I Truen!

It's after midnight...but in about 20 minutes (as of this post), it'll be midnight again.

I'm pretty exhausted. I finally made it out to Shenandoah park today. I almost talked myself out of going, which is pretty easy when I have no one else coming along. It's harder for me to say, "I don't feel like it" to someone else. So, this morning, I overslept. Then made an excuse after an excuse. "I'm too tired." "It looks like rain." Blah blah. Lameness.

When the clouds cleared up, and blue skies broke through, I knew I had no excuses. And that if I didn't go, I'd regret it. It was a bit late in the day though (around noon), so I didn't get to hike much.

For those of you who don't know Shenandoah park, it's quite possibly one of the largest parks in this area. I drove about...Oh, I think, a little over three hours, and only just made it to the midpoint. Basically, it's this mountain ridge that stretches for about 50 miles, and is about, what, 10-15 miles wide (although other parks butt Shen's borders). There are about two dozen different trails and about a hundred different-yet-same scenic vistas parking lots.

Since I got a late start, most of my photos are of those "scenic vistas", but as I'm finding, as I browse through the pictures, they're not very interesting. And for some reason, they always seem blueish. I'm not sure why...I remember seeing same with my point and shoot digital camera when I went out there last year. Smog, humidity, pollution?

I'll load more onto flickr later, right now I'm too pooped to look at them closely. In the meanwhile, here are a couple teasers that I do like.

Closeup of some leaves.

Not a stellar view, but the bird gives it some perspective, which makes the vastness of this view a little easier to take in. If you can, try clicking on the picture to view a larger version.