A couple of weeks ago I spent an afternoon hiking around Colorado Bend State Park and am just getting to my photos. It had been raining quite a bit and I was hoping that Gorman Falls would really be flowing. So, my first hike was down to the falls. The hike from the parking area begins flat enough but toward the end it gets very rocky and you end up making a steep descent down the cliff with some cables to help you keep your balance. The picture below shows the view back up from near the bottom of the cliff. The trail winds back and forth a couple of times and you have to be careful not to slip on the rocks.

I made it down and back up without incident and most people do, but it is a bit of an ordeal. At the bottom of this descent is a shady area with a viewing platform for Gorman Falls and you can climb down the river bank another 10 feet to get river.

The falls weren’t flowing much, and what little water there was flowing was mostly behind some trees. But I do like the mossy rocks in the shade under the falls and set about trying to take a few good photos of them. In the photo below you can see the mossy rocks behind where the waterfall sometimes flows. The area is roped off and most people are good enough to respect the barrier.

These rocks covered with algae or moss (I don’t know) might be a more interesting feature than the waterfall itself. There are certainly many interesting shapes and shadows to photograph and they are mostly shaded so the bright sunlight doesn’t overwhelm the rest of the scene. Below is a side view from up the trail a little.

Hopefully it isn’t just me, but I think it is natural to see faces in patterns and to me the below photo looks like a big creepy green gorilla face. What do you think?

I left the green rocks behind and climbed back up the trail and decided to drive down to the other end of the park and check out the smaller waterfalls there. Along that trail, I became distracted by a moth with a long proboscis fluttering about the thistles. The sunlight was good on it and the background was dark, so I had some fun shooting photos of it. You can see in the first photo moth approaching the flower with its proboscis curled up and then it extends it to get some flowery goodness while continuing to hover. It doesn’t seem to be bothered by the other bug on the flower.

The bug photos were shot at 400mm. The first one is at 1/2000 second shutter speed and you can see some motion blur in the wings. The second one is shot at 1/3200 second and the wings are a little sharper, but there is still some motion blur. The wings move very fast.

The other waterfalls weren’t really flowing much either and I didn’t take any photos, but I did see other wildlife along the hike so I had a good time. Below are photos of a nine-banded armadillo and a turkey vulture. Both animals are quite common out here and you will probably see them while hiking unless you are from Pennsylvania for some reason.

Thanks for reading.