We haven't been great about taking our time off this year, so my wife and I spent a few days in southwestern Virginia this week, hiking and eating the local food. We ended up getting a few good pictures out of it, thought I might share some for those who are stuck at work or at home.
The drive through the country to even get where we were going was lovely. Everything was green from the recent rain, and the folks in SWVa had their harvest-time decorations out.
Our first stop was Cedar Creek Falls, which was an easy hike from the gravel parking lot to a wide set of low waterfalls. The first steps of the hike were across a perfectly safe but very swingy cable bridge.
The falls are nice if a bit difficult to photograph thanks to their proportions, and they are unusually lateral - they are really a bunch of steps in the rock which have more depth than the camera can show. They make that satisfying waterfall noise, but not so loud that it can be unpleasant like Roaring Run. There was plenty of room on the shore around the falls for folks to sit in packing chairs and chat until it got too dark to stick around.
We started back to the trailhead, and there was a nice large rock (boulder? How big does a rock have to be to also be a boulder?) along the trail which provided a nice background for some stainless steel.
At this point the trail diverged and a harder fork was available to get back to the car so my wife said I should take it if I wanted to. I did, and thus condemned myself to quite a lot of unexpected sweating... they didn't really see fit to put in switchbacks, so it was all straight up! I am also out of shape, which might have something to do with it...
I was rewarded near the top of the ridge with a rustic bench along the trial. The Mod. 60 took a momentary rest again.
After what seemed a very long time my harder trail wound back to meet the normal one and we headed out. Just the first day in the woods did a lot to wash away stress from work!
We stayed at a little hotel in St. Paul and then headed to The Channels the next day. We were blessed with great weather again, perfect temperatures and humidity. The leaves here were further along than at Cedar Creek Falls, so we took an embarrassing number of pictures. I will spare you the vast majority of them here! This was on the way in, before we left the gravel road which leads to the real trailhead.
One of my favorite things about hiking in Appalachia is when you reach the "rhododendron line" where much of the plant life is displaced by mountain laurel thickets. Here's one of the many parts of the trail lined with them.
The trees got a bit shorter as we got higher, but they got more colorful. Here's a nice shot from higher on the trail.
At the top of the mountain there the trail diverges. You can go left and through a mountain laurel thicket to reach an overlook, or you can go right and pass under a fire tower from the 1930s to get to The Channels. We went to the overlook first. It was a grid of huge stones which you had to jump or step across to reach the best views.
In my opinion it was worth the trouble. Also, it made me feel like a mountain goat. YMMV.
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Originally Posted by Butzbach
