Hi, gang. Adelheid and I emerged from the deep forests of Shenandoah last night, to be installed in a nice hotel in Roanoke. They sent us kinda odd looks when we walked into the lobby, and we felt rather misplaced in our hiking clothes in this more urban setting.
Our stay under the canopy of Shenandoah was wonderful. It is a national park that protects a stretch of Appalachian mountains. It's long and narrow, and is confined to the slopes of the mountains on each side. A road called the Skyline Drive goes along the crest of the mountains. An somewhat paradoxical name, since one can harldy see the sky at all under the roof of oak leaves. There are, however, many spectacular viewpoints to both the east and the west side of the mountains. Birds of prey were soaring on the upwinds on both sides, and other wildlife made frequents appearances along the road. Red deers seemed common as muck, and not at all afraid of people or cars. Also, we finally found out what turkeys look like before prepared for Thanksgiving. A small predator looking like a cross between an otter and a mink intrigued us (any ideas what we saw?), and large, beautiful butterflies were plentiful. At the highest point in the park, we made a hiking detour to the "Stony Man" summit. An outcrop of rock that gave a fantastic view over most of the northern half of the park. While we were there, we got flooded by a class from a nearby highschool. Cheerful an curious as all kids, but with suspiciously many SLRs amongst themselves. Adelheid had a chat with their teacher, and learned that they were a photography class on a bonus trip to mark the end of term. Another detour brought us to a site used for relocation of young peregrine falcons. Apparently, young peregrines often suffer an early death when the parents choose to nest in bridges or other structures over water. On their first flight out of the nest, they typically try to land on water. So the young birds are removed from their nest just before they take to the wings, and are installed in abandoned nests in the cliffs of Shenandoah. According to the ranger we talked to, they had been quite successful in this approach, and had observed several of the relocated birds returning to their new nests to breed after a couple of years. After a look at the map we got an itchy feeling that the distance to GFM was still more than we could comfortably handle in a day, so we decided to go on to Roanoke to spend Wednesday night rather than spending one more night in the park. It was sad to leave such a great place behind. Once this is posted to the List, we'll be off on our last leg (no pun intended) towards GFM. This time along the Blue Ridge Drive. It will be great to meet up with the others tonight. I'll post another link once I get a few pics uploaded. Cheers, and thanks for reading, Jostein
