Category: Road Trip
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Signs of Spring
This year, March 20th marked the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the fall equinox in the Southern Hemisphere. The word equinox comes from the Latin words for “equal night.” On the equinox, the lengths of day and night are nearly equal in all parts of the world. In our Northern Hemisphere, we consider… Read more
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Maple Festival
We know the Highland County Maple Festival is just around the corner when we see the yellow-bellied sapsucker drilling sapwells in the maple trees in our backyard. These woodpeckers spend hours making holes in a horizontal pattern to find sap and insects. They migrate south during the coldest months of winter, but they come back… Read more
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Autumn
I marvel at the forest-covered Blue Ridge Mountains when the leaves turn red, orange, and gold. The mountain range reminds me of mounds of sugar-coated gumdrops, an array of colors shimmering in the autumn sunshine. Every year, I look forward to the season’s cool temperatures and blazing colors. I grab my camera, and Walter takes… Read more
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Play Ball!
The World Series begins this week, and we will be glued to the TV. Walter is passionate about baseball, and now I’m watching it with him. It reminds me of growing up in Milwaukee when my dad took my sister and me downtown to watch major league baseball. He’d buy us each a team ball… Read more
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Goshen Pass
Walter and I have visited Goshen Pass in the spring and summer months, but last year we decided to go in autumn to see the fabulous fall colors reflecting in the river and adorning the forest-covered mountains. We traveled an hour north on I-81 from Roanoke to Lexington, Virginia, and another twenty miles northwest to… Read more
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Buena Vista, VA
When I moved to Roanoke, Virginia, I wanted to explore the surrounding area by visiting nearby small towns. Many of the towns celebrated the fall season with festivals, and I decided to spend my weekends driving through the countryside to find them. One cool autumn afternoon, I drove north on I-81 to Buena Vista, Virginia,… Read more
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Jefferson National Forest
Walter and I ventured out on a gorgeous summer day to visit Jefferson National Forest. The forest covers thousands of acres, but we chose to head north from Roanoke to Arcadia and on to Solitude, Virginia, where we entered the national forest. When Walter was eight or nine years old, his dad took him and… Read more