Summer Stroll through Southern Appalachia

As it does every year, Appalachia called me back home this year, and I found myself once again crossing the Buckeye State border last Saturday. Mother nature was being especially kind to me on this trip, as the rain never seemed to end as I drove through the mountains. My first spot was not so much a mountain spot as it was a hilly locale that is rumored to have Mud sallies. For the purposes of keeping it secret, I'll just say it's in Southern Ohio. After a long hike through a thunderstorm, I had come up with a Longtail, a Dusky, and an Eastern Newt crossing the trail at random, and readily saw a Box Turtle while road cruising that evening. After a lack of Pseudotriton or Gyrinophilus, I bunked up and prepared for the next day's herping. While driving to KY, I passed through a town that calls itself the home of the "Anti-horse thief society." I kid you not on this one. After a long drive through the Bluegrass state and a stop on Lookout Mtn to just see the sights, it was time to ready myself for the Georgia campaign, in which I fully expected to see the rare Pigeon Mountain sally. As it turns out, Georgia's woods have more Skinks than sallies, but they also have something that the rest of Appalachia lacks: Scorpions. Upon tipping my first log with my handy-dandy rake (for Copperheads and such, as they say it in the south), I noticed an odd-shaped slug clinging to the log, ignored it for a minute as I searched for the skink that scurried under the dry leaves, and promptly noticed that the slug was brandishing a stinger as it crawled along the bark. I am not ashamed to say that I was scared completely out of my wits, and no longer worried so much about the Pigeon Mountain sally. So, that ended that, and I headed a little east into the real mountains of Georgia (the ones more like Tennessee than Texas). At two streams, I got nothing but Spotted Duskies and dragonflies the size of semi trucks, although they were fairly good-looking sallies. Well, after a good lunch and a few Mockingbirds, I hit the trail in a new state: NC. A harrowing descent to a few streams was rewarded by Dwarf Black-Bellies, Ocoee salamanders, and a few more Spotted Duskies, though it was capped with a muddy hike back up a treacherous mountain in a storm. After that little episode, I tried a spot thick with rhododendron at about 4500 feet in elevation, and was pleasantly surprised by my new-found success. I got two Red-Legged Salamanders and a Pygmy within about ten minutes, and promptly wore out the batteries on my camera taking pictures from every imaginable angle. With that, a Mexican dinner, and a few mountain overlooks, I called it a day. But, I had one final push in the south: the Smokies. I cannot describe the feeling of entering the high elevations of the park as a herper for those of you who have not experienced it, but the closest I can come to it is to say that it's like making a pilgrimage to a holy land. This day, the holy land was shrouded in fog, as was the high peak that I ascended in search of my quarry. Around lunchtime, the mountains yielded Imitator Salamanders with dull cheek patches, Red-Cheeks, and a Pygmy. To say that I was happy with the previous 18 hours would be a gross understatement, but there was more to come. On the ride down, I stopped at a roadside trickle, and got a real Imitator Salamander, Seals, and a few Black-Bellies, the likes of which I would be inundated with for the next 24 hours. While in the stream, a twosome of nature lovers completely unaware of sallies pulled up and asked us what we were doing. I said we were salamandering, to which I was greeted with a blank stare. They said that they had never seen one, so we just had to fix that. After two minutes, we saw an Imitator, and I could see the awe in their eyes. By the time I left the stream, the two were still excitedly flipping rocks and marveling at the little Desmogs they uncovered. Other than a Longtail the next day in an unexpected spot, that's about all that happened in the Smokies, barring the odd snake I flipped and the Bear I saw sleeping in Cades Cove. With that under my belt, I headed back north with the Ronnie Milsap playing to one last spot in Ohio-the springhouse I stopped at last year. It was a great send-off to end my vacation. I'll never forget this year's finds, or the mist on the mountains that accompanied them. For a while, so long, Appalachia.

sounds like you had a great time. there's something awe-inspiring about turning over a rock and discovering something living there.

You are absolutely right; there's just something close to magical about stream salamanders and Appalachia in general.

SOOO Cool! I want to go and do this! I really like the ones in the last two pics