Continued from Longpool Falls…
Haw Creek is slowly falling into tradition as a place to go when “driving north.” Initially, I thought of it as a location to judge the amount of water running in the area, however I could be wrong. In comparison to the amount of water flowing from Longpool Falls, Haw Creek was empty. Although, it did have a lot more water than what Brian and I had seen the weekend before, it was still relatively low compared to what it runs in the spring time.
Matt and I kind of took a hit to our confidence upon seeing it. We weren’t sure what the other waterfalls would be doing now that we noticed that Haw Creek wasn’t as high as we thought it should be. Even so, we kept trucking and pushed ourselves up the short bushwhack into Pack Rat Falls.
Pack Rat was running relatively slow compared to it’s norm as well. Was the day going to fail miserably? Matt and I weren’t quite sure at this point.
Upon leaving Packrat we took a detour off the trail and straight through what appeared to be a defenseless batch of tickseed flowers, the yellow flowers which are growing everywhere at the moment. However, upon reaching nearly the end of the short detour through the yellow flowers they turned in to man eating plants of doom. Matt and I pushed and prodded, cut and slashed, but the plants were relentless. They fought back with lashes and stings. By the time Matt and I scrambled out into the campground we were both nearly covered in giant red whelps the size of cherries.
I lifted my arm and looked at the whelps, which appeared to form the Florida Keys on my elbow. Yeouch! Matt had it a lot worse than me, he had the barbs stuck all over his bare legs; he was wearing shorts. We cursed the detour and itched and scratched all the way back over to Haw Creek for a refreshing, freezing, rinse off in the water. Thank goodness the water helped, the itching was becoming unbearable and I had only gotten it on my arm. I felt sorry for Matt, since he decided not to wear long pants, he was defenseless to the onslaught of needle-like thorns.
After the refreshing cool-off in Haw Creek, we decided the next stop should be the Ozark Cafe. What better way to soothe the soul ( and itches ) than with some of the best food in the Ozarks?
We hopped back into the truck and drove off leaving the man eating plants of Haw Creek, eating dust instead.
Next stop Paige Falls after a short trip to the Ozark Cafe.
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