Ep. 1168: Discovering 3000+ Arches in Kentucky - Bill Fultz

0:00Thanks for adventuring with us as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world. Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast. This is Caleb. We look up date on Kurt's Expedition Climbing Kilimanjaro. At this point we really haven't heard a lot which that's because he's out of service and so you know no news is good news. Before he got out of service he did say that he really enjoys his fellow climbers and the guiding company Alteza tour operators is a fantastic crew of people really professional and it sounds like they really know what they're about so that's great to hear. In this episode Kurt interviews Bill Foltz.

1:02Bill has one of the most unique hobbies I've ever heard of where he hunts for not animals but arches and waterfalls in the rich landscape of Kentucky. It's a really interesting episode where Kurt and Bill talk about the mini adventures Bill has had in finding these arches. We go over what it takes to find these arches, how to navigate off trail as well as the geological forces which cause these arches to form in the first place. Now here's your host Kurt Linville. Friends we have a fun show and a little bit kind of off the beaten path show for you today. I have Bill Foltz with us here and he is in Kentucky and I did not know this until Bill told me and then another listener actually told me about this a couple of weeks ago as well. Kentucky has an unbelievable number of waterfalls and natural arches, other formations, caves,

2:06things like that that I did not realize. I think Kentucky is third in the US states. Bill will correct me if I'm wrong for the number of natural arches that they're there. We're at second. Yeah, we're at second. Well, that's fantastic. So Bill has made a hobby. He's a photographer and his work is amazing. But matter of fact, if you're in front of a computer while we're visiting here, you need to go to his website. So you can look at what we're talking about because they're gorgeous. It's a Foltz photos and photos is spelled with an F. So Foltz photos. But anyway, he's a photographer and he's made a hobby of going and documenting these natural arches which means he's, you know, adventuring along the way, hiking, taking the pictures, enjoying nature, doing all the things that we do. But he's also documenting these natural phenomena. I mean, they're amazing. So it's a different sort of an episode. But one that I am really interested in, Bill, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

3:06Glad to see you. Glad to always glad to talk about arches and photography. Well, it's interesting because people encounter nature in different ways and the adventure sports podcast is about nature. Some people really enjoy encountering nature as an adventure sport. I talked to a fellow the other day, the listeners may have heard this already. But he said that he liked to do base jumping with a wingsuit, you know, a squirrel suit, speed-suiting. He liked to do that so we could see cliffs from an angle that humans just don't get to see them from. It's crazy. It's crazy. Wow. Okay. So some people really like the adrenaline sports. Other people like the backpack, other people like to just camp, take day hikes, whatever it is. But however you enjoy nature, I encourage you to do so. And photography has always been one of my favorite ways, although I don't have the right equipment. I'm not a professional, but I like to stretch the limits of my cell phone camera. So that's what I do.

4:07Anyway, that's what today's show is going to be about. So Bill, give us just the skinny on these waterfalls and arches in Kentucky. I think it surprises people to hear that. Right now there's a 600, 1,605 waterfalls that are documented in the state of Kentucky. And then there's another 3,261 natural arches that are documented. 3261. Yeah. Yeah. 3,261. There's actually several that I haven't been able to get to. That number's higher, but I haven't been able to get to some of the submissions to get them into the database. So I don't even know what they look like or anything yet. If you went to all of those, that could take a very long time. This is not a small feat. No, no. And well, some of them, so there's some that require repelling in.

5:09Some of them are just incredibly difficult to get to. You got to wait for water levels to drop to get to. There's a lot of limestone in Kentucky. And you have it. You actually have arches that are forming inside stream beds right now as we speak. Well I was looking through your pictures and it's hard to tell from a distance what kind of rock you're dealing with, but they're not all the same. Now most of them, most of Kentucky's arches are sandstone and then you have a smaller amount that are limestone. Well, that's kind of cool. What I saw in some of your pictures is some of the arches, they look like they're actually the ceiling of what used to be probably a limestone cave. They have stalactites and little formations like that on them. And then maybe the cave collapsed on two sides and left the natural arch. Yes. That's just a guess. That's correct. There's a smoky bridge in Carter Cave State Park is that's how that formed.

6:10It's a house. But both sides collapsed and you have this massive natural, you know, massive arch. Well, and the sandstone ones, of course, would have formed a different way. And we were talking before we hit record, how are these things formed and they each have their own story. But some of them are going to overlap and be similar. But for the listeners, when water, free cycles, yeah, what else, how do these things form? Well, basically when water and freeze and and warm cycles really hit, really what truly affects the how these are created water in different ways. For a long time, it's it's understood that rain formed the arches that are on ridges, which are called alcove arches and wind. And then you have a lot of natural bridges that were formed by by water flow, rock bridge and the red river gorge is over top of a nearly constant flowing stream.

7:13So just last weekend, actually before last weekend was Thanksgiving, the one before that I hiked to a beaver dam that I like to visit from time to time. And I was standing on the beaver dam, trying to find where the water was getting through because it wasn't flowing over the top, but it's a constant flowing stream. And I could hear the water trickling underneath and the question was, this is vaguely related, it really is. Trust me. But the question was, how does the water go through the beaver dam without washing it away? Right. But little by little, that trickle could grow and grow and grow. And it made me think, well, the beavers probably maintain it all the time to make sure that it does flow, but it doesn't wash away the underpinnings for their dam. But if you have water seeping through even just a crack in the rock, then I would think that over the eons of time, it could open up that crack. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah. We'll take rock bridge and a red river gorge.

