A longer walk…

We got home from  Middle Ridge late on New Year’s Day.  We drove up after Christmas to spend a few days and have a quiet family-focused New Year.  The wind was fierce and cold, and we woke up to wind roaring around the corners of the cottage, rattling the roof, and just the thinnest layer of snow on the ground.

Mornings at Middle Ridge are not to be missed.  My internal clock knows it’s time.   Steaming coffee in one hand, and my Bible in the other, I curl up in a chair to view the ever shifting dawn through the dining room window.

GraceNotes and #1 Son skated in the barn.   We did not “go into town” this time, just relaxed and played games, watched The Game  (Redskins vs Dallas),  read books, cooked food, listened to music and went for long walks.

Our walks took us over the fields, and into the woods as we sought our favorite enormous boulder.  Then we hiked up and down as we crossed the series of rippling ravines that flow down in folds from the shoulder of the forested ridge.  We jumped thin brooks, grabbing tree trunks to pull ourselves up steep banks, slipping in the mud and wet leaves occasionally and getting stuck in the ever-present thorns infesting the ground.  Great fun!

We were not nearly as red-faced as we were post Dark Hollow Falls.  Progress!  Our Morning Walks are helping!  In any case our scent, laughter and noisy crashing through the forest has likely ruined any hunting for a few days.

Back home in the flat-lands of the coastal South, we are adjusting the route of our now well-established Morning Walks to occasionally include the perpendicular bridges near our home in order to benefit from four subtle inclines.  Really, the only hills we have access too.   Some mornings we are out before the sun rises, when Venus twinkles brightly, and we can watch the sky shift from shades to tints of cerulean blue.  Other mornings the birds have beat us to it, and we are smiling a greeting at the high school kids waiting for the bus.  Either way it is wonderful to start the day with fresh eyes, ready to catch a glimpse of something lovely in a fresh morning.

Today we were excited to see pelicans, cormorants, bufflehead ducks, and a great blue heron – all in proximity – but still a bit of a distance away.  My camera phone is good – but not that good.   Crossing the bridge the other direction I was able to get a few pictures of the pelicans, each perched on a wood dock piling.

We also found an enormous cache of Burr Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) acorns, which excited me tremendously! Another acorn to add to the collection!

Growing in Knowledge of Oaks and Acorns

I have always loved acorns.  My children have gifted me with acorns for years every fall.  After coming in the house with pink cheeks and noses, and shedding jackets, they would often offer up an acorn found in the yard, or the park, or the neighborhood, and almost every one of them has ended up in a bowl somewhere.  Acorn earrings dangle from my ears starting in September, and I shine up the matching pin once it’s cold enough to wear a sweater or jacket.  I love the color of the wood, first a glowing spring green, eventually a rich shiny brown; the jaunty little tops so like a winter cap, or for some varieties, a beret.  I love the overt theology, the mysterious promise of a tree inside each one!

So, I was excited to see the Autumn Study: Oaks and Acorns Notebook Page in Barb’s October Outdoor Hour Challenge Newsletter.   GraceNotes typically looks askance at notebooking pages, but when the idea was pitched as a package deal with walks and bike rides, she somewhat willingly agreed that we would study the neighborhood’s oak trees.   We started seeing oak trees everywhere!  During travels further afield on our Autumn Break, we found ourselves scanning the leaves of trees and searching the ground for acorns.  We found different varieties of oak trees in the Blue Ridge mountains than the ones we have at home.  Now, at the end of our month of study, we stand amazed by the rich variety of leaves and acorns within the Quercus genus!

In fact it got a bit dodgy, trying to figure out what we had sometimes.  For example we discovered a rich cadre of acorns under a large group of trees, near George Mason University, all of which were oaks, but different species of oaks!  While the acorns don’t fall far from the tree, we were surrounded, and found we needed to begin to pay attention to acorn descriptions in our booklet!  We found that the white oak tree leaves in the mountains are different from our swamp white 0ak at home.   And, in the coastal south, our trees and yards offer a few varieties of oak whose leaves look nothing like those in the autumn picture books!  One can only tell that they are oaks by the acorns scattered on the ground underneath.  Our immense laurel oak (Quercus laurifolia) in the backyard has semi-evergreen leaves which aren’t shed until Spring.  They turn slightly yellow, and then are pushed off by the fresh new green leaves.   (Yes, we rake leaves twice a year!)   Sun and shade affects the leaf form as well, with sunny leaves having deeper sinus between the lobes in some varieties.

