Lessons from Our Fall Road Trip

Our fall road trip was 5 days – 2 nights camping in southern Virginia and 2 nights at the Snowshoe Ski Resort. It was an enjoyable time away from home and, like most travels, a learning experience.

We had not camped for more than 20 years and the type of camping at the Staunton River Star Party was different than we’d ever done before. We learned that:

• We can indeed both sleep in the car…but it is a pretty tight fit.
• The food is reasonably priced and tasty. We’ll still take an ice chest next year…but buy more from the vendor.
• The facilities at the park (like hot showers) make it easy to imagine a camping for longer than 2 nights. We’ll probably stay for more than 2 nights next year.
• We need to figure out how to create our own shade for during the day on the field. It can still get warm in the afternoons in early October.

Several lessons from the West Virginia portion of the trip:

• Cell phone reception is not good in the mountains. In fact – don’t count on it at all.
• The Snowshoe Resort is empty in October…and almost everything is closed. It seemed eerie to not have more people about. I might stay at the base of the mountain next time although I did enjoy the sunsets from the window of our efficiency.
• The efficiency had a queen sized Murphy bed. When it was folded up – a table folded down into the space where the bed would be later. It is very appealing to use space so efficiently. I tucked the idea away for application if I ever do extreme downsizing.

Fall Road Trip

Last week we made our annual fall road trip. Last year we went to Chincoteague and Blackwater National Wildlife Refuges (blog post here) which is southeast of where we live. This year we went south into Virginia and southwest into West Virginia.

Our trip started with 2 days at the Staunton River State Park for a star party. The park is in south central Virginia…and has very dark skies. Our car was completely full with telescopes and camping gear!

Then we drove into West Virginia along very curvy roads. It was a step back in time with little cell service and gas stations with only one grade of regular gas….but the drive was scenic – up, down, around, all the colors of fall.  There are rhododendron and pines to provide a dark green backdrop to the yellows and reds along the way.

We noticed that some of the mountains had trees already bare for the winter…some with brightly colored trees…and some that still looked like summertime. Altitude and the direction of the slope make quite a difference.

We enjoyed Beartown State Park, Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, Cass Scenic Railroad State Park and the Snowshoe Ski Resort. I’ll be posting more details over the next couple of weeks.

Stony Brook State Park - August 2015

The first and last park we visited in our trek to state parks in New York back in August was Stony Brook State Park. The first time we were in the park was a hot Monday afternoon - and there were lots of people in the water. It was hard to get pristine pictures of anything. We returned during a damp and cool morning a few days later; the only other people in the park were park personnel!

There is a lot of moving water in the park: large falls and little trickles. The gray day made it easier to photograph.

My favorite of the images is a low falls - a little dark with the greens  and mists of late summer framing the water.

I liked the stone bridges

And wooden bridges.

Both had lichen and moss growing on their stone abutments.

There were some leaves that looked worn from summer…getting ready for fall.

There were berries ripening too.

There were a few cairns but not as many as we saw at Robert H. Treman State Park.

Last but not least - there was a spider waiting patiently in a web suspended from hemlock branches full of water droplets.

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - August 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each day is an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for August 2015.

Eggplant balls - I finally found a recipe made with eggplant that I really like. The balls are good as appetizers or with spaghetti sauce (i.e. like meat balls) or cut in quarters and used in a stir fry. The recipe I started with is here; I substituted flaxseed meal and ground oatmeal for the bread crumbs.

Great cantaloupe and watermelon from the CSA this year - I always associate the best cantaloupe and watermelon with August….and this year was true to my memories. The watermelons were big, heavy things and very sweet; not the seedless and less flavorful varieties that seem the most popular in many grocery stores.

A visit from my daughter - My daughter had an opportunity to travel to our area for work….and she stayed on for a visit over the weekend. Wonderful serendipity.

New tablet (provided under warranty) - I got a notice about a month ago that my tablet was being recalled and that vendor would provide a replacement. The process worked! My new tablet arrived in the mail and was configured the way I wanted very quickly. I was braced for a glitch that never occurred.

Windows 10 - I was running Windows 7 and decided to upgrade to Windows 10 to be on a more current operating system. Again I anticipated a glitch of some kind. There was a minor one that cost me a few hours but otherwise it was easier. Most of the configuration I had previous was maintained during the install….that’s the part I celebrated.

Anticipating a road trip - I always enjoy the time just before a road trip....finding information for along our route, packing….celebrating that we are getting away for a little while.