8:15That's how that started. There was a crack in the rock and the water flowed under the bridge and slowly separated it and eventually continued to just wash the rock away to where you have this sizable natural bridge over a stream. You know, Utah is the other state people think of. That's where Arches National Park is, of course. And I have enjoyed even motorcycle trips off road in Utah and seeing amazing Arches that are outside of the National Park. Right. And there, it's a desert. We're talking about red sandstone formations for the most part, some are more blonde. But usually they say wind, but there's also a freeze-thaw cycle with moisture. Right. It helps. They usually say wind, but I wouldn't have thought of Kentucky that way. And here's part of the reason why I grew up in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. And it's a similar kind of topography, maybe slightly smaller than Kentucky.

9:20But probably not in Western Arkansas. It gets pretty sizable. But the point is there are things like this, but nowhere near as many and not well known at all. Why is Kentucky different? That's the question. Well, it kind of started because of the, well, there's been, there's been something about the Arches in Kentucky. People have been hunting Arches in the state of Kentucky since what we can figure is from since the 1930s, maybe earlier. And people, we have people that are in their 70s that have been hunting Arches for 40 years that are still out there hunting Arches. Nice. It's catching on. Like there's more and more people that are really excited about finding that new Arches. And it's part of the discovery. It's part of the adventure is getting out there and crawling through, wrote a dendron thicket and upsteep hills and and combing cliffs and looking for that arch that could be

10:25along that cliff. You know, I find it fascinating that there are so many there. Is there a lot of gypsum in the area by any chance? I don't think so. Because sometimes that'll wash away pretty easily. There's a lot here because, you know, and I'll say this, I bet you there's a lot more in Tennessee than anybody knows about. And there's a lot more in Alabama. If you, if and there's, there's a lot in Ohio that nobody knows about. There's a stretch along the Appalachians where you where using a heat map, I have a friend in Tennessee that's used a heat map and taken all this information and you can see that there's a long swath of where all the Arches and Waterfalls have formed. And it's like in a straight line between at an angle actually from Ohio all the way down to Alabama. There's a lot of geology going on. It's just everybody needs to go out there and find it.

11:27Will you do this for us, Bill? Not everybody's been to Kentucky and I admit that I've not been there nearly as much as I would like to. I'd love to go explore it. It's just such a beautiful, beautiful place. But can you describe what Kentucky looks like? I think a lot of people haven't been there. Maybe they're thinking about Appalachia, but who knows? So in the western side of the state, it's more flat and hilly and in the eastern side of the state, it's more mountainous. So in the eastern side of the state, you have a lot of Evergreen, Rotodendrin, cliffs, high cliffs, especially in the Red River Gorge, and even higher cliffs in Macquarie County down in the big South Fork in the southern part of the state. The western part of the state has arches too, but you don't have the Rotodendrin and things like that. It's also a lot more, there's a lot more caves in the western part of the state. Obviously, you have Mammoth Cave, but you have numerous more caves in that section of

12:32the state. But there are a lot of caves in the eastern part of the state. It's a beautiful state that you can go get photographs that look like summer in the dead of winter in the eastern part of the state because of the Rotodendrin and your pine trees and whatnot. Well, and you have every kind of deciduous tree that you can imagine. I mean, some people might even say it's a temperate rainforest. Yes. Well, I'll have to say that it's more like that in the winter, in the winter, us enthusiasts call hiking season. None of us really go out in the summer. We all go out in the winter, not because there's really nobody out there, but because that's whenever the leaves are off the trees, you can see the waterfalls, you can see the arches and the ticks aren't out, which is really important, ticks and snakes, and which ticks and Kentucky are a real problem, but it's our favorite time to go hunt for waterfalls and arches. This is the season where I get all my information in for the arch databases and waterfall databases

13:36and whatnot. Yeah, and we're at the beginning of December right now during this interview, so people know. I totally get it. I grew up in, like I said, the foothills of the Ozarks and it was the same for me. Winter was when I could really explore. Right. Oh, yeah. It's the best time to get out there and it's wonderful. I like it so much more than the heat, too. Let's connect this to hiking a little bit and then we'll get into more details about what you do with the arches and the waterfalls and things like that. Some of this stuff can't be easy to get to. Now, a lot of it isn't some of it. It requires pushing through thick, rotodendrin thickets, which like it's like arms grabbing onto you while you're trying to push through these things. But but also when you're coming down steep hills, they're your friend. You have something to grab onto. You're not rolling down the hill. So there's a love-hate relationship with the rotodendrin.

14:40There's a lot of, I mean, in some cases, you have to repel. You're having to climb over large boulders, under large boulders. You're having to walk through waist-high water and a creek to get to the other side, to get to the waterfall or the arch. Yeah, it's pretty, it can get pretty strenuous, but the rewards often are on parallel. That's cool. I want to mention to everyone in the West that there's getting off trail is often frowned upon. And the reason is because we're in such delicate dry environments here. But I can say in the east and these places where like where I grew up, you can't hardly stop the forest from claiming the land everywhere. And it's very, very difficult to damage it. And being off trail is, you're not doing any harm, I'll just say it that way.

