To get a long weekend away from our full time work at The Family Foundation School, a school for at risk teens, we took a quick trip to Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park to do a bit of hiking and site seeing. My wife and I like a number of outdoor activities, including hiking, bicycling and kayaking. As it turns out, Shenandoah National Park, the Adirondacks of New York, the Green Mountains of Vermont, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire are all about 5 to 6 hours from where we live. Our area is GREAT for kayaking and cycling, but for hiking we need to travel a bit. For day trips we sometimes go to the Catskill Park (about 2 hours driving to most locations), but for weekends we usually go North. This was our first try at a long weekend going South. It was well worth it! Lots of mostly easy hiking is available in Shenandoah, and as it turns out, most trails allowed us to bring our dogs.
Here is a view from Chimney Rock on the Rip Rap trail in Shenandoah. This trail is accessed from the Rip Rap parking lot at mile post 90 in the park. The total round trip hike is 3.4 miles. This image was taken with the Nikon D300 and 18-200 mm AF-S VR lens.
View From Chimney Rock, Shenandoah National Park
The other interesting thing about Shenandoah is that the wildlife is very abundant. Although my wife and I are used to having deer running around like squirrels in a park, we are not so accustomed to seeing as many black bear. We DO have black bear in the Delaware Valley (and have photographed on in our own back yard), but they are a bit more scarce than in Shenandoah. We saw three black bears in two days while in the park. The image below was photographed at twilight, Nikon D300, 18-200 mm AF-S VR lens and ISO 3200. Not that the exposure of the fur of the black bear in twilight is exceptionally difficult, the reason the image quality here is not very good.
The weather during our two days in the Park was quite good with beautiful evening skies on both days. The second day we were there, we were still on Skyline Drive at sunset. The sky looked as if it were on fire. Although I find sunsets to be for the most part pretty much a cliche’, it’s still fun to capture them. Again, this image was captured with my usual camera / lens combination (Nikon D300 / 18-200 VR).
Sky on Fire, Shenandoah Skyline Drive
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Great pictures. I love the “Sky on Fire” Awesome!
Thanks, Mike! It was a gorgeous sunset - we saw it only minutes after seeing the black bear in the photo. It was a fun short (4 day, two days in the park) trip!
Gerald