Letchworth State Park - We had been to the park in New York once before during a spring time and wanted to go when it was warmer. Arriving first thing in the morning meant that we didn’t have lots of people in our photographs.

Taughannock State Park - Initially we had not planned to visit the park but I’m glad we had the time. We only went to the overlook of the falls but it brought back lots of memories of visits there with my daughter when she lived in the area several years ago.

Stony Brook State Park - This was a new park for use and was initially a disappointment because we were there on a hot afternoon and there were huge numbers of people. We came back on our way home and had the park to ourselves…and that the day I celebrated this particular park.

Nature Photography with summer campers - Celebrating a volunteer gig that was a joy - for me and the elementary are summer campers....sharing the wonder of nature.

August 2015 Road Trip

Our August road trip was from Maryland up to New York (south and south west) primarily for waterfalls in New York State Parks from a base in Mt. Morris NY. I have several subsequent posts planned about the state parks. I’m focuses on the drive itself today.

Our first rest stop had Monarch friendly milkweed among their plantings….but no butterflies.

The sunflowers were in all stages of development and harbored quite a few different insects:

Bees

Wasps

And wheel bug (with a much smaller fly).

Several other rest stops along the way had similar plantings.

My husband was driving leaving me free to take pictures while we were moving down the road. The drive through the middle of Pennsylvania is through the Allegheny Mountains so there are sections of raised highway and

Steep road cuts.

The day we drove up was sunny (and hot) with fluffy clouds building.

On the way back it was somewhat cooler because it was cloudy much of the time. The high humidity made it feel hotter than it was. I manage to get a picture of the replica of the Statue of Liberty on an old bridge support in the Susquehanna River as we zipped past.

Road Trip: Maryland to Texas

A week ago I was driving from Maryland to north Texas (over 2 days).

Road Trips - even one that are mostly just driving - allow a close view of the land. We had good weather; it got progressively hotter as we drove south and west through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and into Texas. We stopped for a night just west of Nashville.

Since I was doing most of the driving - I only took a few pictures as we crossed the Mississippi at Memphis…..the Memphis Pyramid and the bridge into Arkansas over the river.

The closer we got to Texas the wetter it got. The center of the US has gotten a lot of rain and some areas are flat enough that it does not run off like it does in the piedmont area of Maryland where I live.

One place I noticed along the road that I had somehow missed in previous treks through the Virginia part of the route was the mansion at Fort Chiswell. It is visible from the highway. I’m going to want to stop to look at it more next time I am in that area.

Gleanings of the Week Ending July 4, 2015

Hope you are enjoying the 4th of July! We’re going to see the local fireworks display tonight. The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Weight loss, combined with vitamin D, reduces inflammation linked to cancer, chronic disease - And the study was done with postmenopausal women! Quite a welcome change from the days where most medical studies were done with middle aged men.

The Mythology and Art of the American Road Trip - 100 billboards along I-10 from California to Florida.

The Colonial Revival Furniture Made at Eleanor Roosevelt's Val-Kill Industries - I like the old fashioned writing chair. If I had one - would I use it for my laptop? I also liked this article because it reminded me of a road trip to New York (state) a few years ago that included a tour of Val-Kill.

Antarctic life: Highly diverse, unusually structured - Will the high diversity help the Antarctic ecosystem adapt as climate changes?  

Photo Gallery: Scenes from the Golden Age of Animal Tracking -  (click on the ‘View the gallery’ link under the three-toed sloth picture) Animals as subjects and samplers of the environment where they live.

Joe Mangrum's Temporary Sand Paintings Are Pure, Beautiful Magic - Videos of how the intricate paintings are made

This One-Ton Fish Is One of Nature's Most Improbable Creations - I’ve seen ocean sunfish in aquariums…and noted how odd they seemed. They can grow to be quite large (heaviest boney fish in the world!

Frame for displaying tiles - After I fill up all the space under the plastic sheet of my breakfast table with Zentangle tiles® - this is my next display strategy form my ‘tile a day,’

How to Make Vegan Parmesan-Style Cheez - Another recipe to try. I’ve noticed large packages of raw cashews in my grocery store; maybe there are more people trying recipes that call for them - like this recipe.

Presentation: Mobile is eating the world - Trends…..but there is a lot of room for disruption of the ‘mobile’ vision that we have right now.

