We started out wearing jackets on the first day of our son Blake's four-day vacation with us. The forecast showed increasingly warm weather, and by the last day we had highs close to 90 degrees. We had thought our kayaking days were over for 2016, but a warm blue-sky day made a perfect opportunity to be on the Shenandoah River.
This was Blake's maiden voyage in our inflatable kayak, as he and Mark headed out from the low water bridge at Bentonville, Virginia.
Denisa was the shuttle driver this morning. She dropped them off here, and then picked them up four miles down the river at the new Shenandoah River State Park.
This is the South Fork of the Shenandoah River. Our campgound is actually situated on the North Fork of the river, but we were advised that it didn't have enough water at this time of the year to try floating that section. You can see that the water is wonderfully clear, and a little chilly at 56 degrees this morning.
It was a good thing to have clear water so they could see upcoming rocks. They got pretty good at raising bottoms up to miss some of them. But occasionally they got stuck on a rock bar that necessitated them to abandon ship to get by. That seemed to be a good time for a photo opportunity.
There were times of tranquil floating on the Shenandoah River, with the trees and the blue sky reflected in the calm water. But they got stuck on a rock bar coming into the boat launch at the state park. They both had to get out and walk the boat across the slippery rocks. Mark slipped and went in that cold water before they made it to shore.
The picture below shows the river snaking through the valley with the Appalachian mountains in the background. Nice! The plan was to continue this float on down the winding Shenandoah, with Blake and Denisa in the boat and Mark shuttling the car to the next stop. But with the low water, the boat had seen enough rocks for the day. We noticed a little hole in a seam as we put things away. It might be time for a new boat for Christmas this year.
A shortened kayak trip also meant that we had time for a trip into the little village of Middletown for dinner at an Irish Pub. Full of Scotch eggs, Irish sausages, and a reuben sandwich, we finished up Blake's vacation on a full stomach.
We had to be up early the next morning to take Blake to catch his flight out of Dulles airport. The rush hour traffic into DC was interesting, and we were glad we didn't have to drive all the way into the city. There are lots of tourist options in the Washington DC area, but we had seen many of them. So we opted for a bike ride along the greenway close to the airport.
The greenway is named after the Washington & Old Dominion railway that used to run through this section of Virginia. Now the Washington & Old Dominion Greenway is lovingly shortened to "The WOD" by the many local residents that walk and hike its 45-mile length.
We decided that a 14-mile bike ride was plenty for us this day, considering that the temperature was around 90 degrees. The local weatherman is exclaiming about the unusually hot temperatures they are experiencing now. We have seen records broken for high temperatures a couple days this week, and we hear that we are experiencing highs that are twenty degrees higher than the averages for this part of October.
Now that it has been six days since our arrival to this area, we wanted to see if the trees on the Sky Line Drive had changed any more. On our way home from the airport, we drove to Sperryville, Virginia, and entered the Sky Line Drive at mile marker 32. Sure enough, we were greeted with some lovely trees on our drive.
Denisa should also confess that we stopped at another apple stand to replenish our fruit supply. Her apple-addiction kicked in when she noticed we were getting dangerously close to being almost out of apples. We usually eat 4-5 raw apples every day, as Denisa cores and quarters them for snacks while we are out exploring.
We also cook with the apples, and have enjoyed several apple crisps. The latest discovery is an apple cheese cake. After we had devoured half of the cheese cake, we decided to take a picture. We will be making another cheese cake before we run out of apples!
All this talk about apples is a digression from our tree report on the Sky Line Drive. We are actually driving at a higher altitude, and we see significantly more color than we did a few days ago.
In this section we also drove through the Mary's Rock tunnel. At only 12 foot 8 inches, it's a good thing we are driving the car today, because our motor home would be too tall to pass through. Actually, the motor home would make it, but we would lose a couple air conditioners and a television antenna.
As we drove closer to home, some of the view points looked familiar. In the 105 miles of the Sky Line Drive, there are over 70 different view points to pull over to see the beauty along the ridge.
Stopping at a good number of those lookouts slowed down the 32 mile trip up the Sky Line Drive. Plus, the speed limit is 35 mph, so it's not exactly the fast route home.
Our only wildlife picture today is of some colorful insects. We recognize this as a seed pod from a milkweed plant. This is the only plant that the monarch caterpillar can eat before its transformation into an orange butterfly. Now the butterflies are gone, but this family of equally orange bugs seem to be enjoying the milkweed as well. We found that they are called large milkweed bugs--honest--we didn't make that name up!
We thought it would be interesting to re-create a picture we took five days earlier when we were hiking with Blake. We had stopped at Rattlesnake View Point, and sat in the grass to look out over the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Sitting in the very same spot, we can definitely see that foliage has adopted a more orange and gold hue today. We can also say that we are already missing Blake, but glad that he likes to visit to wander God's wonders with us.
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