CMSgt Fred L. Clarke

43 years ago today the airplane then TSgt Clarke was flying in over Laos had a mid-air collision with another USAF airplane. He has been missing ever since. 23 years ago Freddie as I have taken to calling him came into my life. I started wearing the POW/MIA bracelet with his name on it and I have worn it everyday since and I will continue to wear it until either he comes home or I go to my grave. Recently Donna and I went up to Washington, D.C. and while there we took a night time tour of several Washington monuments. One stop we made was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial where we took this picture. While it certainly is not a great picture it's the thought that counts. While Donna used the flash from her iPhone I used mine to capture this image. I consider it an honor to take Freddie with me everywhere I go. He's been to Bermuda, the Bahamas, Israel, to include a stop in Jerusalem where he was placed on the stone where Jesus was prepared for burial, Germany, France and any and every other place I have traveled since I put him on my wrist. While I doubt it will ever happen if any of the friends or family of Freddie happen to read this please know that he has not nor will he ever be forgotten.

Book Reviews: Hiking Waterfalls in Georgia and South Carolina and Hiking Waterfalls in North Carolina

This year Donna and I have taken to finding and photographing waterfalls here in South Carolina. So far we've made at 3 trips to upstate South Carolina and thus far were able to find all of the waterfalls we tried to find except one and boy did we have an adventure on that hike! Along the way we've been doing some product testing which I'll reveal later this month but for now I wanted to write about a couple of new books we bought to help us with our waterfall quests.

Melissa Watson has written two guides that we bought: Hiking Waterfalls in North Carolina and Hiking Waterfalls in Georgia and South Carolina. At the bottom of this review are links for the books on Amazon. If you click on the link and buy a book I'll earn a little commission. So far I think I've earned enough to buy a lens cap but hey every penny helps! The guides list 35 waterfalls for Georgia and 18 for South Carolina and 113 for North Carolina which explains why it gets its own book. I'm a bit disappointed with the South Carolina coverage because we have over 30 waterfalls here in our state so the coverage is a bit light in my opinion. I do have to give the author credit though she personally has hiked to each of these waterfalls she has written about and has provides turn-by-turn directions, with mileage for making your way from the trail head to the base of the waterfall. She has included GPS coordinates for the trail head and waterfall. For each waterfall she includes a map with the track she took to get from the trailhead to the waterfall, height of the waterfall, her beauty rating for the waterfall, distance, difficulty rating, trail surface, approximate hiking time, blaze color to follow, county the waterfall is located in, contact information for the waterfall, and map information to use to look the waterfall up on topo maps. That's a lot of information!

I've compared her write up of some of the waterfalls Donna and I have already found and found her descriptions to be very accurate. My only complaints about the book are: (1) lack of coverage for South Carolina and (2) there's a few errors in the GPS coordinates that I've found. Fortunately I was able to discover the errors while entering the coordinates into my mapping software and not while out trying to find the waterfall. Fortunatly the errors are minor. In one case she listed the trailhead and waterfall with the same coordinates but the description says it's a 1 mile hike to get to the falls so obviously one of the coordinates is wrong. I've passed along the issues I've discovered to the publisher and author and received a brief response from the publisher and am waiting to hear back from one of them with the correct coordinates for one waterfall. Given the amount of information she provides and that I was only able to find a couple of mistakes I think she really put a lot of work into these guides.

Overall I'm very impressed with the guides and I'm sure they will get lots of use as Donna and I continue our waterfall quests. It'll be next spring before we get a chance to use the guide. I don't think we'll be doing any more waterfall hunts this year but you never know. If we get an unusually warm weekend we may head north west to upstate South Carolina and put the guide throuh a test. Once we've had a chance to use it in the field I'll post a follow up.

Below you'll find a list of the waterfalls listed in each of the guides.

Georgia Waterfalls
Ada-Hi	Amicalola	Anna Ruby	Becky Branch
Bull Cove (North Carolina)	Cane Creek	Crow Mountain Creek	Denton Branch
Desoto	Dick's Creek	Dukes Creek	Eastatoah
Falls #1 on Waters Creek	Falls #2 on Waters Creek	Falls on Deep Gap Branch (North Carolina)	Flat Branch
Helton Creek	Hemlock	High Shoals	Holcomb and Ammons
Horse Trough	Litle Rock Creek	Little ridge Creek	Martin Creek
Minnehaha	Panther Creek	Panther and Angel	Raven cliff
Sea Creek	Sliding Rock on Wildcat Creek	Stonewall	Sylvan Mill
Toccoa	Trahlyta	Waterfalls of Tullulah Gorge

