(Note: All pictures may be enlarged by clicking on them once or twice.)
Betsy and I made a trip to Cumberland Falls State Park in Kentucky to celebrate my birthday this year. We’ve been there before, and Cumberland Falls is sometimes referred to as the ‘Niagara of the South’, so we were looking forward to our visit. A nice bonus was that there was to be a full moon on the night of my birthday, so we hoped we could see a moonbow. Cumberland Falls is the only place in the western hemisphere where a moonbow can be seen.
We got to the park in the afternoon, and found that there was plenty of water in the river flowing over the falls and throwing up a mist, as you can see in the picture above. The only problem was that to get a photo of that mist, we had to shoot into the sun.
We also found that the overlook nearest the falls was closed for repairs, so we had to walk downstream to get a picture of the falls. Even though we were further away, we still had a nice view of the falls.
It was hazy when we returned to the falls after dark, and a ranger said we probably wouldn’t be able to see anything of a moonbow. But since it was a nice night, we walked to the falls anyway. The falls looked nice in the moonlight, so I did some experimenting with night-time time-exposure photography.
Although we didn’t see any signs of the moonbow, I took some long-exposure photos of where we thought the moonbow should be. I couldn’t see anything in the camera, but when I uploaded the photos to my computer, I was delighted to see a moonbow as pretty as can be.
All in all I had a great birthday!