#549 Vacation Virginia #9 - McCormick Farm

Vacation Virginia #9, in celebration of our fathers, is a day trip to Lexington, VA.

Kelly and I are both lucky enough to have grown up on Missouri farms.  These farms ultimately benefited from Cyrus McCormick's 1831 invention, the mechanical reaper - only 50 miles from Charlottesville, near Lexington. Cyrus was only 22 when he invented and built the reaper on his family farm.  Today, the Cyrus McCormick Farm is managed by our friends at Virginia Tech and is a beautiful place to spend the afternoon enjoying the outdoors, walking the trail, and visiting the blacksmith shop, grist mill, and museum.

The drive from Charlottesville to the McCormick farm is a beautiful trip through the George Washington National Forest, across the Blue Ridge Parkway, and into the Shenandoah Valley.  Luckily for us, our route takes us by the Wintergreen Winery in Nellysford and Ron King's kettle corn booth at Afton Mountain, offering important victuals for what is about to come.

The final stop of the day is Hull's Drive-In Theater in Lexington.  If you miss the good old days of the Fork Union drive-in, then this theater is for you.  It is the nation's only non-profit, community-owned, drive-in theater.  And like Fork Union used to be, it is more a field than a parking lot. The theater is packed to see Man of Steel, a fun movie to watch on a cool night under the stars, a bright moon, and fireflies galore. 

Yours in celebrating our fathers, men of steel both,
Mary

#548 Mountain Lake Biological Station

In 2009, I made my first trip to the University of Virginia's Mountain Lake Biological Station, a residential research and teaching field station on a mountaintop in southwestern Virginia.

I quickly learned the study of snakes is central to the station's mission when a researcher examining the contents of a garter snake’s stomach (termed “barfing the snake”) became so excited upon finding a poisonous newt inside that the station director was alerted immediately via two-way radio.  

It's hard to overstate the level of excitement this generated. A crowd gathered and everyone was really, really excited.  I got excited about how lucky I was to see this apparently rare and thus exciting occurrence.

But I’m a lucky guy.  I've been lucky enough to visit MLBS along with my colleague Chris Gist every year since 2009 to help with geospatial training for summer researchers who work on many topics in biology.

Seems fitting that for our 5^th annual visit we focused once again on snakes.   This time we organized teams of students to map the location of over 200 “snake boards”, stiff black plastic rectangles scattered around the station grounds.  Snakes love to hide beneath the warm snake boards. 

Herpetologists regularly check under every board, collecting the snakes, weighing, measuring, examining, and recording every detail.  Combining many years of these data with locations in geospatial software will give researchers new tools for analysis.  And that gets me excited.

A highlight for me on this most recent visit was the station director asking if I remembered that red letter day when they found the newt inside the garter snake.  Apparently the researcher still talks about how happy she is that I asked for a demonstration of her snake work which led her to check a nearby snake board at a time she would not normally visit and find for only the second time ever at Mountain Lake Biological Station, a garter snake with a newt inside. Now that's exciting.

Yours in asking the right question at the right time,
Kelly

#547 Vacation Virginia #8 - Floating the James

Let's add "float trip" to the long list of events organized by the University of Virginia Library's Scholars' Lab. From planning to logistics to weather, this brainchild of Chris Gist was a hit.

Friends of the Scholars' Lab met on a warm summer Saturday in Howardsville, Virginia, less than an hour south of Charlottesville. The folks at Howardsville Canoe Livery shuttled us upriver to Wingina where we loaded gear and launched five canoes into the sparkling James River.   

Photo credit: Bethany

This rural reach of the James meanders mainly wide and flat across the Piedmont.  We enjoyed plenty of water to lift our canoes off the rocky bottom despite lower than median water levels. 

Turtles, toads, and dragonflies escorted us to the perfect lunch spot, an unnamed gravel bar between Sycamore and Buford Islands where we devoured a highly-civilized Country French meal prepared by Chef Gist. 

After that delicious lunch, flat rocks were skipped, minnows seined, tattoos applied, pirate hats donned, and a fly rod deployed before we set out toward Howardsville. 