15:45And there's off trail etiquette for hiking in the West as well. And I just say, you know, we've got to take care of where we are. But I just want to point out, being off trail where you are is a whole different thing. And it's a challenging, challenging way to travel. I interviewed a lady, probably six years ago, who had a program she called off trail on purpose. And she taught kids, especially, it was a challenge course to help young people kind of overcome some of their own challenges. But to go off trail and learn how to find your way, learn how to maneuver in that difficult environment and discover the things, you know, when you get off the trail, you're in a different world. Oh, yeah. And I know a lot of people here, I kind of joke sometimes, if I want to get away from the crowds, all I have to do is go perpendicular to a trail for a hundred yards. I won't see anybody for weeks because everyone just stays right on the trail, you know, and

16:48it's kind of like a safety blanket for people. It's like, this is, this is my lifeline. That's how I got it and it's how I get out. But when you are searching for these arches and waterfalls and other features, you're off trail. You ever get turned around? How do you, how do you find your way? Um, well, I, I turn on my track on my eye hike is one, one way to do it. But also I've always, I've always had a good memory of my surroundings. Like if I go hiking somewhere, I'll generally find my way back and I don't, I, I usually use my eye hike more for, okay, I'm looking for this arch or this lead. You know, we do have arch leads. And so often I don't really have that much of a problem. There's a friend of mine, he goes, sometimes he tries to steer us the wrong way. I'm like, that's not the way that we went. We went this way. So I've gotten pretty in tune with, with, um, my surroundings, uh, whenever I'm hiking

17:53somewhere, uh, which is important because I mean, the last thing I need to do is have called search and rescue to come and get me whenever I'm, whenever I'm out and out, out in the field. Well, when I was a kid, again, foot hills of the ozarks, I, I was hiking diagonally up a mountain, small mountain through the woods. So no visibility. And what I didn't realize is that the mountain very gradually was, was curving around. And I thought that I was hiking west. And before I knew it, I was hiking north and I didn't realize it. And I went quite a distance. And then I said, you know what, there's, uh, it's going to be a lot easier going in the valley. So I'll go straight down to the valley and hike back out. Well, you know what happened. I hiked north and found myself in a completely different watershed. And I had no clue where I was or how I got there, right? And I, I, I don't mind admitting, I don't have a compass in my head. Like some people do. It sounds like you might bill.

18:54My son does, he recognizes direction just automatically. I don't know how that works. It does not work for me. For me, it's more dead reckoning, but I mean, mistakes. So that's a skill set. We all do make mistakes when we're out there, but I get it. Yeah, it's, it's thick when you're in that kind of topography that changes like that. And that the, the trees and the undergrowth. I mean, it's challenging for challenging. What about private, there's so much to negotiate when you're out there, it off trail. It is, uh, down trees, uh, and it slows you down too. Like it's not like you're, you're, you're doing, you, you may do a half mile in an hour, but depending on how thick, how thick and how down the tree, uh, trees are and everything, uh, or how many boulders you got to scramble over, you know, it's just, it just all depends. Yeah, it's like a big muddy loose ever changing, can't see very far jungle gym.

19:59That's true. That's true. You know, the one thing that I like about eastern Kentucky is it's more sandy than it is mud. Oh, that's helpful. That's very helpful. You don't, you, you, uh, you can, of course, yeah, you've got muddy areas, but the sandstone really, really helps with, with, uh, negotiating, uh, okay. Hey, friends, I want to take a minute to tell you about campfire ranch. My friend Sam started campfire ranch several years ago and his goal, his mission is to energize places by creating meaningful human experiences in the outdoors. And all of the campfire ranch locations from their campgrounds to trailside lodges to backcountry huts, their goal is to help you stay in the place and in the way that you want so that you can spend more time getting out there and getting after it. Campfire Ranch Little Sugar is a trailside lodge located in Belavista, Arkansas, just north of Bentonville, the mountain bike capital of the world.

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22:05Well another thing about Kentucky is that the winners are not like high altitude western winters, but you do have a freeze thaw cycle that I imagine really goes to work on the rocks. That's probably a part of the reason why the arches are there so much. Oh for sure, definitely when dealing with some of the limestone arches, limestone just has all these cracks for water to just push through. Like if it freezes, it could just drop a piece of rock right out of there. And the same thing with the sandstone, especially the sandstone, the sandstone arches have joints in them which are cracks that go like in the case of sky bridge goes along the length of the arch. And you know eventually, you know, the freeze thaw cycle is going to cause that to expand more or even partially collapse. That's wild. Just a little bit of geology and I'm no geologist. So forgive me and Bill filling the gaps as best as I can.

