I couldn’t tell you why, but I’ve always wanted to take pictures of chickens. I mostly just like taking pictures of animals in general, but chickens have always seemed…more fun, maybe? I don’t know, I’m weird. Anyway, we came upon these on the last day of my birthday trip when we were hiking back from the river. They were just standing there in the middle of the hiking trail. When I got a little closer, I saw they had come from under a not very effective fence. I guess they know that’s where all the good food is. We eventually spooked them back to their yard, but they stood around for a while and let me take some pictures first. How nice of them! It was harder to get photos of the actual chickens since they didn’t seem to want to stay in one place, but the roosters didn’t seem to mind having their pictures taken.

Taken on our first night at the cottage right after a short rainstorm.

I made Brandon pull off the side of the road to take pictures of this field. I was hoping to get closer to the horses, but I didn’t want to, you know, trespass. Oh well!

Click to view larger

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…

I won’t say that we were completely blameless, but the person who wrote up the directions to these hiking trails was not very…descriptive. After driving back and forth for almost an hour, I finally realized we were supposed to turn onto another road to get to this trail (the words “turn right” were nowhere to be found in the directions). We drove up a mountain and the directions said to park when you got at the top, but when we got up there neither of us noticed a trail. So we kept driving. Down the mountain. But right when when we discussing turning around, I saw parking and a sign for the trail that we were looking for. Since the directions had been unclear about the way out here, I just assumed they were wrong about this whole “park at the top” thing, too.

One of the few flat parts of the trail. The rest of the time I was too busy trying to catch my breath to take pictures.

Initially the trail was “wide and flat”, but very soon it became narrow and very steep. I figured we had to be on the right trail because I hadn’t seen any other signs. So we kept hiking. It just went up and up and I kept thinking we were finally at the peak but it would just go up some more. The whole time, the wind was blowing so hard and the trees would whip back and forth and I kept jumping out of my skin every time I heard a crack, thinking a tree was about to fall on top of me. After what seemed like a day (but was more like an hour) we got to the peak…which turned out to be the road. At the top of mountain which we had driven right past. Now that we could look around there was clearly another trail with a (small) sign for Kennedy Peak. The trail we were looking for in the first place.

My nemesis, Kennedy Peak (wayyyy in the background)

It said it was a two mile hike up to the peak but after hiking up the damn mountain, I was exhausted and thirsty and I had blisters and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do 4 miles and then hike back down to the car. So instead we just turned right around. Thank god hiking down is so much easier! It seemed to take about half the time as going up and we finally reached our car. After drinking lots of water, I felt better and decided I was determined to see the effing peak. So we drove back up the mountain to the trail.

It actually was wide and but not totally flat, there were some steep sections. It was certainly flat compared to our first hike and if I had just hiked this trail by itself I wouldn’t have had a problem with it, but after the first hike, any kind of grade, even a slight one, felt steep to me. But I kept going and going and this trail seemed to be much longer than 2 miles. I could see the peak in the distance and it never seemed to be getting any closer. Finally we got to the part that the directions had described as “steep up to the peak” and it was an extremely narrow, almost vertical looking trail that I couldn’t see an end to. If I hadn’t already hiked 5 or 6 miles I could have done it, but at that point I was completely exhausted. With great disappointment, we turned around.

Next time we take a trip up here, I am going to hike that trail again and reach the damn peak. It better be worth it! But I still got a nice photo (it’s actually a composite of two shots) of the Shenandoah River and the surrounding landscape from the top of the mountain, so that’s something. Plus, everything will be much prettier when we come back in the fall, right?

After all that, we went back to the cottage and spent the rest of the afternoon resting. I think I was in the hot tub for about two hours straight. I never wanted to leave! But eventually hunger got the best of me, so we ventured into the nearby town and found a great Mexican restaurant. I’m still annoyed that this tiny town has better Mexican food than we’ve been able to find in Charlottesville. I almost never order alcohol because I don’t like the taste, but I got a sangria and even got a little tipsy. It was fun! On the way back, we stopped at the Walmart and treated ourselves to a bag of oreos (and some band-aids for my blisters). It was a very nice end to a frustrating day.

Adorable decorative boat above the fireplace

A quick breakfast

View from the cottage porch

It’s been a week and I still can’t stop thinking of this place. I want to go back! I’d actually love to live in place like this, except that I doubt they have broadband out there. (Sadly, a deal breaker since I work online.)

