Tag Archives: fall foliage

Thomas, West Virginia

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I went to Virginia hoping to see some pretty fall leaves. The colors there were muted and the leaves were just starting to turn. However, coming home through the country roads of West Virginia I found some of the most stunning fall colors I’ve seen in years.

This picture was taken just a few miles outside the tiny town of Thomas, West Virginia. I had driven through rain that morning and experienced the fade and resurgence of the sun off and on for another hour or so as I made my way north through some West Virginia country towns.

I stopped briefly to explore Thomas and chatted with a shopkeeper who sold me local pure maple syrup. I’m at that stage in life where I want to support small businesses without dragging home too much clutter. So whenever I find myself in a position with nothing else to buy I reach for food items that I might view as a luxury later – local maple syrup or honey, fudge, jams, pancake mixes and other things that I can enjoy but won’t be around forever like a shirt or a coaster.

The shopkeeper said this was the best fall foliage they’ve seen in a few years. Sadly, many businesses remain Covid closed and tourists are mostly staying away. Consequently, the rest of the world is missing out on the spectacular colors currently dressing the mountainsides.

Come back tomorrow for more about Thomas. I think you’ll like their story.

PS- I just started a Facebook page for this blog. I’ll post some bonus content there so be sure to follow. Find it by searching Make The Journey Fun or just click here and click like.

White Post

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Striking, isn’t it? It’s just one of many pretty small town and country churches I photographed this road trip.

This is in a tiny town called White Post that has a number of interesting things including a restored Sinclair gas station, a couple of churches, and some lovely homes that looked like they belong on a New England calendar of fall foliage.

The town takes its name from a white post located at an intersection in the middle of the village. It was erected in the 1760’s supposedly to point the way to the estate of Thomas, Sixth Lord of Fairfax.

It’s always fun to imagine the prosperity and former looks of a town like this and to wonder how they ever afforded a church so grand.

I have some regrets about White Post. First is that the weather was nasty and the second is that I didn’t park the car and explore a little more. It really was picturesque even if the sky was gloomy.

I’ve said it here before but will say it again. If you have the time. Take the time to look around. It’s easier to do it while you’re there than to go find it again some other day!

Adventure Weekend!

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There is no better food for my soul than a good road trip. That’s why I took a long weekend and went down to the Shenandoah Valley for some history, hiking, sightseeing and airplanes.

I’m sad to say the weather didn’t cooperate and actually interfered with most of what I had planned but created opportunity to do some other stuff. The thing I most looked forward to was the Flying Circus Air Show and a biplane ride over the Virginia countryside.

It was rained out.

The day I wanted to hike turned wicked cold with wind so strong it threatened to blow me off the mountain. Even when it was not raining, the sky was a flat white, making poor conditions for landscape photography most of the time.

Luckily, I’m good at improvising and was so happy to be away from home that I was thrilled to embrace the unplanned in the name of adventure.

Boring skies make for great black and white landscapes and rainy days are perfect for roaming museums and bookshops. And again, at least it was a change of scenery.

It wasn’t exactly what I had hoped for but it was better in some ways….. except for the plane ride, of course. I’m still stinging over that loss but there’s always next year.

Stay tuned as I start sorting through pictures and begin telling some of the stories from the weekend which featured a lot of interesting sights and history themes.

Meanwhile, the top photo is from a drive through rural West Virginia where the foliage was gorgeous as well as the second photo from the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

Color

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Mother Nature is starting to show us how beautiful the world can be when we let things go. There is nothing more stunning than the early days of fall foliage in southern Ohio when the colors begin to change and leaves tumble to the ground.

Wherever you are in this world, I hope you get to experience beauty in the fall.

Starting The Weekend On The Right Foot

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This weekend began last night with a quick hike at the lake. A parade of distractions, bad weather and all sorts of problems kept me off the trail this week so it felt particularly good to go out and play.

It was not quite sixty degrees and I delighted in the crunch of leaves beneath my feet as well as the sounds of a few stray Canada Geese soaring over the lake.

Fall has arrived.

Soon it will be too dark to hike after work so we must make hay while we can. After months of summer heat, it’s a relief to layer up and breath crisp, autumn air.

Aren’t these mushrooms unusual?

The beautiful thing about living in a place with four distinct seasons is that there are constant changes to your surroundings and always something new to see. So even when you’re hiking the same trail, you’ll still see new things!

Fall Foliage

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Fall in southern Ohio is usually quite colorful and is a time that leaf peepers look forward to every year.

This year, not so much. It seemed like the leaves turned late but mostly they just turned brown and fell when the rain moved in.

But we did have a brief period of blue skies and pockets of color like the day I took this covered bridge photo near Lancaster.

The good news is that those pockets of color did seem especially nice next to all that green and brown and we came to appreciate the color more than we normally might if everything was vibrant.