First Fall is an improbably long and impossibly deep hole that had an added feature — several speckled trout, one of them was big enough to saddle and ride like a pony. I could not believe there are such big fish in a place so regularly visited. Every ten minutes or so another one of them would take a run at the fall before flopping back into the tank below.

A magnificent rock shelf lines most of the pool's 80 foot length, giving you a six foot step off into some astonishing water with a tremendous emerald color. It’s a minimum eight feet deep at the bottom of the fall, but gets really deep below, where water has scooped something that’s scuba deep. The only drawback is that once you jump in from the ledge above, you have to swim around to the bottom and walk a short distance back to the top.

Entry and exit is less of a problem one mile downstream where a low, flat ledge forms a teenage makeout spot called Lover’s Rock. There's no sign saying as much, so I had to ask around to learn the name. I stopped at the bank and described the place to a couple of tellers. Both women said they knew the place, but to make sure we were talking about the same spot, they began describing how to get there. Confusion ensued and as we were trying to sort it out, another employee stepped in.

“They're just a little mixed up," he said. "Whenever they went it was dark.”

Copyright Running Water Publications 2002