Princess Falls

A cou­ple of weeks ago my wife and I hiked to Princess Falls on Lick Creek in McCreary County. There is more than one way to get to it; the route we chose this time is an easy and rel­a­tive­ly short hike. From the park­ing lot at Yamacraw Bridge the trail imme­di­ate­ly enters the woods and fol­lows the Cumberland River.

During the spring there is an abun­dance of wild­flow­ers along the trail, and the falls is in all its glo­ry. But this is sum­mer, and it had­n’t rained much in a while, so our only expec­ta­tion was to have a pleas­ant walk in the woods. We weren’t sur­prised to find that there was­n’t much water going over the falls. That, along with a sun­ny sky, made for less-than-ide­al pho­tog­ra­phy conditions.

The clas­sic pho­to­graph of Princess Falls shows its full width. It is a beau­ti­ful water­fall. I made a few oblig­a­tory pho­tographs from that per­spec­tive, but with­out good water flow I was­n’t too excit­ed about them. We sat on some rocks at the base of the falls and ate lunch and just enjoyed being there, thank­ful we’re still able to hike and vis­it beau­ti­ful places like this. 

As we ate lunch my eye kept being drawn to the phlox grow­ing along the upper part of the falls; it added some con­trast­ing col­or to the scene. I made my way up to the fal­l’s edge and found what I thought was an inter­est­ing com­po­si­tion. I set up my tri­pod very care­ful­ly — a care­less bump and it would go crash­ing over the edge — and took the photo.