Goin' Mobile-A Dance Gypsy's tour of the country

    A pretty decent day outside yesterday. A little bit on the cool side early on, but I was still out there in shorts, even if I did have a sweat shirt on over them. But it did finely get warm enough later in the afternoon that I could actually change to a regular shirt. I spent a lot of the day spraying weeds in the pastures. They had really started to take over the place and were already too high to use a spreader type disperser. So I walked up and down the hills for many, many hours spot spraying where ever needed. I sure do hope it works as I don't want to have to do it all again. Found out that poison ivy has become rampant in several areas of the place. Am really hoping this stuff works on it because that stuff is just plain nasty.
   Hope to get everything picked up around the wood shed this afternoon and get it ready to be stocked with wood. Once done there it will be time to go did a few more post holes out along the driveway. Still need to get that section of fence done before I take off on the road again.
    In the meantime though; I got a few photo's done yesterday and will get the rest of them done this morning. For right now though, here are a few from a trip to Babcock State Park in W. Virginia a couple of weeks ago. We were over there for a weekend contra dance and took a short day trip to a couple places around the area. Today's pictures are all about the grist mill there at the park.

The Grist Mill at Babcock State Park, W. Virginia

May 3, 2014

One of the falls on the creek that flows by the grist mill.

A view of the grist mill from across the stream. The mill is actually a compilation of 3 different mills, none of which were on this site. The National Park Service evidently got a hold of the mills and moved them to this site where they joined them all together into one working mill.

Most of these are just more shots of the mill from different vantage points. I just liked the look of the mill.

A closer view of the actual wheel. This one is an overshot type of waterwheel, meaning that the water flows into the wheel buckets from the top of the wheel and then through the pressure of the water as well as the weight of the water, it turns the wheel. This is actually one of the most efficient designs for a working water wheel.

Rima enjoying the sun while watching the water wheel going round and around.

A view of the wooden flume that brings the water to the top of the water wheel.

A close up view of the wooden water flume. It appears that it was originally built using mortise and tenons to join all the parts together and then they came back and strengthened it with the use of steel rods.

One of the old mill stones. The grooves are cut so that grain that is dropped into the center hole of the stone will be ground into various grits as it works its way to the outside edge of the stone.