Photo credit: Bethany

At the end of the day we're all smiles. 

Photo credit: Bethany

The James River offered adventure, laughs, surprise spills, quick recoveries, and a real sense of accomplishment...not unlike every day in the Scholars' Lab.

Yours in enjoying the adventure,
Kelly

#546 Vacation Virginia #7 - Shenandoah National Park

Driving the whole 20 miles to Shenandoah National Park can sometimes be too far.  So for Vacation Virginia #7, we opt to stay overnight in the park at Big Meadows Lodge during Memorial Day weekend.

Skyline Drive, the 105-mile scenic wonder that runs the length of Shenandoah National Park, is one of our favorites.

On what could be one of Virginia's most spectacular weekends of the year, our plan is to spend it outside - despite the lure of Arrested Development on Netflix!  The Milam Gap section of the Appalachian Trail is just the place for our meandering.  Thru-hikers heading north pass us like nobody's business because we're stopping to enjoy the day and also because they're just a whole lot faster than we are.  In Charlottesville, our ears have quickly grown accustomed to the consistent roar of the 17-year cicadas, but on the Milam Gap trail, we hear nothing but birds and the greetings from other hikers.

After a few hours on the trail, we replenish with lunch in a room with a view at the Skyland cafe.   And in an amazing display of technology, communications between Skyline Drive and the MV Explorer off the coast of Dover were handled with ease.  Though the cafe is busy on this holiday weekend, our veteran waitress tells us this is slow compared to October weekends. 

Kelly may have found his favorite kite flying spot - and that's saying something!  Kelly's kites have flown over the Puntarenas beach in Costa Rica, the mall in Washington DC, the citadel in Halifax, and off the back deck of the MV Explorer.  The big meadows at Big Meadows offer a consistent wind, an open space under blue skies, and a bunch of other kite-flying enthusiasts.

Just a stone's throw up the hill behind the Big Meadows Lodge, Blackrock Summit offers a stunning panorama view of the Shenandoah Valley. 

 

We eventually lose the light and head indoors to the comfort of the Big Meadows lobby and the music of the High Ground bluegrass band.

In Old Dominion, Eddie from Ohio got it right.  "When you're talking home, you mean the Old Dominion."

Yours in enjoying Sweet, Sweet, Virginia,

Mary

#541 Vacation Virginia #2 - Shenandoah National Park

We can't go long without remembering how near we are to Shenandoah National Park and the Appalachian Trail.  Twenty beautiful miles in the car gets us to the entrance of the park on April 14 for Vacation Virginia weekend #2.  Soon, we're on the beautiful Riprap Trail.

And because it's impossible for Kelly to be anywhere near Ron King's kettle popcorn truck without stopping, we stopped.  Two bags, size large, go to the Scholars' Lab and to the Johnston home.

Yours in celebrating the closeness of our favorite things,
Mary

#534 George Washington Defaced It, Thomas Jefferson Bought It, We Visited It

• George Washington defaced it (some say) by carving "GW" into the rock during his 1750 surveying visit.  
• Thomas Jefferson bought it from the King of England for a few dollars, built a private home there, and tagged it "the most sublime of nature's works".  
• The National Register of Historic Places listed it as a National Historic Landmark.
• Herman Melville used it to as a literary device to describe Moby Dick. 

It's Virginia's Natural Bridge.  So we stopped by to see what all this fuss is about.

Virginia's natural beauty, lush and green, engulfs the place.  But the incredible coming together of nature's forces to create this oddment is the real story.  Tectonic plates, continental collisions, limestone's incremental yielding to the unstoppable forces of water, and poof, a natural miracle happened before we were watching.

Seated on benches facing the bridge, we heard a well-delivered scholarly description of the natural and human history of this dramatic place.  Later we engaged costumed interpreters at the Monocan village in the bridge's shadow and got a sense of the depth of their knowledge of Native American life.  These educational interludes (our highlights) were pleasant surprises given the for-profit nature of this place.

Yes, there's a gift shop. Virginia's Natural bridge - "it's easy to get to and hard to forget".

