Walls of Jericho

Last weekend my friend Wade and I made a quick trip down to the Walls of Jericho, a cool area right on the Tennessee/Alabama border. I had hiked it once from the Alabama side in January, but the hike was very different this time because we came from the less-developed Tennessee trailhead, and because it was muggy and hot instead of freezing cold.

The water level was so low that it didn't make for very good pictures. But we spotted quite a few salamanders, frogs, and other creepy crawlies. Wade was particularly interested in the red efts, which apparently are the land-dwelling juvenile stage of certain long-lived salamanders.

Me standing in the amphitheater of the Walls of Jericho. I'm trying to get satellite signal for my GPS unit so I could find a geocache, but the walls blocked out the signal. (Photo by Wade.)

The Walls of Jericho have a portion of a creek that travels underground and then comes out of a hole in the rocks. There wasn't much water flow, but this is the view from the hole, looking out at the amphitheater.

These bright little salamanders were all over the place. 

We think this is an eft. It has a drier skin than the salamanders, with a shorter body. It also had more sharply articulated limbs and moved much more slowly. (Photo by Wade.)

There were pools full of tadpoles, and these tiny little frogs were everywhere underfoot. Some were even smaller, but the really tiny ones didn't want to pose for a picture. (Photo by Wade.)

The weather was pretty humid. This is the last of the morning mist coming off the water. (Photo by Wade.)

My wife thought we were crazy for getting up at 3:30 to go hiking, and she was right. We were trying to get back in time for the USA-Ghana World Cup game, but we took longer than we wanted, so we didn't get back until the second half. Fortunately for us, the hiking was much more pleasant than our 2-1 loss to Ghana in overtime.