Day 2, Peaks of Otter

 Note: Ward, Wally, Theo, and I are on a week long trip in the Blue Ridge of central Virginia.

Since we picked our destination for this trip on the fact that Ward had always heard about Peaks of Otter, but had never visited them, we thought they should be first up on our agenda. The Peaks of Otter are three mountain peaks (Flat Top, Sharp Top, and Harkening Hill) in the Blue Ridge along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We decided that Sharp Top was our first destination since you can get 360 degree views from the top. However, there was bad fog that morning around Sharp Top, so we decided to hike the Fallingwater Cascades Trail while we waited to see if the fog was going to clear. 

The trail was rocky, wet, and slippery, but full of interesting things to see. Below are a few photos of things that caught my eye along the way. 

  

The Cascades Trail was more strenuous than we thought it was going to be, so we opted to try Sharp Top another day. Instead we took a walk around Abbot Lake which lies in the valley among the peaks. That was a pleasant, easy walk with some good views.

Flat Top Peak

Sharp Top Peak in distance

Polly's Ordinary

Today they have something a little fancier that Polly's Ordinary. You can see the Peaks of Otter Lodge across the lake.

After stopping for Mexican food on the way home, we went back to relax at our home away from home. Ward started a 1000 piece puzzle, I read, and Wally and Theo were somewhere doing something.

Until next time...

Home Away from Home

Note: Ward, Wally, Theo, and I are on a week-long trip to the Blue Ridge in central Virginia. 

The morning is quiet. Ward is working a puzzle, and Wally and Theo have as of yet to emerge from their rooms. The sun is trying to peek through the clouds in one part of the sky while fog is shrouding the landscape in another part. It is so peaceful here where we're staying.  

The house is on 6 acres with farms all around. If Zillow has it right, the house was originally built in 1800, but it has been upgraded to the modern place we are staying today. There are 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and just enough space for this family of introverts to find places to unwind after spending the day together.

Here are some pictures of our home away from home.

The house is down a long driveway from the main road.

In front is a huge cactus interlaced with morning glory.

There are cattle in the adjoining fields as well as this friendly horse
that Ward is feeding carrots.

There are abundant black walnut trees, and squirrels are scurrying everywhere with the nuts getting ready for winter.

The property has a small lake (pond) on it. Yesterday I saw a great blue heron fly across it.

This is the dam between our lake and the neighbors larger one next to it.

Ward and I took advantage of this swing last night.

And speaking of Ward, he's in the kitchen frying up some eggs and sausage for breakfast. I better go see if he needs any help. Next time, I'll tell you about some of the hikes we've been taking.

Until then...

Greetings from Central Virginia

 Hi, All. We're in day three of our trip to the Blue Ridge. Phone coverage is spotty, however, I checkout out a hotspot from the library that is yielding some results at the place we're staying. However, it comes and goes, and doesn't handle much data. For example, I can look at photos, but sometimes it times out before I get one posted. So we'll see how far I get with this post. BTW, libraries are great places. They have all kinds of things to check out besides books - like this hotspot. 

We left Wednesday morning right on schedule. Theo did most of the driving on our 5.5 hour trip. He planned for a hike along the way in Grottoes, VA, on the Madison Run Road Trail.

The trail started off along an old fire road before it took off up a hill.

Along the way, we found a benchmark/survey mark. These medallions accurately list the elevation at that point. Finding it, took me back to when I was doing geologic mapping. Their locations are marked on topo (topographic) maps, so I always knew for sure where I was when I found one. 

Our last stop before our Vrbo was the Bedford Visitors Center where we got brochures and maps for attractions we were interested in.

Then it was time to check-in at our rental house and relax for the rest of the evening. It is an old farm house and not close to much of anything. But I will tell you about that tomorrow. I think that's all of the connection I get for tonight.

Until next time...

Songs and A Trip

I like to sing. Always have. And I sound pretty good, except when I don't. I have a limited range, and sometimes, my voice won't cooperate with what I hear. I wouldn't say I was tone-deaf because I can hear when I'm off. I just can't always correct it, but that doesn't stop me from singing. Just ask Ward or Wally or Theo. 