The cottage was both secluded, but not as secluded as I thought it would be, actually. It is located about 10 miles from the small town of Luray, VA, (only an hour or so from here) but the drive out there involved lots of twists and turns on country roads, vast fields and farms, a river, and very few houses. When we got to the (dirt) road where the cottage is located, I was surprised to see it lined with quite a few other houses and cabins (some quite extravagant) but it seems like many were also rentals/summer homes and since it was the off-season they were empty.

I wouldn’t want to come back here in summer since there would probably be a lot more people around and also, the A/C in the cottage wasn’t spectacular. That’s another deal breaker for me but luckily it was only warm the first day we were there, after that we had to turn on the heat, which was much more effective (almost too effective). My plan is to come back next Fall since it won’t be so hot and I imagine the color on the trees and view of the mountains will be stunning. I honestly can’t wait.

We got there around 3pm on Friday. I walked around and took a bunch of pictures. We found a trail behind the house and went on a short hike. The cottage has a full kitchen and I had brought lots of food so we stayed in and ate hot dogs for dinner and watched a little TV. Then we relaxed in the hot tub. I’ve never really been in a hot tub before, but this trip made me hope that one day we’ll be rich enough to buy one. The hot tub was out on a screened in porch, so we were covered, but the moon was full and the wind was was howling all around us. It was amazing! I could have stayed in there for hours. The next day I actually did stay in there for hours, but I’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

Well, I’m back from my vacation. Actually we got back late last Monday, but I didn’t get my photos processed until this past weekend. Honestly, it was a pretty crappy vacation. I thought I was going to get a ton of photos (as evidenced by the 4 memory cards I brought) but I came back with slightly more than I usually get from walking around my own neighborhood for a few hours.

The problem was that we didn’t actually get to do anything. We were at the whim of Brandon’s mom and she didn’t seem to want to do much of anything except hang out with some of her old friends and eat their food. It was really boring. She had made all these plans for stuff we were going to do (like going to Washington D.C. or Fort McHenry), but I guess when we she realized it involved actually getting out of bed early and driving somewhere she lost all motivation. The only touristy thing we did was go to Gettysburg, but all we did was walk around the welcome museum. His mom didn’t even make it through the whole museum! She wound up sitting in the food court most of the time and then she made us all leave before we actually got to see Gettysburg. What’s the point of going to Gettysburg if you don’t get to see Gettysburg??

The yurt we stayed in was…interesting. It wasn’t horrible, but I doubt I’d choose to do it again. I love nature, but I’m just not a camper. I need indoor plumbing! Mostly it was a chore having to be in a very small space with 4 other people. It would have probably been okay if it was just me and Brandon. And I didn’t even get any photos of the yurt, either. I kept putting it off and then on Monday it was pouring rain and Brandon just wanted to leave so we wound up going home a day early.

Anyway, these photos are of the garden of the friend that we spent the whole week mooching off of. The poor guy had to pay for the yurt, too! He was really outdoorsy and apparently rents the yurt all the time so he can fish and hike and I guess he thought it would be fun for us, too? He and his family lived out in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania surrounded by corn fields. I wouldn’t mind living in an area like that, it was quite beautiful. He had a giant back yard and a beautiful garden. I’d love to have a garden like this someday.

I love this diptych. The wind started blowing so hard and the little guy was just hanging on for dear life. (Spicebush Swallowtail)

Silver-spotted Skipper and Clouded (Common) Sulfur

It’s going to be a busy week. Brandon’s mom, step-dad and aunt are coming up on Wednesday to stay and then we’re all leaving for Pennsylvania on Thursday to go to their family reunion. We’re staying up there for a week not only for the reunion and some other family stuff, but for some typical touristy stuff. Even though I’m not terribly comfortable with Brandon’s family, I am looking forward to the trip. We’re going to be staying in a yurt, which is the one thing I am not looking forward to, but I’m trying to look at it like camping. It’s going to be an adventure!

Anyway, since I didn’t post last week and I probably won’t post next week, I wanted to get something up on here. Plus, I know I will come back with about a million photos (I bought a new purse/camera bag so I will be taking my camera everywhere), so I wanted to get these posted since they’re from August. Stay tuned for lots of photos in October.

I guess Labor Day is sort of the unofficial end of Summer so I wanted to post this instead of my usual Friday Flowers. I was looking through shots I took this summer and I thought these paired well and they just make me think of summer. Despite the heatwave this was one of the nicest summers I’ve ever had. It was certainly a major improvement over Florida summers. I’m ready for fall, though! You can expect lots of shots of turning leaves around here, Fall is my favorite season and I plan on taking full advantage of it with my camera.

My dream is to have a house by a lake and I’d have a little pier just like this. I don’t even want a boat, but I’d love to just sit out on the pier with my feet in the water. That would be wonderful.