Waterfalls, skeeters, bats and owls!

We decided to take off for a Saturday and do some hiking/exploring. We packed up the car and headed to the Sipsey Wilderness. Joe used to go there all the time with his best friend before we got married, exploring and getting lost all the time. Hence the reason that Amber is apprenhensive about going! Well today he talked her into it.
We decided to hike down the old Arnold Motorway to upper Quillan Creek, a very beautiful area. Hiking to it along the ridgetop and down the rim in the winter actually pretty ugly and sometimes challenging because of all the dead and fallen pine trees everwhere, thanks to the southern pine beetle and many numerous storms. But getting to it is half the fun, right?
After hiking a bit along the top, the road went down and eventually headed toward a wall of evergreens. It is amazing how much of a difference there is between the dreary forest and the jewel of the creek hidden in the evergreen trees. Mountain laurels, firs and mountain holly surrounded and encapsulated the realms of the beautiful Quillan Creek. The Sipsey Wilderness is famous for this phenomenon, and this is what brings us back there everytime.
We explored along the bank of the creek, listening to the peaceful sounds of the gentle water flow and enjoying the quiet serenity of the creek flowing through the canyon of moss covered boulders and a catherdral of evergreens.
We had to cross the creek a couple of times and get our feet wet, but this day, even though its winter, was unseasonably warm, so the coolness of the water was somewhat welcoming. All in all we saw a few sets of rocky cascades and a waterfall that made the hike that much more worth it. We could have gone further, but the day was getting dark and we didn't feel like getting lost in the middle of the woods at night this time, much to Amber's relief. Although we almost got lost when we started hiking up the wrong ridge, but luckily Joe realized before we got to far. Along our trek alongside the creek we saw cute little skeeters bugs scooting along the top of the water. We tried to find turtles but I guess they are all hybernating right now. We headed back up the ancient highway back to our car.
Driving through the forest on the gravel road, we saw several bats flying around, and a couple almost flew into the car. We had to make sure that our windows were rolled up! After getting onto a paved road we headed towards the highway but saw the most unusual site, at least for us, we saw this huge bird swoop down from a tree and then back up into the tree and landed in the branch. At first we thought it was a hawk, but realized after it landed that it had a big round head, the head of a Great Horned Owl. The first owl that we have ever seen in real life, awesome! Its too bad we didn't have a camera with us today, but it would have been too dark anyway to take a picture of the owl. Next time we will definitely bring one with us. We headed to Decatur and had yummy bbq for dinner at Big Bob's.