Yours in admiring Mr. Jefferson's real estate acumen,
Kelly

#513 Nate Visits Charlottesville

Get ready.  I'm about to show you how cool it was for us to have our nephew Nate hang out for a few days of fun around Charlottesville.

We're off to a strong start, Skyping with the fam in Germany and Idaho and Missouri.

 We outsmarted the July Virginia heat by hanging out underground.

Outside the cave was too hot, so we hiked deep into the longest pre-Civil War tunnel in the United States.

Yea, I'd hiked this tunnel on Halloween before, but this July trip had the super dense scary fog and these scary cars. Don't ask. You had to be there. Scary.

After the tunnel we were chilly, so we fixed that by hiking to Humpback Rocks where we chilled.

Before he flew home, Nate made about 50 new friends at a party.  He's so Rambis.

Yea, too bad that visit ever had to end.

Yours in hangin' with cool,
Kelly

#426 Floating the Rivanna

Think about your dream job.  What would it be?

Hmmm...something that would make people say "You get PAID to do that?"

I recently met Allan Thomson. He has a dream job like that. He takes people on canoe trips to raise awareness for a healthy Chesapeake Bay watershed. Cool. He invited me to join him and a group from the University of Virginia for a day on the Rivanna River as part of Earth Week festivities. Even cooler.

So here's Allan steering our canoe.

A few international students in our group had never been on a float trip. With guidance from Allan and his colleague Pat, they did just fine. And they introduced us all to the concept of delicious boxed cake for shore lunch.

After lunch we hiked through woods to find the massive cut-stone remains of a long abandoned river lock.

Too soon our six-mile float was done and we were all smiling for the camera.

So Allan did his dream job well and we all left feeling a little more aware of our local ties to the Chesapeake Bay.

Yours in supporting dream jobs at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation or anywhere,
Kelly

#420 Wild Indiana

No, we're not talking about the Colts season. We're talking about the natural wonders to be found all over the Hoosier State.

After 20 years exploring outdoor Indiana, our friend Mike Habeck has written and published Wild Indiana.

Big Hat Books, Indianapolis' independent bookstore in Broad Ripple, sells Wild Indiana as does the Indiana Historical Bureau bookshop inside the Indiana State Library with more local outlets in the pipeline. 

We've heard good reviews from our outdoor Indiana friends and it has 5 stars on Amazon.  

The book has 160 maps. I like it too.

Yours in appreciating Wild Indiana,
Kelly

#280 Happy Earth Day!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle all day long and every day!

Yours in appreciating the earth on our walking commute,
Mary

#276 Cherry Blossom Time

Nearly a hundred years ago, Japan gave 3020 cherry trees to the United States. From this act of kindness grew a mighty festival in Washington DC attracting 1 million folks to the National Mall each spring.  On Saturday, Indy friend Melody joined us and 999,997 other blossom fans for a spectacular Cherry Blossom Festival.

The blossoms peaked. The sun shone brightly. And we walked.

The Smithsonian Kite Festival has been a part of the Cherry Blossom Festival for 42 years. I suppose that was time enough to prepare this elaborate dragon kite that reached far into the sky.

Yours in appreciating the gift of trees,
Kelly

#268 Shooting the moon

Line up the sun, earth, and moon in that order and if you're the moon, you're in a spot where the sun don't shine.

Last night it happened.

The moon took on an odd reddish glow for 51 minutes as it passed through the Earth's dark shadow. Eighty nine photos later in 20-degree weather, my fingers took on an odd reddish glow as I punched through every advanced camera-setting combination.

Oh, and don't bother looking for your camera's "Eclipse" button. It doesn't have one. Listen up camera manufacturers. Only 1034 days until the next total eclipse.

Go ahead. Shoot the moon.

Yours in anticipation,
Kelly

#250 Fall is here

Despite a dry, dry year, we're having a little color here in Virginia. Just outside our window, we're enjoying the redness.

And out on our back deck, we're lucky enough to have a small patch of woods trying hard to give us a good show for our first Virginia fall.

There's something wrong with these trees in our side yard, though. I'm not sure they know it's fall. ;-)

Is it fall where you are?

Yours in enjoying all the colors - even the green,
Mary