River Play - Yadkin River, Cooleemee, NC
River Play - Yadkin River, Cooleemee, NC

There’s nothing like water stick retrieval and canine snorkeling to relieve the heat of the day.

Cooleemee River Park Dam
Cooleemee River Park Dam
Yesterday morning I visited Cooleemee River Park (Bull Hole). I hadn’t been there in a couple of months. It’s been hot and dry here for several weeks and there’s no appreciable water coming over the dam, but waters flowing via the lower spillways.

I used my Canon S90 for these photos. I expected people in the park and I thought it would be less intimidating taking pictures of and around them using a small camera then with my Nikon D700 and kit. The S90 is proving to be a decent small pocket camera.

Fun on the rocks
Fun on the rocks
Lower water periods, such as now, are when it’s fun and safe to play on the rocks and water pools below the dam. As you can see in the third photo, with people present to provide scale, the dam is a little larger/higher then I believe it often looks in many of my photos.

My usual visits to this park often occur early morning or late evening when few people are around. I imagine this park was packed on the 4th of July, Sunday, for most of the day with people taking advantage of the water, shade and picnic tables.

5 Comments

  1. I’ll bet those folks were enjoying the coolness of the water; I saw on the weather channel last night how hot the east coast is predicted to be this week! Try and stay out of the red hot sun.

    • Steve, we’re on the southwestern edge of the worse of this weeks East Coast heat wave so we’re looking for 92°F today and 97°F tomorrow. Of course the humidity will make it seem at 3-5 degrees hotter. I’m ready for fall! ;-)

  2. We were delayed coming out of DC today due to the heat. When it’s too hot we have to reduce weight in the aircraft to get liftoff and especially if the runway is short. Anyway, I think I’ve seen some of the images of this area when the water was raging. It does look like this is a better time to be there.

  3. Earl, that definitely looks like a dangerous swordfish in the first image. Didn’t know that they grow to *that* size in your rivers though.