23:07I'm not the best geologist in the world. I'm trying to learn it. There's a lot to learn. Yeah, there is well, sandstone generally forms like in a river delta where sand gets washed out and layered, it's sedimentary and then under compression it becomes rock. And then limestone generally forms on a sea floor where you know, crustaceans and things corals and what have you die over the eons and those calcium deposits collect and form the limestone. And the interesting thing about limestone is that it is a basic meaning alkaline. And so a weak acid can get in there and there's a acid base reaction and it eats the rock. And that's why caves form in limestone so well. But that's also part of the reason why you would have limestone arches. I'm sure. But these are two different types of strata that are somewhat related. My guess is, and I'm just guessing because like I said, I'm no geologist, but my guess

24:11is that you're in an area where there is a sea and mountains were weathering and formed the sandstone layers and then just beyond that you got to the sea floor where the limestone layers are deposited. Yep, that's how it's, yep, that's correct. Huh. That's kind of fast. So you have sandstone on top. You got the limestone on the bottom. What can you tell us about the ancient Appalachias? The Appalachian Mountains from way back. How big were they? Do you know? I don't. I haven't done any research on the age of the Appalachians or how they were formed in things of that nature. Just simply because it hasn't been something I've had time to do. Because I'm more focused on the data that's coming in to me for the databases. Oh, yeah, yeah.

25:13Just out of curiosity, do you see a lot of fossils in the sandstone like shells and things? There's that primarily the limestone. You see a lot of pebbles and things like that in the limestone. You will see some, it's not really more like sea type fossils, not dinosaur type fossils. I know that in northern Tennessee, there's an actual palm tree fossil in the side of a cliff. And I've had somebody else report one to me that's down near Hazard. But I haven't had an opportunity to look into that yet. Well, I guess the reason I bring it up is because when you go out to try to find an arch or a waterfall or something like that, you're exploring all of this. And there's so many different ways to explore it. But as you learn a little bit about the ancient formation of these various rocks, it's

26:19got to be fascinating to think about what nature was like then and compare it to what it's like now. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it would be, it would be really incredible to actually see what Kentucky's largest arches looked like, you know, 200,000 years ago, or maybe even, and if they look nearly the same then a million years ago, was, did the, did the shallow sea form the arches that are on top of the ridges, you know, that those are questions that are actually being brought up now by people in the Kentucky Geological Survey. The most type of an arch Kentucky has is a pillar arch, which is an arch that is alongside a cliff. Generally, those were formed by flowing water and you have them at all different levels of the, of the valleys. So that there is more proof that, you know, or suggest that the water was just is forming

27:25all these arches and, and it would just be fascinating to see what it would look like back whenever this was actually happening. It sounds like the valleys are probably deeper now than they once were. Yeah, for sure, for sure. You can, you like, there's a coppers creek in the Red River Gorge. It's really neat because you can, you're like, whenever you hike back to it, there's no water on the stream, but you can hear the water under the stream. So you get up about a mile up the watershed and there's a cast. There's a big split, a big pool and all this water is just flowing into a cast that's right in the middle of the stream and it flows underneath the, underneath the stream at lower water levels. I wonder if it's making an arch down there. It could be, you may have arches formed this way. Right. That's crazy.

28:25It is crazy and there, there's another stream over by Whittleton Arch, which is near natural bridge that does the same thing. The water goes, there's a waterfall and it goes downstream a little bit and then it just, it just goes underneath, underneath the stream bet and then reemerges, you know, maybe a quarter mile down. Oh, that's cool. So much geology and topography and hydrology and flora and fauna. I mean, it's, I, Kentucky is just dense with all of this stuff. It's amazing to me. As you describe it, it kind of takes me home to the Ozarks because it's similar, but I think Kentucky is also unique. Oh, for, yeah, I, I agree. I, you know, there's, there's some things in the Ozark that are pretty unique too that I've seen picture up along to that waterfalls of Arkansas group and that's cool. I've seen some really great waterfalls there in that state. Yeah, Kentucky just has a, you know, you never know.

29:30There may be four, five thousand arches in, in, in Arkansas. There may be that many in Missouri, you know, you just don't know because there's really not enough people out there looking to really to see if they're there. You know, I can say having hiked around those areas some, there are some, but I don't know how many. It's, if I saw one, it was special. I mean, it was like, whoa, look at that, you know, because it wasn't like, oh, yeah, I stumbled into these from time to time. No, they, it was more like dang, that's, that's rare. Right. Well, that, that's the thing I'm, a lot of Kentucky's arches are not the, oh, my goodness, they're spectacular. Um, many of them are, you know, just over three feet in, in one direction that you need, you need three feet of visible light in one direction for it to be, for it to be to qualify for an arch. So that's what counts.

30:30So that's what counts. So we have some really incredibly ugly arches in the state that you just go to knock it off your list, you know, or say, hey, I've seen this arch, but there's, I would, I would be honest with you. There's probably over half of Kentucky's arches are not really worth seeing because they all, because they're just, there's some that are like in the rules of, of a rock shelter and it's six feet by an inch and a half. Okay. So it's very, very skinny, but yeah, but it still qualifies as an arch because you have that, you have that three feet of visible light. Well, I would argue that while the arch might be a little disappointing, the hike itself is worth it. Well, for sure. Well, you're never disappointed when you find that, that arch, you know, you document that arch that hasn't been documented, all right. That's not, that, that's always exciting.