All of my sisters have nice singing voices. My oldest sister is the best, and she was the leader in teaching us many songs when we were young. It was a time of folksongs, and she learned to play the guitar and sing many. That, along with all of the songs she learned in Girl Scouts, gave her quite a repertoire. The routine would go something like this. We'd eat supper, then my parents would retire to the living room to watch the evening news. We, girls, would then do the dishes. And while we worked, we sang. I loved it. (The singing part, not the dishes part.) We'd also sing in the car. Again enjoyable, but more importantly, it helped with carsickness. While it helped, I wouldn't exactly say that it always worked. But maybe I don't need to go into the details of that just now.

I sang at school, I sang at church, I sang in plays, and now I sing during storytimes. But mostly, I sing to myself. It seems that many things remind me of a song, and I just need to sing a few bars when the one pops into my head. Sometimes, when it's not appropriate to burst into song, I save it for later.

So what song just popped into my head? Leaving on a Jet Plane because of the first line, "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go..." But the way I'm singing it now is, "All my bags aren't packed, I'm not ready to go..." That's because we're leaving Wednesday morning for a week-long vacation in the Blue Ridge, and we're not ready yet. Of course, we don't have to be ready until Wednesday, so it should be okay, I tell myself when I look at my To Do list.

Where we're staying doesn't have internet, so I don't know if I will be able to check in with you during our trip. But, I'll share our adventures with you when we get back, if for no other reason than this is where I record the main parts of our trips.

Do you like to sing?

Until next time...

P. S. If I'm lucky, I will get Wally and Theo to sing with me on this trip. 

Meanderings

 In my head, I've written several blog posts since I last visited with you. And they have been very insightful as well as humorous. Too bad, my thoughts are so rapid-fire that as soon as I have one, another comes along to push the first one out of the way. So, let's see where my mind meanders today. :)

There are many more where these came from.

We have been picking up dropped apples around the broken tree limb, and although the apples are still sour, they are sweeter than the ones we tried a couple of weeks ago. They are taking a while to process because they are full of rotten places and wormholes, but I have managed to get some into the freezer for pies. While working on the apples, I thought about when I was a kid and we made lots of applesauce. We didn't have an apple tree, but my father collected bushels of dropped apples from various friends. Every day after school, we would have to make a canner load (7 quarts) of applesauce. This continued until the supply was depleted and often lasted for a few weeks. My father was always scavenging for food - I think a throwback to his childhood when he earned extra money that way. We always had a good supply of blackberries, hickory nuts, and apples from his efforts. And he was a big gardener. But that's a story for another time.

I was too lazy to take the pizza out of the oven for a picture. 

Last night, we had one of our easy, frugal, but tasty dinners. We got a cheese pizza from Aldi's (16" one for only $5.99). We added shredded rotisserie chicken from Costco (4 lb cooked weight/$4.99), peppers from Uncle Billy's garden (sweet for me and jalapeno for Ward), and tomatoes from our garden. We have pizza this way occasionally, and the toppings vary with whatever we have on hand. It easily provides a couple of meals. It could have been cheaper if we had made it entirely from scratch, but it was still a very good deal. And all we had to do was push the Easy Button. And if it's easy, we're more likely to eat at home instead of eating out. And eating at home is almost always cheaper than eating out. 

Surprise iris bloom

I had a fun surprise in the yard recently. I turned around in the driveway one day and saw an iris blooming. I got these irises from an aunt, and they have not bloomed in the two years I've had them. I know it takes a season or two for one to bloom after transplanting, so I was not worried that they hadn't. Disappointed but not worried. It was a surprise to see one blooming in September when they usually bloom in April. I'm unsure what it all means, but I enjoy the bright pop of color.

Next week, we are going to the Blue Ridge with Wally and Theo. Where we're staying is not close to any town, so we can't count on popping out to Walmart to pick up something we've forgotten. And there will be no internet, which we usually use to figure out the details of where we're going and what we're doing for the next day. I think it's time to get serious with our planning. In the meantime, work and other things are keeping us busy. 

Hope everyone gets a fun surprise this week, like my iris.

Until next time...

