More Photos From the Road - November 2015

View from the road.

I interrupted my crafting to make a short trip up to the mountains.  So far, we have not had snow.  In the higher elevations, most of the leaves are down.  We raked leaves in October but there were still plenty of leaves on the trees then.  We expected to be raking leaves this time, but the yard was bare.  I think our neighbors, who sometimes mow the lawn for us had run over the leaves with their riding lawn mower.  It was either that or the high winds had blown all the leaves off the yard and back into the tree line.

An old log and chink house.

Lower down, there was still some color in the trees, but you can tell that autumn is coming to a close.  Although the trees are bare, the mountains are still beautiful.  The bright sunlight shining through the bare trees casts bent and crooked shadows onto the side of the mountains.  It can be almost disorienting as the shadows fall at odd angles on the side of the mountain.  Without the tall weeds and wild flowers, you can see many features that are hidden at other times of the year; rocks and vines unseen all summer leap to the fore.

A giant size head of Eva Toole.

I took this photo of an old building on the side of the road.  The original building is a log cabin with chinked clay between the logs.  If you look closely you can see that the main building has had more structure added over time.  In this photo you can see the two additions on the back. I may have posted a photo of this building before, but at that time I was more focused on the geometric pattern on the side of the building.  This time I noticed the additions to the building.  Driving by things, you just catch a glimpse of something before you have passed by it.

The shed is still standing.

The third photo is a piece of roadside art.  Fans of the television show Hell on Wheels will recognize this as the face of the character Eva Toole.  I shot this photo during the October trip.  Apparently it was a short term exhibit.  The "hair" was only black plastic.  I did not see it on this trip, but it may be that I was looking in the other direction when we went by that area. 

Vines can live for a long time.

The old shed is still standing.  I have been expecting it to fall down every year since 1966.  It just keeps looking a little more decrepit every year.  Who knows, this may be the year that heavy snow does it in.  I consider it a science experiment at this point.  Just how long will the old shed last.  Our neighbors consider it an eyesore.  They offered to bring a backhoe over and push it down.  We told them they could tear it down, but they would have to clean it up because we were working on the cabin and would not have the time or energy to haul it away.  That put an end to the conversation.  What is worse than an old shed?  An old shed lying in a heap on the ground.

The cabin.

The old vine in the center of the last picture was already onsite when my parents bought the place when I was a child.  That was a long time ago.  It just keeps growing thicker.

A few days before we went to the mountains a Nor'easter came through.  A Nor'easter is a big storm with lots of rain and high winds, with the winds come in from the North East.  Because Virginia is on the Eastern Seaboard, this brings in rain off the ocean.  It rained for days pretty much non-stop.  I guess we were luck that it was above freezing.  If it had been colder, it would have been a huge snow storm.  Anyway, the mountain streams and rivers were

Hickory nut.

showing just how much rain was in the mountains.  I rarely see the rivers that swollen except at the height of spring storms.  There was a lot of water flowing down the mountains.

This trip up my husband put in a new set of steps for the front porch.  The old ones were in bad shape.  It
does not seem that it has been all that long since the last time the steps were replaced, but it has been several years.  The weather up there is so severe that repairs need to be made frequently.  The porch needs painting again.  That will have to wait until spring.  It was not warm enough to paint.

The last photo is a photo of a shag bark hickory nut. The nuts are edible, but are a lot of work to open the inner nut shell.  I have a hickory tree in my yard at home as well as a pecan tree.  Both trees are members of the Walnut family and all hickory trees have edible nuts, although some varieties are more bitter than others. 

The temperatures stayed above freezing while we were there, but not by much.  On Saturday it never got above 48 degrees Fahrenheit (8.88 C.).  Sunday it was 54F (12.22 C). Overnight the temperatures hovered at about 34 F. (1.11C.).  We heat the cabin with a wood stove and some auxiliary heaters.  Once the wood stove dies down, the cabin gets a little chilly.  In the evening we wear watch cap type hats to keep our heads warm.  Inside the cabin it was in the upper forties when we woke up.  In bad weather, the temperature can drop much lower.  It is cold, but it is surprising how quickly one becomes accustomed to the lower temperatures.

It was a short trip, but being up there seems to recharge our spirits.  Getting away from everything and taking some time to have peace and quiet is something that is very important to us.  We will be looking forward to the next trip.