31:31That's one of the things too is like so many people go in and they find arches. We have people that have gone in behind people and found more arches in the very same area. Cool. There's areas of the state, like McCurry County and Laurel County and Wolf County in the Red River Gorge in, in Pau County. You'll just hit arch after arch after arch after arch and a cliff line. You know what this reminds me of is the kind of the joy in the fun of discovery. Yes. It's the mystery of it. It's what's out here that we don't have on our database, but maybe even something that no one's really noticed, or if someone did, it may have been so long ago, you know, it could have been, it could have been an Native American 200, 300, 400, 500 years ago, a thousand years ago, right? So it's, you get that feeling of a first. Right. Well, we were over the summer, man, a friend hiked a little sinking, sinking creek in Lee County. And I was kind of excited because I knew that there were a lot of cave entrances in this

32:33watershed. And so we were going specifically to hike to the, the little natural bridge, it's like five feet. It's right at a cave opening. It's really, really, really, really neat. And on our way to it, I looked over and I said, man, that looks like that's an arch over there. And I could see, see the cave opening and I'm like, there looks like there's something else going on there. We went to the bridge. We come back and I scrambled down into the, into the creek, there's a, there's a lady and a man there with a boy and they're playing around in the rocks or whatever. And I go over and sure enough, there, there's an arch. And I didn't think that there was an arch on the other side till I looked inside the cave and I could see light coming in. So I climbed up the other side and I'm standing there and I'm, I, you know, telling my friend Dustin that's with me, I said, man, this is, this is a twin arch. The lady down below me, she goes, I was here last month. That wasn't there before and what was amazing was is what I figured out was that there had

33:34been like a serious deluge of rain and it had come down. And there's a series of caves that cave follows along the creek. The cave had such a volume of water. I believe it blew the limestone out and formed one of the arches. The other arch, I believe, formed that way too. But it was much, it was older, it was an older form. This, this one here, the one that was on the right was, it was brand new and you could just see where the, where the rock had just crumbled and, and fallen down below close to the entrance to the arch. What are the odds of that? Right. I mean, to document an arch that literally is less than a month old. I have to tell you a story bill that's only vaguely related, but it was so hilarious. Someone told me about this probably 20 years ago, I don't even remember who it was, but they were visiting Bryce Canyon and you know, they have all of the clay stacks with a hard rock cap. Yeah. You know, it's that iconic landscape you just don't see anywhere.

34:35And they had gone to visit with some friends and one of the, the stacks collapsed. Oh wow. And that's such a rare, you know, it's like these things have been here for who knows how many yawns and one of them collapsed and crumbled down. And one of the gals there said, oh, that was so cool. Let's stay and watch another one. The scope of time involved. Right. And some of these things is so big. We just don't, it doesn't register, you know, in our minds, but for you to find an arch that was new, we're talking about how old, weeks old, yeah, just a few weeks old. That's crazy. It was absolutely insane. I did not expect, I mean, I was hoping that I'd find some archers along the, along the creek that hadn't been documented because after a while, it's kind of like, after a while, you start to get an eye for it. This looks archy. And so you start, you know, you, hey, this cliff line looks archy or, you know, this,

35:38this watershed looks archy. And you tend to start to, I mean, of course, you bust out sometimes and then I didn't often didn't find anything, but you start to get in tune with the, the geology and are able to increase your chances of finding an arch. Oh, that's, that's really cool. You kind of get a six sense about it. Yeah, it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of an intuition. It's kind of like, like waterfall swirls, like whenever I first started photographing waterfalls, I never paid attention to the leaf swirls that were in the foreground. But then, then you realize, oh, wow, you can do a long exposure and make this beautiful leaf swirl. And then every time you look at a waterfall, you look for a leaf swirl. It's the same thing with a cliff line, you look at a cliff line and you're like, oh, that, that looks good, you know, wow, well, and what's fun about it is that you're a photographer. And so you naturally are developing your eye for subtleties in the landscape and the lighting

36:41and that takes you to a different level of observation than maybe the average person would have. It's one of the beautiful things about photography, right? As it takes you to a deeper connection with what's going on around you, just because you're taking time to see, yeah, you know, looking at a waterfall, you're like, this is where how the waterfall looks best. And it's the same with an arch, like I want to, when photographing an arch, I want to accentuate the size of the arch or the color of the arch. I once had someone tell me that you can't shoot an arch the first time and really get it right. And that can be true sometimes because you come up to the arch and you just really, sometimes it's really hard to figure out how the arch looks best. And I kind of feel that I've gotten a pretty good handle on shooting arches and not all of them I've ever posted, you know, there's hundreds of, you know, a hundred arches that

37:43I've never posted photographs of, not for my photography gallery, just because I either couldn't figure it out or they just weren't, you know, just weren't attractive enough. But I usually, I'll go ahead and shoot them anyway. My family and I visited Arches National Park several years back and I remember there are a lot of arches there that I couldn't get it, I couldn't get in the frame. Yeah. And it's like, oh, it just kind of looks like a chunk of rock, you can't get the effect, you know, because they're working within the limitations and yeah, that could be tricky. You can, for me, going wide with a wide angle lens is best for, best for arches. What are you shooting with? Is it like a 25 or a 35 or 16 to 35? Oh, wow. Okay. So go wide and you could, you really accentuate, accentuate the arch. Now it doesn't always work for your, obviously, your smaller arches and whatnot, but it's