Serendipity

 It all began last spring when Ward and I took a driving trip south. At the last minute, I grabbed The Pioneers by David McCullough to listen to along the way. I had no idea what it was about but knew that his books were usually interesting. The Pioneers chronicled the settlement of the Northwest Territory with a focus on its first town Marrietta, Ohio. It was an interesting discovery for me to learn that Marrietta played such an important part in our country's history. My parents and most of my relatives grew up on the other side of the Ohio River in West Virginia, across from Marrietta. Having some personal knowledge about the place we were hearing about in the book made it all the more captivating for me.  

Jump forward a few months to last weekend when Ward, my sister, and I went to a family reunion in WV. Guess where it was? Across the river from Marietta! And we stayed in Marietta. (Turns out that the hotels are cheaper there than across the river.) And one of the local museums had an exhibit on The Pioneers. 

After a 6-hour trip, we arrived in time to visit the Campus Martius Museum. The museum was built around the original house of Rufus Putman. Putnam led the first party of white settlers into the NW territory in 1788. Amazingly, many of the original parts of the house were still intact. 

This was the land office of the NW Territory and is the oldest building in the Territory. The NW Territory later became Onio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota. Unlike Putnam's house, this building was relocated to the grounds of the museum.

Much of the museum was too dark for decent pictures, but I did get this picture of a more recent artifact - the first draft copy of The Pioneers book.

After the museum and dinner with friends, we went to the cemetery where my parents and many of my relatives were buried. It was a time of mixed emotions as I remembered my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who have passed.

The next morning, we had a little time before the reunion picnic, so we visited The Mound Cemetery in Marietta. The name came from the prehistoric, 30' high burial mound built by people of the Hopewell culture sometime between 100 BC and 500 AD. 

The early settlers preserved the mound by building a cemetery around it in 1801. The Mound Cemetery has the highest number of Revolutionary War officers buried there of any place in the country. We learned about Dr. Hildreth and his son at the museum yesterday.

We also took a pleasant walk along the river.

Along the walk, we discovered this tree carving of one of the pioneers. It was done by Perl Totman, who was 85 years old when he created it.

The tree had been destroyed by the emerald ash borer,
which made it difficult to carve.

Then it was on to our family picnic. Since I can't show you pictures from this year's reunion for privacy reasons, here's an earlier one. I had 10 more cousins born after this picture. The crowd is small these days, but it's always good to connect with family.

Our trip was a whirlwind 36 hours, but a good one (except for the no-visibility rainstorms on the way home). We got to experience history in a whole new way. First, we got to know the pioneers intimately by reading the book about them, and then we got to actually see where they lived and died. It's not often that I have gotten to experience history like that, and I found the whole experience exhilarating.

Until next time...

A Second Look, September 7, 2023

I have been Second Looking in my yard for a couple of weeks now, but am just getting around to posting some of what I saw. So with no further ado, here I go.

Allium. Early on, the allium had a bad case of black aphids. I managed to get rid of them, but they stunted the growth and blooms this year.

Abelia

The anemone is blooming about a month earlier than last year.

The surprise lilies are always a pleasant surprise.

After the white 4 o'clocks have been blooming for months, these pink ones bloomed. Another fun surprise.

A rare photo of a black-eyed susan before all of its petals are eaten. I just noticed it looks like it's growing out of a violet plant. :)

The fuss-free begonias continue to thrive along our front walk.

A bird-planted sunflower in a pot on our front porch.

Vincas and petunias in front of Ward's shop.

A broken limb on an apple tree. This is an old tree, and the first time it has produced more than a couple of apples since we moved in. Over the years, it has been limbed up, so most of the apples are out of reach. Now we have some easy picking. Unfortunately, the apples aren't ripe yet and won't get any sweeter. I see a lot of sour applesauce in our future.

The bees are enjoying rotten pears. The whole area smells like fermenting fruit.

A rare sighting of a native ladybug on the fence to the vegetable garden. These days, we see mostly the problematic imported Asian ladybugs.

We have seen our first spotted lanternfly in our yard. The spotted lantern fly is new to this country and was first found in Pennsylvania. It is highly damaging to many woody plants, and they are trying desperately to stop its spread.

That's all for now. Ward and I are off to WV this weekend for a family reunion.

Until next time...