We made our monthly telescope shiner collecting trip to Hurricane Creek in the upper Paint Rock Valley of Alabama today. We aim to get into the Walls of Jericho state lands tract, which requires driving four miles up a gated, broken road. Today we finally encountered a large fallen tree across the road, the bane of offroad collecting. The ATV in our group was barely able to get around it (see the picture below), but there was no way my truck was getting over it. We backtracked a bit, and collected telescopes at an old ford nearby, three miles south of where we usually work. The collecting day ended with the first lightning flash. But we got our quota of 30 telescopes, plus one large male greenside darter.

Next month we're bringing a chainsaw!

Put a stihl 029 in you next years budget.

Man a good small chain saw is a requirement in my opinion for these off the beaten path roads....I now carry one on every trip....Just cleared two maples just this week to get my Toro to a sample / study site..Very handy to always have in your regular kit.

I've lead a sheltered life to date.

Just as a punchline to our adventures with no chainsaw, yesterday I talked to Nick who's land steward for the Walls property. He wondered what happened to us on Saturday, since he showed up at the downed tree on state property and chainsawed it into smaller pieces without our help. He didn't even know that there was a second downed tree on private land leading in to the Walls that we were stopped by. So we could have spent the whole day cutting and removing timber on the road. It's like any fishing trip, you never know what will happen.