Wednesday Walk: Into the misty gorge

Hello dear Steemians and photography enthusiast,

Today I want to share with you my wednesday walk that I did from our current parking spot, down into the nearby gorge on a foggy morning after a rainy night.

I got up rather early to say goodby to a friend that was leaving to drive up to the north of spain. A day before I had decided that I'm going to do at least some daily exercise before breakfast. I decided to put on my hiking boots and grab the camera. I wanted to walk down into the gorge because the atmosphere seemed mystical down there. Although up at the parking the sun was occasionally creeping through the clouds, the bottom of the valley was still hidden under fog.

On my descent I found the first interesting flowers, so I stopped to take a few shots. The photo which came out the best was of a red poppy.

^{Wrinkled red poppy on a half rock half soil background.}

I continued my descend into the gorge and the small path merged with a fast flowing stream from all the rain at night. Therefore I had to walk beside it, sometimes on solid red sandstone and sometimes on a misty bed of green ivy covering the ground.

^{My shoes already wet, I switched paths to avoid walking through the stream.}

Further up on the other side of the gorge, I found some chalk marks on a rock, which meant people have been bouldering there. So I decided to check it out and started scrambling. The boulder was rather unspectecular but underneath the big roof I found the cutest little plant. It looked like some kind of fern but was so much smaller than any fern I have seen in germany.

^{The little fern in comparison to my finger.}

Heading deeper into the groge, I discovered some small flowers with blue blossoms growing crisscross in the grass and a plant that I have never seen before in my life.

^{The blue blossoms with some droplets were an magnificent sight in the dark green grass.}

^{Never have seen something alike this interesting plant. Do you know what it's called?}

As I hit the bottom of the valley, the fog disappeared and I discovered some more sandstone boulders and rock walls. On one of the boulders a tree was sucking like on a lollipop.

^{Birch and Boulder are best freinds.}

The further I went, the broader the bottom of the valley got and alongside the path a meadow sprawled to my left. I sat down and entered droplet land! There were so many diffrent plants, flowers and straws all covered in thousand little droplets looking like small eyes watching me.

^{Leafs of Clover all covered in droplets. When you look closely you can see the fine hairs which hold the droplets in place.}

^{Like pearls on a string...}

^{Do you think the spider will be happy about this?}

After a while taking shots and enjoying this miniature parallel universe, I decided that it is time to turn around and walk back to our van. Fortunately I reconized the snail on my way before I got into the range of stepping onto it. It was slowly creeping on the ground trying to cross the path I was walking on. I sat down and watched its movements. It was surprisingly fast for a snail so I was able to take some pictures with different backgrounds. The one I like the most ist the following.

^{The snail overcoming a huge obstacle of a leaf :)}

Because it started to rain a bit, I decided to take a different path back to the parking, which is a bit shorter. On my right the path was bounded by another natrual stone wall. On top of that wall there were growing some more red poppys of which one gave me a particular wonderfull sight.

^{The shape of the tilted blossom, the contrast with the background and the droplets, all together intriguing.}

I headed up the path over rocks for the last 500 meters or so and arrived at the van happy and a bit fatigued. I have to say I was really lucky, because just minutes after I entered the van an lay on the bed, the rain turned into hailstones banging on the roof.

Hope you enjoyed my entry for the wednesday walk,
if you did please let me know in the comments :)

Have a good week and see you next wednesday!
Constantin