This civil-war era house was owned by Christine "miss teenie" Hutton. We used to sneak off and play in the house when we were kids. Check out the size of the limestone blocks that are used for the foundation. Very cool. The house was built by slaves, from bricks that were fired about 1/4 mile away.
The main floor joists are made from whole trees, split in half, with the bark still on. It's got jail cells in the basement, yep jail cells, with bars on the windows and locks on the doors. Back when we were younger and stupider we'd take turns locking each other up in those cells. Hey, it's better than playing jail with the old refrigerator behind granny's house, right?
I can remember the portico over the front door being very ornate, I'm not sure what happened to it, there are no remnants of it left. Inside the front door there was a marble staircase that curved up to the second floor. Even back then the floor was starting to give way because of the weight of the staircase, when I looked in yesterday the floor and the stairs had collapsed into the basement, very sad. The cistern was located around back, near the kitchen, in what today we'd call the back deck. It had a hand-powered water pump that would draw water up from the cistern.
The brick that have fallen away on the left side is damage from this year's wind storm. The stump from a huge pine tree that fell over during that storm can been in the right front. The house has seen lots of history and more than it's share of bad weather, and it has lasted in pretty good condition until this year, but I doubt that it will hang on much longer now that the roof has started giving way.
I went back to Lower Higgins Creek south of Erwin this afternoon, hoping to hike to the upper falls ... but ... the creek was up so much I couldn't make it across anywhere without getting wet, not today.
This piece of construction equipment is stashed in the back of the parking lot across the street from the Sulphur Springs Store.
Here's a picture of another old building that I pass by on my way to work. It's another nice old building that deserves to have it's picture taken.
I pass by this barn most every day on my way to work. From the road there's a really neat looking shot of the barn through a 'tunnel' of overhanging trees. I've been threatening to stop and shoot a bracket for quite a while but for whatever reason I never did ... till yesterday.
Like most folk who've been cooped up during the snowfall I was in need of some exercise. I trekked back up to Rocky Fork in Unicoi Co. The roads were clear and dry all the way there ... until I turned onto Rocky Fork road itself. It was still snow covered, but the day-time temps were warm enough to make the snow slushy, so traction was there to be had in the big red diesel.
The next picture is of some icicles that were 'growing' under a log which had fallen over another nice cascade. What drew me to this shot was the pale green and purple colors that the lightly filtered sunlight was making in the water underneath the log. The splashing water at the base of the fall was pretty substantial, so a long exposure was going to blow out. That made it a bit trickey getting the exposure right so that the colors would show up without blowing out the white water.
The last picture is another 3-exposure hdr of the Rocky Fork falls in the snow.
