Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains

Touring Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains in autumn is always a treat, even when the tree colors are still only approaching their peak. Driving Skyline Drive through the Shenandoah National Park offers nice hikes, great views, occasional wildlife, and a gentle 35 MPH pace.  I saw my second bear of 2012 this month;  he crossed the fire trail about 100 feet ahead and then stopping to check us out before scampering (at about 250 pounds?) into the brush, but this time I wasn’t watching from inside the car. I guess I should have been wearing those bear-alerting bells the rangers always recommend.

Autumn Sunset from Skyland

Blue Ridges at Sunset

Wilderness Clouds

Early morning sunrise – The Wilderness Battlefield
Orange Plank Road, Spotsylvania, VA

June clouds illuminated at sunrise, northbound on the Orange Plank Road at the south end of the Civil War’s Wilderness Battlefield.  I almost always keep a camera in the car and eagerly try to catch and share those rare colorful clouds at sunrise, sunset, thunderstorms, contrails, fogging, or lifting rain. Sometimes the shot is out of the sunroof (sort of like the Google Street-view Car), occasionally out the driver’s window, and sometimes I’ll actually stop the car.

I pulled over to take this image (driver-side mirror at the bottom), even though the traffic was light. The sky paled quickly as the southbound car passed and I got back on the road and crested the upcoming hill.

Establishing a blog…

I’ve toyed with WordPress for a number of years, even used it to build a non-profit site some years ago – but the static sites I was maintaining did not seem to need the dynamic capability of a dedicated blog. The breadth of themes available always seemed encouraging, and a quick way to build a site.

While visiting an acquaintance’s (Jessica Ruano) WordPress site today, I needed to join WordPress to comment – so here is my original blog, hosted on WordPress. I’ll let the entries define the categories, but discussions on art, photography, sciences, technologies, travel, and history all seem to be just over the horizon.

With one hundred and eighty seven initial “Themes” available – Please tolerate some random format changes as I find an appropriate layout.