CSA Week 5

The remnants of the week 4 Gorman Farms CSA share traveled from Maryland to Texas in an ice chest (a two day road trip). The only portions left are a few carrots and a cucumber!

It has been hot and wet in Maryland recently so the veggies are abundant…and the CSA share is full of variety:

• Leafy greens like lettuce, kale, collard greens, kohlrabi greens, carrots tops, cabbage
• Roots like carrots, kohlrabi, onions and garlic
• Cool cucumbers.

The only downside is that I am in Texas and my husband picked up our share this week. How much will still be good by the time I get home.

Ten Little Celebrations - April 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each dayis an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for April 2015.

Countdown to a little vacation - Even though lots of my days feel like ‘vacation’ I have adjusted my definition for vacation to equal ‘away from home’….so I savored the anticipation of the North Caroline road trip in the days prior to leaving.

Otters - There were so many plants and animals I could have celebrated from the North Carolina trip but I am singling out the otters because it was the first time I has seen the animals in the wild.

A barbeque dinner - Sometimes a high calorie splurge is truly worth it. The restaurant advertised ‘Texas Barbeque’ and they delivered.

The Elizabethan Gardens - A lovely place in Manteo, North Carolina. A garden is a great place to celebrate spring.

Maymont - This was a spur of the moment stop in Richmond VA on the way home ---- a gold age mansion and grounds that was donated to the city after the owners died in the 1920s. It is now a park. We were there on a Monday when the mansion and visitor center is closed….but the park is well work the stop. I have post planned for it in a week or so (it’s taking me some time to get all the posts done from the North Carolina trip.

Home Again - I always celebrate coming home after being away….no matter how great the ‘vacation’ was.

Cherry Blossoms - We didn’t get down to Washington DC this year for the cherry blossoms but the tree in our yard had its best year ever….timed perfectly to welcome us home.

Last Master Naturalist Class - I celebrated getting through the 8 class days - not missing a single one! And now I am waiting for my final exam to be graded!

GreenFest - I celebrated finding the native plants I wanted for my yard at the county celebration - along with some additional reusable bags and information on dealing with deer in the neighborhood.

Figuring out a technical problem - I figured out how to use the GPS info from a series of picture to overlay a map. It was easy than I thought it would be….something to celebrate.

Road Trip to North Carolina

We are back from a road trip to North Carolina - focused on the coastal National Wildlife Refuges. I have a series of posts planned for the next few weeks. Today my focus is the getting away.

We had decided to leave a little later to avoid the weekday commuter traffic around the Washington DC beltway so we took our time packing the car. It had been very wet the previous day and there were earthworms that had taken shelter under the garage door - to keep from drowning. Some of them had stayed to long but others were already making their way back over the asphalt to the lawn. There was also a tiny frog on the driveway that was evidently too cold to move.

My husband decided the traffic was light enough for us to leave earlier than he’d planned…and we were ready. We were on the road by 8:30. It was such a gray day that it was not a scenic drive. The non-native pears trees (escaped Bradford pear trees) were in bloom in the brushy areas along the highway. The new leaves of the season provided a hint of green.

We stopped to stretch our legs at the rest stops almost every hour….made very good time. It was still gray and cold as we drove over the bridge near Norfolk and saw larger ships.

And then we arrived in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina and discovered that our room had a view of the Wright Brothers National Memorial (on the side of the barrier island facing the mainland) and about a block from the beach in the opposite direction (on the side of the barrier island facing the Atlantic). We hoped for a warmer and sunnier tomorrow!

On the Road in Arizona

I enjoy being a front seat passenger on road trips and catching the landscape ahead of the car. Our road trip within our vacation to Tucson was a great opportunity. I’ve perfected my technique over the past few vacations: make sure the windshield is clean, zoom a little to get the car out of the picture, and try to keep the horizon level!

My daughter did all the driving:

• From Tucson to Flagstaff (via Phoenix and Sedona, images 1-8 in the slideshow below),
• From Williams to the Grand Canyon in the early morning (image 9), and
• From Petrified Forest National Park back to Tucson (via Show Low and the White Mountains).

We had plenty of variety in the sky: clear blues, sunrise colors, patches of clouds building and a golden sky near sunset with rain not quite reaching the ground from dark clouds. There were roads winding and straight…up hill and down. Mountains with snow and mesas and buttes. Lots of red rock. Grasses, pines, scrub, and saguaro.

Enjoy the Arizona scenery from the road!