38:45still can. If you put it on the ground, I've seen people in myself make smaller arches look a lot better than what they really are. To get the rabbit's eye view, yeah, that's really fun. So I have so many more questions, let's, let's transition a little bit here. People in Colorado like to bag 14ers and doing that just gives you an excuse to get out and climb mountains, right? But there's, there's something to chase and it gets you out the door a little bit more for some people and I love stuff like that and I've interviewed people that they've chosen to chase whatever their thing is. They've chosen to chase it and it's become the thing that, it's kind of a driver for the fun they have. It's like, you don't have to have a list that you want to check off, but if you do have a list for some people that's really motivating, you are keeping databases, you're helping to build the databases for the waterfalls and the arches and explain these databases because

39:50other people are going to say, oh, I'd love to see some of that stuff. How could I learn more? So the database, we'll go with the waterfall database. So the waterfall database was originally created by Christopher Morris, who's still involved with the project and he created it because that nobody would share any waterfall information with him. And so he created the waterfall database and then began hiking out, he would, he's a surveyor and he began pinpointing places on the map and hiking out to them. And he has submitted to the data, he has the most submissions to the waterfalls database of like 400 and something different waterfalls. And he did a lot of off trail hiking to all these to help seed the database besides the, you know, 40 we knew about. So this gave people an opportunity because the database also gives, you can submit waterfalls.

40:51So all you have to do is photograph GPS location and so you can submit it to the database. And we'll put it in there. I think there's 111 waterfalls on a clickable map that you can see mostly pictures of, there's mostly pictures with them all, there's information on how tall they are, how wide they are, what rock they're in. It just gives the GPS location and a point on the map. Anybody that wants to take the GPS location and put it in their phone, they can go and hike to any of these waterfalls. The waterfall database also features a trip section that I wrote that, that gives detailed directions to 20, I think 21 or 22 waterfalls in Kentucky. And it also has maps and I have gotten a lot of feedback from people that really love these trip sections because it's really inspired them to get out there. It's really helped them to go to these places that not a lot of people get to go to.

41:52I mean, some of them, some of them, some people do, a lot of people do. Cumberland Falls is in the in the trip section. But Town Creek Falls, which is in Monticello, Kentucky is not a lot of people know about it. It's it's about getting people out to visit these places, but also to help scatter people out. Everybody concentrates on going to Kentucky's Red River Gorge. There are so many other places in Kentucky that are worth going to go see, not nothing to take away from the gorge, the gorge is incredible. But when it's crowded or when they do close it down in the winter, you've got a huge swath of of Daniel Boone National Forest to go to, like down into Laurel County and Whitley County. Whitley County is it got plenty of, Whitley County's only got like 50 arches that have been documented. I bet you anything.

42:52There's another 2000 Wow, because nobody's really gone in there and dug it out. Everybody's digging out Laurel County and career County and sandwiched in between is is Whitley County. So so much to explore and it discover yes, that's fun, that's fun. Have you ever gone through all the hassles of getting on the plane security luggage, long waits at the airport, all that kind of stuff. And then when you finally arrive at your destination, not only are you worn out, but you also might feel a little bit disconnected. I know that I do when I hop scotch around the planet on a plane, that's one of the reasons why I love the great American road trips, where you get to drive from one place to another and connect all of those dots. You get to experience the changes in the terrain and the weather and the people in the communities.

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45:02So when you're ready for a trip that actually feels like a break, head to Outdoorsy.com. Outdoorsy is currently running a special promotion for listeners. Use the promo code ASP at checkout to take advantage of this limited time offer that's outdoorsy.com promo code ASP. So how many waterfalls did you say are in the database now? There are 1,605 waterfalls in the database. There are 111 111 are visible on the map. Problem is we've got a we have a we have a back end issue with the waterfalls database that website. We're going to have to rebuild it and repopulate it, which we thought was going to be a big problem, but we found out it's not. Now we're just trying to find the time to do it. Oh, that's fun. I have to tell a story about my daughter when she was barely talking and she talked early. She was probably 18 months old or something when this happened.

46:04We went to a waterfall in British Columbia, Canada. And we stood there and it was amazing and we started getting all the benefits that come with falling water. And I maybe you know more about this bill. It just people say maybe it's negative ions. Maybe it's the spray. It's how fresh the air feels. It's the natural setting. It's the sound. You can feel the ground shaking and whatever it is, it feels it feels healing. It does. It is absolutely a healing experience. I can't explain to you what it is, but I go to a waterfall and I photograph it and I feel clenched. Reset. Yeah, yeah. Well, we went to this waterfall and we're hiking back out and I picked my little daughter up because she was tired of course. I started explaining to her. I always talked to my kids way above their age level. And so I was explaining how the earth has seasons because it's tilted at 23 degrees and how it's, you know, it goes around the sun and how the seasons change.

47:05And we're the only planet we know of that has liquid water and frozen water at the same time and how such a special miracle it is that we live in a place where we can have a water cycle and it makes things like waterfalls and waterfall. And then she interrupted me and just said, Dad, it just makes us feel good. And here she, you know, she's like 18 months old. So I thought, yes, that's wisdom. I need to shut up and just enjoy where we are, you know. Right. So amazing. If people can go to your waterfall's database and you just said 1600 and five are there that they could explore that's okay. So you said you have to have three feet of light in one direction for it to be an arch. Right. What's a waterfall? Usually we kind of, usually over three or four feet it has to be a waterfall for it to be like a documental waterfall. Though I was Chris and I talked about it recently.

