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A little adventure in Virginia, mostly in the woods…

October 6, 2022, 8:06 AM

From September 13-15, Elyse and I had a little weekend adventure in Virginia, where we went down to Augusta County stayed in Staunton like we usually do.  This one was a little different than most because it was partly a solo adventure.  Prior to this trip, Elyse had been down in Roanoke attending to business related to a nonprofit that she volunteers with, so she traveled up from there on Amtrak, and we met up in Charlottesville.  My original plan was to go the easterly route down, taking I-95 to Fredericksburg and then taking Route 3, Route 20, US 15, and a few other routes that would take me through Locust Grove, Orange, and Gordonsville.  However, at the last minute, I had a change of heart, deciding that (A) I didn’t feel like wading through traffic on the Beltway or 95, (B) that easterly track would get me to Charlottesville far too early, meaning that I would have to kill time before Elyse would arrive, and (C) I had ideas that necessitated taking other routes.  So I took the westernmost route, which primarily utilizes I-81, and took the “alternate” version of that, which goes through Harpers Ferry and Charles Town in West Virginia via US 340, and then taking Route 7 to meet I-81 in Winchester.  Yes, I’m going north to head south, but the distance and time for going out to Harpers Ferry is almost the same as it is to go through Northern Virginia on I-66, so it works.

My first point of interest was a relatively obscure sign in the middle of a field in Verona:


Image: Google Street View

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The evolution of a cloud…

October 5, 2016, 10:24 AM

Sometimes, you don’t notice the way things change right in front of your eyes until you analyze them a bit more.  I was recently in the Philadelphia/King of Prussia area with Elyse on what was primarily a fire alarm-related mission (more on that later), and was photographing the Manayunk Bridge.  First of all, for those not familiar, the Manayunk Bridge is a former rail bridge that was closed to rail traffic in 1986, and which reopened last year to pedestrian and bike traffic as a rail trail.  I had previously known it as the big arched bridge that the Schuylkill Expressway goes under, i.e. this, as seen in November 2001:

The Manayunk Bridge, photographed November 22, 2001 from the Schuylkill Expressway

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Categories: Nature, Philadelphia

What is Afton Mountain, anyway?

March 21, 2013, 5:58 PM

A friend of mine recently sent me a link to this article by Dr. Christopher M. Bailey, a geology professor at The College of William & Mary.  The article discusses the name of a place that many people in the part of Virginia that I grew up with are most likely quite familiar with: Afton Mountain.

The article is titled, “Mind the Gap! Where is Afton Mountain?” and discusses the geology of the area, specifically Rockfish Gap, and a few quirks of the local culture.  First, for those not familiar, Rockfish Gap is a wind gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which separate the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont region in Virginia.  Because it is the lowest gap for quite some ways traveling both north and south, the area became an important way to travel east and west.  Today, Interstate 64 and US 250 carry travelers through Rockfish Gap.

Technically speaking, this is Rockfish Gap, seen here in a 2003 Schumin Web file photo:

Rockfish Gap, seen from the junction of Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway, on a bridge over Interstate 64.

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Categories: Afton Mountain, Nature, Roads

The Walters Art Gallery and Great Falls…

January 6, 2013, 9:42 PM

So as promised, this is the photos-from-Baltimore-and-Great-Falls post.  Right after Christmas, Mom came up to visit for three days.  We certainly had fun while we were out.  We went out to Montgomery Mall, we went to Baltimore, we went to Arundel Mills, we went to Great Falls, and we had dinner with friends.

Montgomery Mall was pretty much what you would expect.  After-Christmas sales and all that jazz.  Mom did, however, leave me a bit scandalized when she went into Abercrombie and Fitch just to pay the five-cent bag tax to get one of the bags with the picture of the guy with the six-pack abs on it.  I commented:

My mother went to the Abercrombie store just to get the bag with the picture of the guy with the six pack abs on it. I am scandalized.

This must somehow be payback for all the times that I may have embarrassed her in the past.  Especially when I brought the little green reusable bags that I take with me to go grocery shopping.

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The highlights of the visit to Natural Bridge…

September 28, 2012, 10:39 PM

So on this, the night before I pull the wraps off of the new “Modern Blue” design and hang up the “Blue Squares” design for good, I realized that I never showed you the pictures that I took in Natural Bridge last week.  While I was down visiting the family, we all went down to Natural Bridge on the 20th and saw this geological formation.  We realized that in twenty years in the area, we had never seen the Natural Bridge from which Rockbridge County takes its name (and by the way, the town and the rock formation are both properly named “Natural Bridge” – confused yet?).  Mom, Sis, and I saw the wax museum there in 1993, but never the bridge itself.  So we did.  And here are the highlights:

Mom stops for a smile on the stairs down to the Natural Bridge.
Mom stops for a smile on the stairs down to the Natural Bridge.

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Categories: Family, Nature

An earthquake? In DC?

August 23, 2011, 3:42 PM

Yeah. It happened.

It’s funny how it happened, too. I was at the office, helping a coworker move offices, and I felt the floor start to shake. My first instinct was to look out the window, since you occasionally can feel vibrations when trucks are moving around in the loading dock area. But there was no truck. Then I realized that the whole building was shaking, and that it must be an earthquake, and so I ended up standing in the doorway of the office next to mine (where my coworker was moving), waiting for the shaking to stop. From that vantage point, I saw everyone else standing in their office doorways looking as perplexed as I was. The lights flickered once for half a second, but once everything stopped, that was it. No further shaking occurred, and there was no damage that I could see. I was half expecting the fire alarm system to start up, but it never did.

A number of my coworkers left the building for a little bit, just in case, but I stayed in, and, like a number of others, tried to figure out what was going on. The Twitter and Facebook certainly lit up with earthquake-related buzz. I cross-posted a message to both services:

Okay… that was interesting. An earthquake in DC. Is everyone all right?
August 23 1:55 PM

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Categories: Nature, Work

We had an earthquake yesterday? Why didn’t anyone tell me?

December 10, 2003, 7:55 PM

Yeah, we supposedly had an earthquake that registered a 4.5 on the Richter Scale on Tuesday around 4 PM. According to news reports, the epicenter was 28 miles west of Richmond, and could be felt into Maryland and North Carolina.

In Harrisonburg and Staunton (roughtly 80 miles from the epicenter) it was very hit-and-miss. Some people felt some shaking. Other people didn’t feel anything.

Me, I was in Harrisonburg about to take a final when the earthquake came, and didn’t know that there was an earthquake until later that night, when a friend IMed me and told me that we had one. I didn’t feel a thing. Likewise, talking to my coworkers at Wal-Mart, no one who was working in the Staunton store at the time felt anything.

I know when I found out, it was like, “We had an earthquake? You’re kidding. Seriously? Hmmm. Must have skipped me or something. I didn’t feel anything.”

Interesting when you have those intra-plate earthquakes, though, since Virginia’s nowhere near a plate boundary, with the nearest plate boundary being quite far away.

Categories: Nature