll take their million dollars somewhere else??!!  Okay, okay, I'll learn the mushrooms.  fine.  Oh, and I just made that fungus name up back there, just so you know,  I really don't know what they are!!   After all this talk about fungus, you'd think that I'd have a picture of one or something.  Alas, I do not.  I'm compiling them and you'll have to wait until my Ultimate Fungi Post.  Not to be confused by my post about Brian, the Ultimate Fun Guy.  har, har.  :)