48:06And because Kentucky has got a lot of small watersheds. So we have some documented waterfalls on some pretty small watersheds. It was like if somebody's willing to send it in and document it, then we'll go ahead and accept it is kind of where we're at with that. That's one of the things too is that mentioning about the waterfalls. Like Kentucky only has three waterfalls that we're on year-round. Cumberland Falls, Dog Slotter Falls, and Eagle Falls. All of them are all there within a three-mile radius of each other. All of the rest of Kentucky's waterfalls are all rain-dependent and the best time to visit them is in the winter. In the summer or once you get into, once you get to about June and you get through the dry season of the fall, the water is absorbed by the trees. An inch of waterfall in the winter is completely different than an inch of waterfall in the summer.

49:07All that water is absorbed by the foliage. So that's one reason why we all get out in the winter. Because there's nothing to absorb that water up. So you can have a 100 acre waterfall that will look fantastic in a in the winter where it's dry, you know, 95% of the time in the summer. You know, I have to wonder if there's not just so much underground water as well. That's why you have so many arches in the first place. Oh, for sure. So a lot of that water comes down and just goes somewhere. Oh, for sure. That's another condition too. Going into going into the car system. That's so fun. So you also have a database for the arches, right? Yep. And then you have a database for landforms. Yeah, so the landforms collects the arches and the waterfalls. And it also includes overlooks, which I think we've got 348 overlooks.

50:09And then train tunnels. And then we're adding natural chimneys to the database. One of these days, it's on the list. I'm not really sure when that'll happen. But we have information on about five or six natural chimneys. And so we thought, well, we'll go ahead and make a database. And then one of our archunters, one of our historical archunters said, I know where a ton of chimneys are. So he's going to help see completely see the the chimney database that we'll be building eventually. Hey, describe a chimney. A chimney is a basically a column of rock. It's similar to a hudu, like what you have out west. But it's not a hudu. It's rock that the cliff line has eroded away all the way around. And basically left a subbandoned column of rock. Okay, so it doesn't have to be hollow on the inside or anything. No, no, no, no, you're just talking about just a stack of rock, a really tall chimney.

51:14Yeah, just a very really tall stack of rock. I know like five or six of them now. So and they are unique. I know where a couple are in Ohio as well. You don't see there are actually more rare than arches, obviously. They're they're pretty rare, at least in this state so far. But again, there may be there's maybe plenty out there first to discover. You know, where we live, there were massive volcanoes in the area and they deposited millions of years ago. A lot of stuff that was belched out of the volcano that made breccia, which is kind of a soft rock that weather is very, very easily. But then there are also some lava flows and basalt deposits on top of that. So you get the hard top layer in the soft sides. So we get a lot of those sorts of things where things just stand. Oh, wow. Yeah, we call them palisades here. Okay. But they could be chimneys. There are some of those as well.

52:14And but we don't have the arches too much is just going to crumble and fall apart. But it's so amazing. It doesn't matter where you are in the natural world. There are unique things that were built by that places geology and by the animals and the plant life and the topography and there's so many ways that you can explore. It's mind blowing and you're making me want to go to Kentucky and just hike around. It sounds, it sounds really delightful. Come on over. Well, you mentioned that some of these places people have to repel down into and I'm just kind of curious, are there safety concerns that people should be aware of? Yeah, I mean, yes, there are safety concerns. There's a lot of people that fall off cliffs because they're not paying attention. Because I mean, there's a lot of cliff walk in that's involved and getting lost, getting stuck somewhere you can't get out of.

53:17You got to know your limitations and be aware of that. I don't suggest first-timers going off-trailing without any experience really. You gain that experience because it happens a lot in the gorge. People get lost and Wolf County search and rescues called in or one of the other emergency responders are called in to save people that have fallen off cliffs who've gotten stuck where they shouldn't be, got lost, their telephone quit working so they didn't know where they were, they, you know, just all kinds of. Yeah, there are safety concerns but, you know, if you know your limits. Watch where you step. Yeah, right? Watch where you step and be mindful, be mindful of yourself. Huh, it sounds really fun. I know that out in the west, we generally have very long big views and we can see the lay of the land. There's a mountain that's, you know, 10 degrees from north or whatever. And so you can find your way because there's that mountain you can always see but that's not

54:18always the case in the forest. No, no, not in Kentucky. I mean, yeah, there's some high points and you can see far off the, but you don't have any towering points. Like all the points, like if you're up on an overlook, we'll say like, buzzard rock in Macquarie County, but you see way off into the distance, but you're, you're almost, you're almost the same level as the distance. Even though the valley is going through, you don't have any towering mountains. You have to get further down into southeast Kentucky before you start getting into different heights of mountains and whatnot. Well, and if you're in, if you're in the valley, you don't get that view either. No, no, if you're in the valley, yeah, you just have to stay in your watershed. You know, if you go around to the next watershed, you've got to, that's the thing too is like you're, you're hiking in the valley. The watershed will always take you back to where, where you can't generally.

