The Rest of Shenandoah

After visiting Rapidan Camp by trail, we returned to the campground to find our site surrounded by about a dozen hikers fresh off some long-distance hiking on the AT.  We thought maybe they'd be tired, and therefore sedate, but noooooooo.

We got tired of their extended and exaggerated loud yapping and so decided to go watch the sunset from one of the overlooks along Skyline Drive.

I took these shots with my phone, and took the opportunity to goof off with filters.  I like both effects, but I think the black and white edges out the color.  If you can't tell from the photos, this was both a beautiful and a relaxing evening.

The last rays of the sun caught a blooming shrub in a particularly nice way.  When I don't know what a shrub is, and it's flowering, a lot of times I'll say that I think it might be a viburnum.  So, folks, this is a viburnum ;)

And well, you know what?  I forgot one of the best parts of the campground.  Justin walked just a short ways into the woods from our site, looking for downed wood.  He wasn't gone long when I heard a "Pssst!" followed by a "Bring your camera!"  I could not imagine what would stay still long enough for me to get down there, much less take a picture.

Turns out it was this fellow - a very small fawn who was very suspicious of our activity.  Not wanting to cause any undue stress (life's hard enough!), we left pretty quickly and didn't alert anyone else to its presence.  

Shenandoah in June

I'm getting a little out of order here, but bear with me.  Exactly one week after we returned from Ireland, we made a quick weekend trip down to Shenandoah National Park.  We hit some fantastic weather - warm but not crazy hot, sunny with dramatic fogs and clouds.

This park more or less demands the use of the pano function on the old iPhone camera.  Anytime you get a view, it's usually miles of mountain blue and valley green and one frame doesn't catch nearly enough of it to give the proper scale.

These are a couple of the overlooks we encountered as we drove south.  We intended to camp but left the campground itself to chance.  Matthews Arm looked big and open and not overly inviting, so we decided to head further south, to Lewis Mountain Campground, which is the smallest in the park.

After we snagged a spot, we decided to hike down to Rapidan Camp.  Before this hike, we did not know that Herbert Hoover had a camp in Shenandoah.  Camp actually does not give you a sense of the size and complexity of the thing.  But this was a great spot to visit.

Actually, the biggest excitement happened just a few hundred yards along the trail.  We're zipping a long, and a bear pops up right next to the trail.  I screamed, it screamed.  It ran away, but not very far, and then followed us for about 100 feet.  Kept us hopping!

Rapidan Camp is at the bottom of this particular trail.  Not many of the buildings are left (there were a lot!), but a few cabins still stand, and so do the chimneys of a few others.  

There's a small waterfall along this trail.  We caught it as the sun was filtering through the trees above it.

And it turns out that we would have interesting wildlife encounters on the way down to the Camp and on the way back.  Near the top of the trail, we met a pair of white-tailed deer traveling downwards.  

We caught sight of them and stopped in our tracks, and watched them approach within about 50 feet of us before veering off to the left and looping around us.  

Three Romances - It Happened One Night, A Husband's Wicked Ways, & More than a Mistress

These are not part of my challenge, but sometimes, you just want to read what you want to read.  I found the first two of these recently, and gave them a try.  It Happened One Night is a set of four short stories, each by different authors.  The lead story is a Stephanie Laurens one, an author I've read a lot of.  The other three are new to me.  These were all kind of okay - not great, but not horrible.  Which is nice when horrible quality is pretty common in this genre.  I think the last story might actually be my favorite, because it's the most unusual of the bunch.

I found A Husband's Wicked Ways on the bookshelf at work.  We maintain a borrowing library, more or less, there.  The plot line, involving the Napoleonic Wars and spy work, reminded me of a few of Stephanie Laurens' works so I gave it a shot and ended up enjoying it quite a bit.  It's the third in a trilogy so it would have been better to start at the beginning, but it didn't hurt to read this one first.  My only complaint is that the ... ummm ... more romantic parts of the book are just cold and weird, despite the banter between the two leads normally being snappy, entertaining, and warm.  it's a strange juxtaposition.  And the master spy ends up being not so bright toward the end.      

I have had More than a Mistress for a while now, and decided to polish it off, too. I think I liked this one the most of the three.  A lot of the typical plot points are hit, but the "hero" is a little less annoying than usual, and the pot shots that the two lead characters take at each other are pretty humorous.  

Final call:

Three stars to all.

These are pretty decent if you like Regency-era historical romances.  The plots are all a bit contrived, but how could they not be?  People didn't act like this then!

Orange & Yellow - Getting Started With Butterflies

Not too long after our return from Ireland, we went back to Fulton County to do some work at the farm, and also just to visit and enjoy some time in the country.  My Dad planted a wildflower patch at the farm that was in full swing in mid-June, attracting mostly fritillaries but also a few other winged denizens.

