One false step

Yes...one small step and it would have been curtins f0r Jimmy & I today. The heights I go to get pictures of wild flowers is going to be the death of us...I'm getting too old for this, but we have had lots of fun for the last two days. It has been nice and sunny and yesterday we rode our bikes to Natural Bridge State Park and got some wonderful pictures of Mountain Laurel just beginning to bloom...But I'll save that post for another time.
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Today we rode our bikes south to Pine Mountain State Park in Pinville, Kentucky. We were going to see if perhaps south of us the Mountain Laurel was in full bloom, but it was just in the budding stages there.
What we did find was Rhododendrons everywhere, just as in Natural Bridge. Most had been bitten by the freeze in April and were not blooming here either...so we thought. The Rhodies were everywhere scattered in between Mountain Laurel, also not blooming. The picture above is a Rhodie.

Since we didn't find any flowers blooming here we decided to hike around. Above is a picture of us high up in the mountain looking down on the city of Pineville. Pineville is close to the Tennessee & Virginia borders.

Here is a walkway to an overlook where I snapped the picture overlooking Pineville. You can see a metal railing attached on top of a great big boulder at the end of the path. Jimmy was standing at the overlook first, while I was busy snapping pictures along the way, when he spotted it....or them! And wouldn't you know it, the only Rhodies in bloom were on the edge of the cliff with brush and other trees in the way. We could barely see them thru the bushes & small trees that were growing on the rocks. I tried to get a picture from the overlook, but to no avail.

See the railing in the upper left of the above picture? I came over the railing and down this rock very carefully to another big rock. I was determined to get closer to the blooming Rhodie for a picture. When I got closer I could see more blooms off in the distance, but I only wanted to get near enough for a picture.

Here I am hanging on to a very small maple tree...more like a twig. I can't move in any direction because there is no where to move but back. I tried to take a picture and why I didn't think to zoom in, with my very limited zoom, I don't know. Was it because I was concentrating more on hanging on to the little maple tree and watching my feet that were right on the edge?

I tried aiming my camera in different directions taking many pics of this same bush and could tell that I wasn't going to get a very good picture when suddenly Jimmy was right by my side, saying, "Honey be careful! Let me move some of the branches out of your way." He has very long arms and we both clung to the same little maple branch for support...with nothing in front of us but a very long way down and some bushes to break our fall.

Now see...Jimmy did a good job holding the branches out of the way. He tries to help me as much as he can....He's so sweet and he knew that I wanted to put these up on my blog to show you guys.

These are the same Rhodies...I just wanted to show you the rest of the bush that hasn't bloomed out yet. This mountainside should be breathtaking once all the bushes all blooming. While taking pics of this bush only my arm with camera in hand was moving around for the different shots...I was standing as still as I possibly could.

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Once back on the path and as we were walking away from the lookout, Jimmy said,"I never gave it much thought before, but you would have to be out here with someone you really trusted because you could have easily pushed me over the edge or visa versa."

I wonder why he didn't think of that yesterday? We hiked much higher and were on the edges of rock cliffs several times...but maybe not in such a vulnerable position and in such close proximity to each other.