There is no better food for my soul than a good road trip. That’s why I took a long weekend and went down to the Shenandoah Valley for some history, hiking, sightseeing and airplanes.
I’m sad to say the weather didn’t cooperate and actually interfered with most of what I had planned but created opportunity to do some other stuff. The thing I most looked forward to was the Flying Circus Air Show and a biplane ride over the Virginia countryside.
It was rained out.
The day I wanted to hike turned wicked cold with wind so strong it threatened to blow me off the mountain. Even when it was not raining, the sky was a flat white, making poor conditions for landscape photography most of the time.
Luckily, I’m good at improvising and was so happy to be away from home that I was thrilled to embrace the unplanned in the name of adventure.
Boring skies make for great black and white landscapes and rainy days are perfect for roaming museums and bookshops. And again, at least it was a change of scenery.
It wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for but it was better in some ways….. except for the plane ride, of course. I’m still stinging over that loss but there’s always next year.
Stay tuned as I start sorting through pictures and begin telling some of the stories from the weekend which featured a lot of interesting sights and history themes.
Meanwhile, the top photo is from a drive through rural West Virginia where the foliage was gorgeous as well as the second photo from the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
Make the Journey Fun 
There’s certainly nothing like Shenandoah. I visited there for the first time in 2009 to tour around with a friend and it was simply amazing even though it was early spring and none of the trees had started budding, just bony branches. So I can just imagine how beautiful it must be in autumn (or spring). That’s a spectacular perch, in that lower picture.
Honestly, it was a little underwhelming for me. The colors were dull compared to Ohio and West Virginia. But it is a very nice park and welcoming to visitors. I would love to see it in winter sometime!