This is a Great Spangled Fritillary, or an Aphrodite, but I'm not sure which as they're very similar and I'm a little too lazy to get out the ID guide right now.

There was one Black Swallowtail in the patch.  These are striking, when most of the other colors in the vicinity are yellow, orange, and green.  The last type of butterfly I managed to get a still shot of was this guy, which I believe is some sort of sulphur, possibly a Clouded Sulphur.

Here's a wider shot, where you can see the bold blooms pulling these guys in, plus two more fritillary/aphrodite types.  I think there were 10 or more at any given time in this patch!

I called this post "Getting Started With Butterflies,"  because we have managed to have quite a few adventures with butterflies lately, and this is just the first one!

The Anubis Gates

I do know how this book made it on to my list   I saw an article about the origins of steampunk and it included this title, saying that it's also one of the best science-fiction books around.  Then I found it at a library book sale.  Done, and done!  Since I feel like I have a lot of random thoughts about it, let's just do a bulleted list:

• The Anubis Gates reminded me of a book from earlier this year, Drood.  That book also has Egyptian cults and lots of subterranean London action, so maybe it's not so surprising.  Both books were also on the Dickensian side of things, although at least in The Anubis Gates, Dickens himself is not a character!
• This is one of the just plain cleverest books I've gotten my hands on.  The plot zips in and around and over itself perfectly.  There are layers and layers behind what's happening and why.
• The mystery of William Ashbless is a hoot.  You figure it out pretty quickly, but then find out that you really didn't know everything after all.
• The ending is just fantastic.  One of the more perfect ones I've come across lately.
• The part that happens in actual Egypt sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the book but it's one of the best parts.  So is the trip back to the 1600s.
• When the book tips over into the horror side of things, it gets really horrific.  The idea of a body-switching werewolf is especially terrifying, not to mention an evil clown on stilts.
• Who knew Samuel Taylor Coleridge had it in him!
• This is one of the earliest examples of steampunk, and it's really interesting to compare it to the genre now.  For instance, aside from magic/sorcery/time travel, there really isn't much in the way of alternative history, or steam-driven technologies that didn't exist at the time.  No dirigibles, no protagonists running around with aviator goggles.  No people with mechanical eyes or other body parts.  But the atmosphere is there, for sure.  The high action, the humor, the tongue-in-cheek feel to the plots you sometimes get.  It also reminds me very much of the Parasol Protectorate books, minus the technological fancies.
• It's really wordy!  I found a long paragraph that was actually one sentence!

Final call:

I'd give this book the time of day, any day.  And I don't think you have to be a sci-fi or fantasy nut to enjoy it. 

If I Stay

I'm not sure how this book got onto my list, except that sometimes I do like to dip into the Young Adult section of the bookstore.  There are some great quality books there.  

This one is fine.  The plot turns around 17-year old Mia, and whether she'll decide to stay here on earth and live, or move on and die, after she is grievously injured in a car accident that kills the rest of her immediate family.  She's essentially having an out-of-body experience for the bulk of the book.  There are a lot of flashbacks to moments with her family and boyfriend.  Everyone is actually pretty well-adjusted and pleasant.  

There's a lot less ruminating over the meaning of life and the loss of it than I expected, and more of it centers around her boyfriend than I expected.  It's a very short book.  

What bothered me the most is probably pretty minor.  We can't just have Mia, who plays the cello, and Adam, who plays in band.  It has to be Mia, the best cellist Oregon has ever produced, and Adam, whose band is on the verge of making it big.  I think the book would have been more powerful if the characters had been a little less exceptional.  Similar to my complaint about Bel Canto.  With all these super fantastic people running around, the whole thing becomes a little less believable.    

   

Final call:

 Is this a powerhouse?  No, but it's a lot better than some of the mindless crap that's out there for teens!

Wicked Plants

This may rank as "The Book I Own With the Oddest Backstory."  I was visiting a local thrift shop and saw this on their shelves.  I have Stewart's The Drunken Botanist so I picked it up, and was quickly fascinated with the artwork inside.  When I went to check out, the owner told me the book was free, because a landlord had called her in to clear out the apartment of a drug dealer and she had found it there.  We both thought it was strangely appropriate, but verging on scary, for a drug dealer to have a reference book on poisonous plants!

This is a small book, with a lot of illustrations.  It won't take you long to read through it.  I picked off chapters here and there before bed and on car rides, and really enjoyed it.  There's not a lot of detail, and sometimes you want more information, but overall it's an entertaining work and not meant to be encyclopedic.  Some of the gruesome illustrations are silly, but the full page etchings of plants are gorgeous.  Many of them almost look fossilized.  I'll paste one in so you can see what I mean.

Final call:

 Lightweight and entertaining.  I'm seriously considering pulling out a few of the illustrations and framing them.