HIKING IN SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK




(If you have trouble reading the captions on the pictures, just click on them and they will enlarge!)

What a great day! I actually got to sleep in an entire hour, filling in for Tony Pann this Saturday morning (I got to get up at 4am!! -- Woo Hoo!) After the morning shift, I had plans to go hiking with Ben and members of his church at Shenandoah National Park. We all met at the Church parking lot and piled into a nice, roomy van to make the hour trip to Front Royal.

Front Royal is only a place, up until now, that I have only zipped past on I-81. I need to get off the interstate more -- how cute! We climbed in elevation to Shenandoah's Dickey Ridge Visitor's Center. When we got out of the van, it was soooooooo much cooler & breezier (got to love that dry adiabatic lapse rate!) Little did we know (well, actually I knew) how hot and uncomfortable a hike would be, lower in altitude...

So, off we went, hiking an old farm road past Snead Farm. This place was neat. It even had an old root cellar behind it, long since covered in grape vines. But I climbed in, ducking, to have a look around. As we continued our hike, the first creature of nature that we saw was a long, black rat snake. It had to be between 4 & 5' long. I didn't spot any lumps in its belly, so I guess it was in a hurry to find something to eat. Of course, I wasn't fast enought to get the camera out of Ben's backpack to snap a pic. Little did I know that would be one of two snakes I would see on this hike -- a good thing. How fortunate, as well, that we would have "Larry the biologist" along for the hike with us. My first question to him was "How come the planeria I kept chopping up kept growing back and why can't we?"

Later on in the hike we came across some centipedes. Now, if you are familiar to my blogs, we have a tendency to get some "Broadcast House" Centipedes in the studio (they are fond of the traffic area), but they look far different. For starters, they *don't* have a hundred legs like the one you see in the pic from our hike. These "real" centipedes are much more "worm like" (groan from me) and don't seem to be in a hurry. Perhaps the Broadcast House centipedes have been trained to hustle, like everyone panicking in the studio with "30 seconds 'til the breaks over" constantly reminding us not to be late to the set...

Notice the second centiped pic...this guy knew we were hiking by and immediately curled up into a ball. "Don't worry...we don't see you" I tried to reassure it. Poor thing. At the peak of our hike, we came to an area with a wonderful view of the Shenandoah Valley. This is also an area where hang gliders like to take off. We spotted another snake, but this one was a baby and waaaaay faster than the first snake. As I type, Ben is going through pics on the internet trying to identify it. Once again, it was too fast for me to grab a pic.

We finished our hike with a wonderful picnic lunch and a quick nap under a tree (I think I was the only person to actually sleep -- it isn't difficult for me to do!) On the return trip we hit the State Arboretum of Virginia.

What a nice way to spend a Saturday. Take advantage of a National Park virtually in your back yard! Just watch out for the creatures below your feet...