Weird Weather

  On Friday,April 22 around 3 PM a freakish Hail came out of the sky that pommeled downtown Owingsville, KY and surrounding areas. I believe I was smack in the middle of it while I was driving down main street. Traffic came to a standstill for a few minutes as there was zero visibility and heavy hitting hail and rain came down in sheets. At one point I thought the pellets would almost break my windshield since it came with force and numbers like billions of marbles being dropped from above . When traffic started moving again I soon pulled over to wait out the skyfall.

Clumps of what gathered on my porch 

 

 

No damage seemed to have occurred and while I have seen much larger hail in the past ,there was never so much at once and coming in clumps.It was hail that resembled the size and appearance of rock salt and interestingly enough it was dry hot weather right before it hit.

 

So Many hailstones it almost looks like snow 

 

 

 

Archaeological Strangeness

                                            Bizarre Rock Hauled out of the Ohio river

 

 

One Of the last Photos of the rock when it was still Visible above the waterline

    A Strange situation developed when Ohio Historian Steven Shaffer set out to locate the lost Indian Head Rock, an eight ton boulder that at one time jutted out of the Ohio River before it was damned in the 1920's .Shaffer had heard stories passed down from old timers about a Rock large enough for people to stand on .Supposedly The Rock received a lot of carvings and graffiti from those who swam out to it over time including what was thought to be a pictogram of an Indian head perhaps dating back to Native peoples.

  After the damning Of the river the rock was no longer visible and mostly forgotten. After finding Old Pictures of the rock Shaffer became obsessed. In 2000 he started researching the location and did numerous scuba dives until he located the submerged Rock and pulled together a recovery effort.

   It proved to be a difficult task but after two attempts the heavy rock was soon removed from the water and it was briefly put on display in Portsmouth, Ohio with the intention of making it a museum attraction. Ah ,but It was not the rocks destiny to be on Ohio soil. That section of the river is actually Kentucky territory up to the Water line of the Ohio bank. When word spread that the Boulder had been removed, Many Kentuckians were incensed ,even though the Rock had not been visible for generations and essentially forgotten. The Army corpse of engineers ruled that the rock belonged to KY and when it was pulled out and stashed , Ohio violated an 1899 Federal Rivers and Harborment Act .Also a Commonwealth attorney Cliff  Duvall stated the Rock was of Great Historical significance to KY and that Ohio had violated an Act that protects from the theft of antiquities including Natural and prehistoric structures, historic landmarks and native American Artifacts.

The strange face thought to be carved by Native Americans  

 

 

 

A three year legislative battle began and as it turned out the old rock was already registered by the UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY as an object of archaeological significance and protected as of  1986 .Ohio soon surmised that the right thing to do would be to returned it to its original location back in the water, but KY still wanted the rock .Why was the Item so important to The Kentucky Authorities? A settlement was finally reached and the rock was handed over to Kentucky on Thursday November 4, 2010 .Now here is one for you Cover up and Conspiracy theorists out there ,The Artifact was subsequently hauled away to a Greenup, KY Garage Where it supposedly still stays. Hidden and unseen by the public.

 

A Giant Tree

  Montgomery County's Giant sycamore Tree

                                 

                      It was once measured at 125 feet tall and  35.35 feet in circumference.
                      Hollowed out for so  long no one knows How old it could possibly be.


         These  pictures were taken in 1993 Courtesy of Tom Martin- Author and Naturalist .It Is not known if the tree is still There but Tom Martin and  I are planning an expedition to try and find the tree again when time permits .

                           A Still from a Video when Tom and His Father measured the tree at 43'.
                                              Even greater than the official measurement.