So we found ourselves pouring over the descriptions in our Common Native Trees of Virginia handbook, and filling in the gaps with the helpful resources at the Virginia Department of Forestry Education website, and Virginia Tech’s Dendrology site.  After all the checking, and measuring, and comparing, we are fairly confident in our identification, but open to correction if we are wrong!

Quite a few notebooking pages are ready to be placed in the Outdoor Hour Nature Journal binder now!  Grace has patiently sketched leaves and acorns with nary a complaint, and actually seems rather pleased with herself!  When I asked her what she thought about this study, she said she thought it was really interesting that oak trees have so many different forms, and other tree species, like the sycamore, are more limited.  (Yay!)  As for me,  I don’t think I’ll look at another acorn without trying to determine which species of oak tree it came from.   To that end, we took one of our cardboard egg cartons and made a little acorn collection for our nature shelf, a la Whitman’s Sampler (candy) style, with all of the acorns that we’ve collected and identified.

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This post is written to participate in the The Outdoor Hour blog carnival sponsored by Handbook of Nature Study blog.  The topic for October is trees!  Please click over and see how various families enjoy and explore God’s world by spending an hour or so outside!

Golden Autumn at Middle Ridge

After visiting our #1 Son and enjoying Great Falls together as a family, we dropped him off at GMU with cookies, clothes and supplies.  The remaining Garners headed west toward the Skyline Drive, to drive along the mountain ridges and see the progress of the turning of the leaves!  There were still some green leaves, but there was plenty of gold and red and orange!

Mr. Garner had selected a light to moderate (Hmmm) hike just off the Skyline Drive to Dark Hollow Falls (Yes! Another waterfall!)

Here’s the thing about waterfalls – usually the hike takes you down to the plunge pool of the waterfall, with lovely sites along the way -  The catch is, you have to go back up! 

We loved the hike, following a small brook down, watching it grow and spill over several different sets of falls before the final lower falls.  What started out as a light descent with a relatively mild incline, slowly got steeper and steeper.  The hike was crowded and a large family group gathered at the most picturesque spots along the falls for long lengthy visits  with each other (Ahem) so, unfortunately,  a good photo of the falls was not happening.  And, the trip back up was tough.

That said, I laughed to myself as I noticed a pair of Mennonite girls pass me as they hiked down, and then pass me again later as they quickly skipped back up without breaking a sweat.  Similarly, a very elderly grandmother from China exhibited no sign of strain heading back up the path.  After arriving at the top, red-faced and breathless,  I determined an incline needs to be introduced to our morning walking routine!

After our workout, we thoroughly enjoyed an early dinner at Big Meadows Lodge in their rustic dining room.  Getting back on the Skyline Drive, we caught a spectacular sunset with Massanutten Mountain in the foreground.   Then, as the sun finally dropped behind dusky purple mountains, we watched porch lights and street lights begin to twinkle and glow in the Shenandoah Valley, just as the stars began to twinkle and glow in the sky.  We woke to rain and fog the next morning, so we opted for the fast lane to the farm, a little sad to leave the mountain ridge, but knowing we wouldn’t be able to see much.

At the farm during our Autumn break we woke to golden mornings, with golden leaves, and golden fields.  We’ve found a unique golden moth and we’ve been visited each afternoon by swarms of red and orange lady bugs!  We’ve watched youthful deer cavorting across the meadow, we’ve seen and heard a flock of wild turkeys, we’ve caught a glimpse of Mountain Bluebirds, Red-tailed Hawks, yellow-shafted Northern Flickers, along with familiar favorites like Robins and Blue Jays, and a very, very fat groundhog!  We’ve sketched several varieties of Oak acorns and leaves, and enjoyed collecting Pecan, Black Walnut and Chinese Chestnut nuts and leaves for Nature Study!

Orchard Cottage Dessert Plate

Grandma Honey’s sculpture

Angel in the Window

Apple Sorters

Cows in the neighbor’s field

Monte Vista Church of the BrethrenApple Butter!

Plethora of Oak Leaves

Wildflowers and weeds

Love the Fence!

Afternoon Lady Bug

Massanutten Sunset

The sky is always gorgeous at the farm.  In the country, there are no city street lights to contend with.  We can easily see the Milky Way stretched out across the sky, and layers of stars beyond what we can usually see at home in Hampton Roads.  Jupiter, and its four moons, were discernible through our binoculars.  Venus rises just before the sun this time of year, so morning sunrises have an added sparkle beyond the beauty of watching the sun rise over tree covered hills rather than my neighbor’s roof!