55:20Right, right. Okay, that's a good word. Well, it sounds like a delightful place. It is. How can people get more information? We've talked about your database and we've talked about your photography website, but list all of that for us again. So there's the KY landforms database, which features a clickable map to the waterfalls, the arches, the overlooks, and tunnels of Kentucky. Then there's the KY arches website that features not only the map with the arches, but it also features a trip section to, I think, 15 different arches that have detailed directions. There's also historical information on archunners of the past. We've done features on archunners of the present. It also explains the types of arches, and then we also discuss arch awareness,

56:25which covers the abuses that happen to Kentucky arches. There's a lot. We have a problem with Pavelink, which is where people dig for Native American artifacts under arches. We have people that camp under them. You're not allowed to camp under arches. It makes them brittle and fall, and then we have people that like to spray paint arches. That's not cool. That requires a lot of work to get that off, and all the stuff damages arches. Then we have the waterfalls database, which, and also with both the arches and waterfalls databases, there's information on all the top 10 waterfalls, top 10 submitters, top 10 heights, widths, all that. There's a whole top 10 section, which is really, really cool. Now the Kentucky Waterfalls KY Waterfalls database also has a clickable map, but currently it just goes to the landforms map. But there's also the information on the trip section.

57:33There as well, which 22 waterfalls, I think. So if people want to contribute to the effort, let's say they spot an arch somewhere. Yeah, they could go to the landforms page, and it up on top, it says submit an arch, or submit a landform, or you can do it from the waterfalls or the arches. You can just click to submit, and as long as it has a photograph and a GPS location, you're good to go. Send an email. Sometimes we get double submissions, and I'm pretty good about reaching back out to people and saying, hey, we already have this in the database. We have quite a few that we keep private. Arch is at least numerous reasons. We have agreements with some of our arch hunters, not to share them. And then we have some that are roadside that are not covered in graffiti,

58:33that we don't want ever covered in graffiti. So we don't we don't put those on there. And then other protected arches, if they're in nature preserves or things of that nature. And privately end, we definitely want to make sure that landowners, people aren't going on to landowners property and whatnot. And that applies with the waterfalls too. There's not as many waterfalls that we keep hitting, but there are there there's probably a few hundred that we keep from the public just because of those similar reasons with the arches. Well, that's that's cool. I was going to ask that question and you answered it already. So very, very cool. And I want to mention your photography again, faults, photos, FUL, TZFOTOS. It looks like you sell and license your photography through that. I do. Yeah, I do. I license I license rights to photography for recently. I did a

59:37worked out something with Kentucky tourism, where they licensed about a hundred images. And Kentucky State Parks, they licensed about 30. So yeah, I license out. And then I also do sell prints. And usually it's not like a click on order thing. You just have to reach out to me and I'll go print it and send it to you. I haven't had time to set all that stuff up. Been a little bit busy. Well, it's beautiful. And everyone should go look at your work because you're doing a very, very good job. I'm kind of I'm looking at it now. And I see one that reminds me of the arch to triumph, you know, in France or something. And there are others that have waterfalls going down through the arches, which the combination is just and of course, you have the beautiful foliage of Kentucky, wrote a dindrums. They're stunning. I'm just going to say they're stunning. They're really, really beautiful. So oh, here's one horse head arch. Now that's cool.

1:00:40So it looks just like a horse. So that that one was originally named Angel Windows. And the in our Facebook group, the Kentucky Waterfalls Arches and Landscapes group. Somebody posted the picture of that and somebody said, Oh, that that looks like a horse head. Yeah. And it took off. And that is one of the most searched, my most searched photographs. That's its nickname. Well, we, you know, and that's what everybody calls it. So yeah, it's a really a unique arch that it looks like a horse head. I had been there 20 times and had never noticed that it looked like a horse head, still that fellow post of that photograph. Well, it absolutely does from this angle. Oh, yeah, for sure. Very, very fun. Well, thank you so much for sharing this with this bill. I I'm fascinated. And it's always fun to find out about things that people can do in. I shouldn't say unexpected places because people know Kentucky's amazing. Right. Well, but nobody, nobody knows

1:01:44it. Kentucky has how many orches it has or as many. Yeah. And I know that the websites are a direct result to eco tourism in the state. And I've been told that by somebody that that was speaking with the tourism director of McCurry County. McCurry County said the websites are a direct result of because it's one of the poorest counties of the state of how many people are coming into that county and in hiking and visiting. And that for people that like those long hikes, that's lower section of Kentucky's great for it. For the big south fork, you've got 8, 9, 10 mile hikes going on there. And then if you want to take the Shell Tweet Trace National Recreation Trail, that there's like stretches from Tennessee all the way up to I-64 in North Central, Kentucky. Nice. Well, we should have talked about that too. We burned up our time, though. So it wasn't burned up. I thoroughly enjoyed this bill. Yeah, but thank you so much for sharing this with us.

1:02:49And everyone you heard, Boots Photos, the KY Landforms Database, KY Waterfalls Database. That's how you can find out more. And until the next show, go find your mysteries out in the woods. Get out there and have some fun. Thank you.