Hello, all: Well, I'm back from my trip to West Virginia. And I have a bone to pick with somebody: WHO ORDERED UP ALL THAT RAIN???? It started raining in the wee hours of Saturday morning and didn't let up until early Sunday morning! Now how am I supposed to clean up a cemetery in a downpour? (At least I didn't have to worry about snakes. They had all drowned!) My brother and I, however, are not ones to sit around moping and looking out a window saying "if only". So by early afternoon we said "What the heck...", jumped in the truck, and headed down to Mulberry. We figured we could at least take a look at the Radford Cemetery and get a good idea of what we're up against now that it's the height of summer and everything has come up. When we got to where we needed to ford the creek the first time (there are 2 crossings), we decided to park the truck as the water was rising. We figured to hike through the woods as the cemetery is on the same side (the road crosses the creek once and puts you on the opposite bank, and you cross the creek the second time to get back on the right side). We got lucky and found a pretty good deer trail, although the deer probably don't mind the occasional briar patch as much as we do (my expensive plastic rain poncho from Oak Hill's K-Mart that cost me $3 now has air conditioning). I'm happy to report our instincts were pretty good: we didn't overshoot the cemetery and end up on Laurel Creek. In fact, when we left the deer trail and came down the hillside, we came down pert near right into the cemetery. Fortunately for both my brother and I, we are not allergic to poison ivy. How green is that cemetery, and its all periwinkle and poison ivy. It was just as well anyway, because there wasn't anything we could really do in the rain (my glasses kept fogging up and I think my t-shirt got wetter from wiping my glasses on them than the rain coming through my air-conditioned poncho.) We are going to make another attempt this fall when things have died back a bit: cut the bushes/saplings/briar patch out and do some raking. Then come spring, as much as I don't want or like to use poisons in our environment, I guess we will hit the whole thing with 3-4 gallons of Roundup (if anyone has an alternative option, I'm all ears). I would like to share what my brother found to be most hilarious. We decided to walk down the road and see if we could ford the creek instead of going the woods on the way back. We come to the first return crossing and it is shallow with one somewhat narrow deeper section. My brother says "Geronimo", runs and leaps it. I say "Okey-dokey", run, leap....and land with one foot in up to my calf. Leave it to my brother to be laughing too hard to offer a hand (not that I needed one. It wasn't as deep as we thought and should have taken the truck on up the road.) Of course, the biggest laugh was the look on my aunt and uncle's faces when we showed up on their doorstep after our trek up Mulberry. I don't think they thought we were acting our age (52 and 45, me being the younger.) I'm sure after relating this story, I'll never get anyone else to go up Mulberry and help me in the cemetery. No doubt, like my aunt and uncle, you think my brother and I are probably certifiable. <LOL> Best wishes, June P.S. We also checked in on the McKinney-James Cemetery up Beards Fork. Although the loggers are very near--I will not repeat the expletive my brother uttered when we pulled off where they have torn up part of the old road leading to the cemetery--they seem to be respecting the cemetery's boundaries and leaving a fairly wide berth.