Savage Gulf, Fall Creek Falls, and Icy-Hot

I really should post something, since it has been awhile, but there's no big news or story to share. Life is really good right now. Scary good. I say scary good because deep down I'm cynical enough to believe the possibility that if life is this good, something horrific must be right around the corner. Since life is so good at the moment, it must be something biblical, like locust or boils. Neither of those sound like fun.
Anyway, there's no overarching theme to this post. I really enjoyed posting the Colorado pics a few weeks back so I thought I'd put up a few more local ones:
A couple of weeks ago on a post-call day (the best days ever, by the way) I went out to Savage Gulf and spent the afternoon hiking. Savage Gulf is a wilderness area about an hour and a half southeast of town. It is formed by a couple of creeks and rivers flowing off of the Cumberland Plateau and eroding deep canyons (or gulfs, according to the locals). I hiked about eight miles around the rim. It was easy hiking since staying on the rim meant the terrain was relatively flat. You could also hike into the gorge, but hiking nearly 1000 feet in meant having to hike nearly 1000 feet back up, which would have made me sad.
The pic on the right is looking off the rim at the Stone Door entrance into the wilderness below.
On the left is Savage Creek going over the originally named Savage Falls. Since it had been very dry, the waterfall was actually very unsavage.
Finally, last Saturday Kate and I went up to Fall Creek Falls for the afternoon. The picture below is courtesy of her, since her picture turned out better than mine. Supposedly, at 260 feet, that's the tallest waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains, though I've been to a waterfall in North Carolina that made the same claim. If you look closely you can see people cavorting at the base of the falls.
It was a beautiful afternoon. The weather was cool, and the leaves were changing. The only problem was that I had woken up that morning with a sore neck, which I assumed was from just sleeping wrong. However, as the day progressed I started having neck spasms. It was similar to having someone stab you in the shoulder with a blunt screwdriver at random intervals. Fortunately, the next day was a little better, and by Monday I was basically cured. Thanks to Kate for driving and putting up with my whiny spasmness. Thanks to Icy-Hot and Tylenol PM for helping me sleep. By the way, everyone should go out and get an Icy-Hot patch and try it, even if you aren't sore at all. Its wonderful. When you snap the patch to activate the iciness, you just know life is about to be better. Next summer when I go running I'm going to wear one on my forehead just to cool off. Except you have to time it right and rip it off before it goes from icy to hot. Ripping it off hurts, by the way. That's Icy-Hot's one flaw: It is overly sticky. Removing it also removes the top layer of skin.

Another reason I felt I should post is that come Friday I'm off on vacation and will be away for awhile. Its my own personal tour of Places I Once Lived. On Friday its off to Houston for the weekend to visit friends and see some band called U2 in concert on Friday night. A few days later its off to that most fantabulous of cities, New York, for more friends and fun, and perhaps video-racing, which I of course will dominate, in much the same way as every country at one time or another dominates France. In between the two will be a couple of days in glorious New England, specifically the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Be back in a week or two.