A Saturday morning trip to the Roanoke Farmers Market yielded hand-beaded necklaces, handmade Shea butter and olive oil soap, fresh crunchy Stayman apples, and a jar each of Catawba Mountain wildflower and clover honey.  Sunday was a day of rest, and Monday, on the way home to Hampton Roads we stopped to ride bikes on the High Bridge.

All in all our Autumn Break – was golden!

On Top of the World

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, we were driving in and out of mist, at elevations at or around 3,000 feet, but we decided to pull off the parkway at Craggy Gardens.  Like every other “chance” we took on the Blue Ridge, Craggy Gardens was a wonderful experience!  Part of the Pisgah National Forest, this mountain is one  of the Craggy Mountains, a subrange of the Blue Ridge.  At 5,525 feet Craggy Gardens is among the higher peaks of the Blue Ridge.  The high slopes of the Great Craggies are covered with heath bald.  This means that the slopes are covered primarily with grasses and shrubs, in this case beautiful Catawba rhododendrons, wild blueberry bushes (pick your own!), clover and wildflowers.  Small hardwood trees of beech, buckeye, mountain ash and red oak grow at the lower elevations.  The summit is called a “blunt summit.”  There are no trees to block the view.

After a stop at the visitors center, we drove a bit further to the parking lot for the Craggy Garden Summit Hike.  We grabbed a jacket (in August!) and started up the path.   Wild flowers, ferns, mosses and lichens lined a lovely path which led through a rhododendron forest which promises to be glorious in late Spring!  After a light to moderate hike, not long, maybe 20 minutes or so, we reached the summit.

The mountain was wreathed in clouds.  There was a cool, damp mist and all was hushed.  We whispered, and listened to the wind!  As the clouds moved off, the sun brightened considerably, and the jackets came off!  The slopes around the stone parapets of the viewing area were covered with wildflowers, clover, shrubs and blueberry bushes.  After the quiet, we noticed a slight hum and then a gentle but persistent buzzing.   With the warmth of the sun, hundreds of bees and butterflies had begun feasting on nectar and pollen!

There is a 360° view at the summit.   The overlook provides a viewing area for each side of the peak and a few benches for resting and relishing the scenery.   The glistening Swannanoa River and the Black Mountains are quite visible to the East, with Mt. Mitchell to the North, and the rippling ridges and peaks of the Pisgah National Forest wrap around West and South.  It was a beautiful, serene, “mountain top” experience!  I would love to see it in late May, early June when the Catawba Rhododendrons are blooming!

From here we went to Mt. Mitchell!  Over one thousand feet higher than Craggy Gardens at 6,684 feet, Mt. Mitchell is the highest peak east of the Mississippi, and one of the peaks of the Black Mountains.  More alpine in nature, the mountain’s climate resembles Canada more than North Carolina, and is home to the famous Frasier Firs.  Here is a link to a North Carolina State Park Teacher’s Guide and Educational Booklet relating to the unique climate at Mt. Mitchell.  We pulled into the Mt. Mitchell State Park, just off the Blue Ridge, and drove up to the parking lot, where there is a Visitor’s Center, a Gift Shop, and Education Center.  We (slowly) climbed the steep walkway to the pinnacle, but took very few pictures.  We were immersed in clouds (again!)!   Here is a website with some pictures of unclouded views.

Relaxing over a lovely view, on the back patio at the Mount Mitchell Restaurant.

We were just a little disappointed to miss the four-state view, but cheered up considerably with a wonderful lunch at the Mt. Mitchell State Park Restaurant.   A short drive from the Visitor’s Center, the restaurant also has a gift shop, as well as a large patio out back with rocking chairs!  From our table by the window we could see nothing higher than us, and enjoyed glimpses of the tree-clad peaks and sunny green valleys below as clouds thinned and moved past.

I will have a separate post with all of the flowers!   Here are a few photos:

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Thanks so  much for reading!

This is the latest post in a series about our wonderful summer vacation in the Blue Ridge!  Thank you so much for reading!  If you are interested in the other posts you’ll find them here:

We Set Out Accompanied by Wildflowers
Dipping Our Feet in the Ancient New River
Stumbling Over the Tanawha Trail
Wonder and Awe at Linville Falls
Relaxing on a Rock at Looking Glass Falls
Ice Cream at the Vanderbilts