North Carolina Waterfalls
Big Bradley	Big Laurel	Bridal Veil	Bridal Veil Falls in DuPont State Forest
Bubbling Spring Branch	Bull Cove	Camp Branch	Cascade Lake Dam
Cascades on the Cullasja RIver	Cathey's Creek	Cedar Rock Creek Falls and Falls on Grogan Creek	Chestnut
Connestee	Corn Mill Shoals in Dupont State Forset	Courthouse Falls	Crabtree
Cullasaja	Denton Branch (Georgia)	Dill	Douglas
Dry	Duggers Creek	Eastatoe	Elk River
Falls on Cove Creek, Little Sliding Rock, and Cove Creek Falls	Falls on Deep Gap Branch	Falls on Long Branch	Falls on Long Branch, Hendersonville Reservoir Dam, and Falls on Fletcher Creek
Falls on Tributary of State Rock Creek and Pound Pup Falls	Falls on the West Fork of the Pigeon River	French Broad, Mill Shoals, Rooster Tail, Lower Rooster ail, and Bird Rock
Glassmine	Glen	Glen Cannon	Granny Burrell and Frolictown
Grassy Creek	Greenland Creek	Harper Creek	Hickory Nut
Hidden and Window Falls in Hanging Rock State Park	High Falls on Mills River	High Falls on the Thompson River	High Shoals Falls in South Mountain State Park
Hooker Falls in Dupont State Forest	Hunt Fish	Hurricane	Jackson
John's Jump	Juneywhank	Key	Lake Powhatan Dam
Lake Sequoyah Dam	Laughing	Little Bradley	Looking Glass
Lower Cascades in Hanging Rock State Park	Lower Falls of Upper Creek	Lower Falls on the Little Beartrap Branch	Lower Satulah
Lower and Upper Linville	McGalliard	Merry	Midnight Hole and Mouse Creek
Mingo	Mooney	Moore Cove	Moravian
North Harper Creek	Paradise	Peason's	Picklesimer Rock House
Quarry	Ranger	Raven Rock	Roaring Fork
Rough Butt Creek	Rufus Morgan	Schoolhouse and Warden's	Second Falls at Graveyard Fields
Secret	Setrock Creek	Shunkawauken	Silver Run
Silvervale	Skinny Dip Hole	Slick Rock	Sliding Rock
Soco	South Harper Creek	Stone Mountain, Middle, and Lower Falls in Stone Mountain State Park	Tom's Branch and Indian Creek
Tory's Falls in Hanging Rock State Park	Toxaway	Triple, High, and Grassy Creek Falls in DuPont State Forest	Turley
Upper Bearwallow	Upper Cascades in Hanging Rock State Park	Upper Falls at Graveyard Fields	Upper Falls of Upper Creek
Upper Falls on Little Beartrap Branch and Falls on Big Beartrap Branch	Walker	Walking Stick	Waterfall off Moore's Springs Road in Hanging Rock State Park
Waterfall on Avery Creek and Twin Falls	Waterfall on Log Hollow Branch and Falls on Tributary of Big Bearpen Branch	Waterfall on Sam Branch and Wash Hollow
Waterfalls of the Horsepasture River: Rainbow, Turtleback, Drift and Stairway	White Owl	Whitewater and Laurel	Widow's Creek Falls in Stone Mountain State Park
Wilderness	Wintergreen Falls in DuPont State Forest	wildcat and Falls on Flat Laurel Creek

South Carolina Waterfalls
Brasstown	Bull Sluice	Cedar Creek	Chau Ram
Chauga Narrows	Fall Creek	Falls on Reedy Branch	Issaqueena
King Creek	Long Creek	Opossum Creek	Pigpen and Licklog
Raven Cliff	Spoon Auger	Station Cove	Twin Falls
Upper Sloan Bridge, Lower Sloan Bridge, and Hiker's Perel			Yellow Branch

Even Siri Gets Autocorrected

This morning I was watching a video on the new iPhone 4S and the capabilities Siri brings to it. The guy from macword created a note by talking to Siri. Seems iPhone 4S gets autocorrected to iPhone 4 ass. You can see it in the screen capture above :)

I knew when I bought my iPhone 4 not too long ago that something like this would happen but that's okay I'm really happy with my iPhone 4. I can't wait to see what's going to be available in two years when I can upgrade!

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Thank you for thinking differently.
In doing so you changed the world.
You will be missed.

Nikon COOLPIX AW100 Camera

For years I've shot nothing but Canon but now that Nikon has just announced their new Nikon COOLPIX AW100 Camera I'm buying a Nikon. I don't think I ever thought I would ever say or type those words but here I am typing them. I currently own the Canon PowerShot D10 and I have enjoyed shooting with it quite a bit but the Nikon adds GPS which I really like so that the images will be automatically geotagged for me and, as much as it pains me to say it, 1080p HD video. I'm finding myself shooting video more especially while watching birds around the house. As soon as I get it I'll publish a follow up post and a comparison between it and the Canon PowerShot D10.

So how about you? Are you looking forward to a new camera of any type?

Keeping Equipment You No Longer Use?

Just curious do you keep camera equipment you're no longer using?  I do and I'm beginning to wonder why I do it (aside from the packrat gene I inherited from my dad, that is). Two examples come to mind:

Canon EF-200 F 2.8L Lens. When I was shooting sports this was my lens of choice. I've shot several thousand images using this lens. It's been a great lens. Great enough that I even placed 3rd in a photo contest with a photo I took using it. Problem is these days I'm no longer shooting sports and it just doesn't have the reach I want/need for the type of nature photography I do. I suppose I could get the 1.4x extender which would take it out to 280 but that's still short. I primary shoot birds with my 400 and often wish I had something longer than that. I checked B&H Web site and this lens is now selling new for $800. I guess I need to check eBay and see what used ones are selling for these days. Let's just say this lens is worth $550 these days.

Canon Speedlite 580-EXII Flash. I bought this when Canon was offering one of their rebates and I'd be willing to say it it's been fired less than 100 times. Why? I just don't shoot in situations that require flash. I've tried using it with my nature photography and didn't really see enough improvement to warrant lugging it around all of the time. B&H sells this for $475 so let's say it's worth $350 on the used market.

So I have about $900 worth of equipment sitting on the shelf. That's crazy don't you think? So what do you do? Do you keep your equipment you're no longer using or do you sell it off on Craigslist or eBay?

Half Staff

Half Staff
Originally uploaded by zackojones

Don't forget to display your flag at half staff until noon today in honor of those that made the ultimate sacrifice to our great nation.