Cane Creek Canyon is a privately-protected nature preserve in Colbert County, Alabama, near my family’s land.
Dr. Jim and Faye Lacefield established the the nature preserve on 700-acres of land, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy.
My brother introduced me to hiking at the Preserve in 2007 and I fell in love with the beauty of the place–and the friendliness of Dr. and Mrs. Lacefield. Dr. Lacefield is a retired geology professor at UNA and is well-known for his work, Lost Worlds in Alabama Rocks [Amazon affiliate link.]
I created a short slideshow of photos from a few of my hikes at Cane Creek Canyon to give you an idea of what it’s like. I have so many other wildflower photos that I decided to save them for a second slideshow!
Here are few photos that don’t fit in the slide show, due to cropping or perspective.
Summer McCreless and Ashley Baker are leading an overnight camping and yoga trip for women at Cane Creek Canyon on April 9-10, 2016. They talk about the details of the Cane Creek Canyon trip, and their other camping-and-yoga outings in Episode 8 of the Discover Grow Shinecast.
Hiking at Cane Creek
June – July 2008
This photo is at the beginning of the June 2008 hike, with my nephew Matthew, and another hiker, Roger B.
A few weeks later Matthew and I returned to Cane Creek with my Mom, who’d never visited the Preserve before. Here she is standing just above the large rock overhang shelter, once the site of Native American activities.
On the June 2008 hike, Matthew, Roger and I were caught out in a massive, pop-up thunderstorm, with lots of lightning—the type that’s common in the summer.
We made it to the picnic area (below) . No place to take shelter, other than a small tin-covered shelter at this picnic site, in one of the lowest areas of the Canyon. So we took our chances that the taller trees would be more of a lightning rod than the tin roof. Not necessarily a choice I’d make again, but we made it through.
We later than into another solo hiker, a female, who had endured the storm in a different area of the park without any shelter, other than trees. After the storm, she had slipped on wet rocks and turned her ankle. She was making VERY slow progress back to the entrance, and was clearly in some physical pain.
My nephew ran the mile or so back to the entrance, which happens to be where the Lacefields live. They weren’t home, but Matthew was proactive and resourceful and found a 4-wheel “mule” and drove it back as close as he could to where we were on the trail and we were able to get the injured hiker back to her car.
