I know Winter doesn’t officially start until later in December, but with most of the leaves off the trees (or else brown and about to fall off) it really feels like Fall is over and Winter is here. But it was a lovely fall this year and I feel like I took advantage of it and got outside to see and photograph a lot of it. I do wish I had gone out for one last hike in early November, but I didn’t get a chance so these photos from late October are the last pictures of Fall that I have.

The top photo was taken back in May while the other two were from a few weeks ago. It turns out I like to take shots of this lake at Sunset! (I think I’ve probably already posted at least 2 or 3 but I’m afraid to look.) I can’t help it, it’s always pretty!

Eastern Tailed-Blue

See that squirrel? He is a master people manipulator. He’s also totally fearless. He’s the only squirrel I’ve ever seen that didn’t run away when I came close. Whenever he sees me in the kitchen, he comes up to the sliding glass door and stares at me. Just like in the photo. One time he even climbed up the screen door so he could look me in the eye. Crazy!

I always throw out some birdseed for him. I mean, really, could you resist that face?

I promise I’m almost done with these snow photos. I just have few more that I may post tomorrow if I decide I don’t hate them. Next week it’s back to happy Springtime photos!

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Our cottage had check-in/check-out hours like a hotel, so we had to leave by 11 am on Sunday (although it’s not like there was anyone there waiting so I imagine we probably had some leeway). We’d seen the river from the road all weekend but I wanted to see it up close, so (after getting lost, again) we found a short hiking trail down to the Shenandoah River.

With the winter landscape all around it wasn’t terribly stunning, but it was nice and peaceful down there. I was most interested in the cabins on the other side. I would love to have a cabin by a river! I’m not sure it would be somewhere that I could live all the time since I’m pretty dependent on my broadband internet and Target, but it would be so great to have a cabin that I could go to on the weekends. Maybe one day…