Fallen Trees and Flooded Streams

Last night's storm (it's still last night to me even though this post is dated Thursday because I'm typing it at just a few minutes after midnight, see) was something, wasn't it? Me and Krampus were holed up here on the old JSH Plantation, listening to the hurricane-force winds and emergency sirens, getting ready to take shelter in the center of the house if need be. I spent a couple hours bouncing public and private messages back and forth on Twitter with various peeps-o-mine, which kept my mind occupied until the storm abated enough that I finally fell asleep around 3am.

This morning (Wednesday morning) when I got up, I found that Anchorage had become a landscape of devastated trees - including one that fell on my car and gave it some minor dents and scuffs. Could have been a lot worse, it's obvious to see.






Additionally, the creek is now swollen so far over its banks that vast areas of the nearby park are totally flooded. Between the fallen trees and flood waters, some of the trails are completely impassable now.

Signs of the Anchorage Wilderness

I spend a lot of time roaming the woods and trails in Anchorage. Here's some puzzling evidence encountered in the way of signage.

Above:this almost completely rusted-away "No Trespassing" sign is along what is now a public nature trail in E.P. Sawyer Park. It must date back to the time of the Central Kentucky Insane Asylum, which originally occupied these grounds.

Below: This "nature trail" sign is oddly isolated out in the middle of a swamp area.


Just when I thought I was truly out in the middle of nowhere, I happened upon this deluxe and informative sign, telling me all about the importance of keeping Goose Creek clean:


And then there's this old plastic sign with what seems to be the international symbol for "no hikers allowed", but it was laying flat in the ground in a remote part of the woods. Which way had it been meant to indicate to keep out? Impossible to tell for sure. I kept walking, of course.


It sure does seem like there's a lot of plastic signs littering the landscape even as they warn me of the importance to protect the environment. Here's another, with the surreal title "Wetlands: Nature's Kidneys".

An Archaeologic Assay of Human Artifacts Deposited Alongside Roads, Vol. 1

On Lakeland Road in Anchorage, there's this deep gulch running alongside the E.P. Sawyer Park. The park, as my regular readers are probably tired of hearing about, used to be the grounds of the Central State Insane Asylum and is so haunted, they say you have to scrape the ectoplasm off your shoes when you get back to your car. (I exaggerate only slightly.)

Lakeland Road, incidentally, used to be a railroad track that shuttled directly to the asylum. If you look closely at some points you can still see evidence of the tracks before they paved it over and turned it into a road. And human beings, filthy creatures that they are, have been tossing crap out their car windows along that road ever since.

Today while in the park searching for the exact spot where the asylum's water tower had stood (more about that tomorrow), I happened up the embankment where the park's fenceline meets the aforementioned roadside gulch. It has acted as a catch-net for much of the debris that has been accruing there for decades, and while my left brain was appalled that no one has cleaned that area up for so long, my right brain was fascinated by inspecting what humanity had sloughed off.

Without even doing any digging or disturbing the site at all, I could visually identify corroding beer and soda cans from the 1970s with pull-tabs rather the modern stay-tabs. (Stay-tabs were introduced in 1975 and had become the industry standard in the United States by that decade's end.) Most of the outer layers of garbage were recognizably between the 1980s and the present. And if you think that's not very old, let me remind you that 1991 was two decades ago.

I spotted evidence of much older strata of trash peeking out here and there, however - large murky green and brown bottles, and a fragment of very old floor linoleum (seen in images #16 and #17). A little digging with a shovel would likely yield some more serious finds.



I found a liquor bottle still partially filled with what I presume is vodka or gin because it's clear and the lid is tightly sealed (see image #5). Then again, I also found a pop bottle full of a liquid bearing that unmistakable color of urine (see image #3). Such are the hazards of my profession.

What am I seeing in image #14? Is it a child's sweater? A hat? Definitely some sort of abandoned clothing. It appears to have a face on it. I didn't even really notice it until after I got home and looked at the pictures closely.

While the junk seen here isn't as immediately compelling as, say, the old dumpsite in Elliott County I chanced upon a few years ago, I betcha there's all kinds of groovy goodies lurking under the surface. Avid fan of urban archaelogy that I am, you can be sure this gulch hasn't seen the last of me.

Jupiter Over Jefferson County

One from my blog Revelation Awaits An Appointed Time:


The planet Jupiter has recently been closer to the Earth than at any time since 1951 or 1963, depending on conflicting media sources.

How close is it?

It's so close that last night, standing in E.P. Sawyer Park in Anchorage, KY, I actually managed to see (I think) one of its 63 known moons through high-powered binoculars.

It's so close that I even managed to take photos with my ordinary and mundane digital camera (an Olympus SP-350, 8.0 megapixel) that, while, not likely to appear in Sky & Telescope anytime soon, are good enough to show Jupiter's characteristic pinkness.

Lakeland Asylum Markers

The bronze commemorative marker on the grounds of the now-demolished Central State Asylum at Lakeland (Anchorage) vanished awhile back, and no one seems to know what became of it.

Recently, while taking my early-morning coffee-walk constitutional in the E.P. Sawyer Park (which now occupies the haunted former asylum property), I discovered that not one but two new markers have appeared. One's your basic state historical marker, pretty vague and dry and not terribly informational in its capsule description. The other is a surprisingly elaborate presentation that speaks of the asylum's horrors with a little more candor, but still doesn't even begin to touch upon the full nauseating extent of the atrocities said to have occurred here in the name of psychiatry.


The photos were taken with a flash since it was 5:30am and pitch black dark out (I couldn't even read these plaques until I got home and looked at my own photos.) Don't mention the "orbs" in the photo unless you want to be thoroughly ridiculed.