Pictures

Bonsoir!

Time for a biggish, mostly pictures, less-snarky-than-usual-because-I-have-not-been-drinking post methinks. So I had some visitors. Picture bomb!

Kate and Ell in the caverns!

Joke is on us because Kate is gorgeous.

Elliot is a bit nervous underground.

And I think she plays with her hair when she's nervous.

Or she prepares to become She-Hulk. 

Hurry and take the photo before it caves in on us!

Great shot, terrible coloration. My camera was on some sort of super color effect mode accidentally.

Elliot is sort of happy it is time to go!

I love people in period attire! They had a tent with a fire and a bunch of uniformed soldiers, generals and a band, where they waltzed. Awesome!

We also saw a bear. Yes, a bear. A mother effing black bear just ambling somewhat slowly across the divided highway. It was so cute. I didn't get a picture because I was too busy squeeing, so here is a picture of a bear that is not nearly as cute:

That is it for pictures, which kind of sucks, because we did so much other cool shit that it would have been awesome to have documented! We ate lots of delicious food and we also went to this crazy place called Wilson's Wild Animal Park, where there was almost no other visitors and we were able to get up close and personal with some baby lemurs, a lion, and we got to hand feed some adorable baby deer. It was the unexpected winner of the weekend. Took a stroll down by Hawksbill Greenway, which is a little paved path by a creek in a bird sanctuary in Luray, and saw Pirates: Band of Misfits which was also surprisingly entertaining. Overall a superb weekend with great company and many wonderful surprises that I am pretty sure got my sister hooked on Shenandoah Valley.

Then, I had a sort of grouchy week. A lot of driving all the time, averaging about 200 miles on my car per day for back and forth to my new assignment area, not to mention spending hours and hours in the car, was really putting a damper on my chipper carpe diem attitude. Also, it was in the 90's and raining almost all week. And I broke out. And my landlord charged me $500 extra for rent to make up for the taxes, and I realized I needed a passport, birth certificate or social security card to get fingerprinted for my pending West Coast licenses, none of which I will have before I get back to NH on June 23rd or 24th. So, week was not quite going my way. Until.......

Mom's fix everything. She was dedicated to having a totally relaxed, no stress and worry free weekend away. And that is exactly what we did, slept in, treated ourselves to delicious dinners of Indian food and Southern cooking, and we went to Shenandoah National Park/Skyline Drive, a scenic drive that takes you south on the backs of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I had only been up on the drive once quickly when I first arrived, but this was much much nicer. I cannot believe I haven't been going here every weekend and just laying in the grass and staring at the wonders of life, such as...

 This dead tree, all alone on the edge of this scenic vista. Nice spot, mom!  We stopped at the gift shop, where I purchased bird and tree identifier booklets, because I'm always looking at that shit and wondering why I don't know more about the shit that I see hundreds of times a day. All ya'll visitors and friends who I will be seeing this summer, get ready for some knowledge dropping, bird spouting, leaf identifying bad assness. Sounds super intimidating, right??

Anyway, mom and I tried to get to the caverns on Sunday, but when we got there, there were about 700 people in line, standing outside in the sun on the pavement. It would have been at least a 2 hours wait, and we decided to scrap it and head to Winchester to go the gardens I've heard so much about.

Photo op on the way, this lovely little farm with the Shenandoah just out of sight. I love the exposed rock cliff and the mountains. Pretty much everything looks like this here.

Gardens at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley

I died here. Over and over. It was like that effing Secret Garden movie except minus the snotty little disabled boy (is that the right movie?) plus an obnoxious Lora chasing animals and flower petals, dreaming about all of the weddings I could have here. 

 Some sort of flowering onion plant. Dude, why don't they sell the onion with the flower? I'd be eating that shit everyday. Thanks, Macro filter!

 This reminds me of the scene in Wizard of Oz where they get effed up in that field of poppies. Even though they aren't poppies. Or in a field.

 Hey! Ducks! DUCKIES! Come here!

 Rose garden is preettty

 Hey Geese! HEEY! Why do they always run? I just want to rub my face in their feathers hear them honk. Does that make me a creep? Well eff you geese, I think you are the creeps. All honky and scratching your beak with your webbed foot.
Wait, what?

Ew. Weirdo. Get out of here!

Here, bear! Dinner time!

In the Zen garden, there is a pagoda. A fake pagoda, with recreated fake Chinese furniture. It would be only natural that there would also be a fake snake on the back of the chair.

 Oh. Wow. That is not a fake snake. Actually it is a 6 foot long Black Rat snake, nearly harmless and pretty skiddish. Like the snake, mom and I made ourselves scarce from the Pagoda after this sighting.

Lastly, a picture from the zen garden. Then my camera died. Another lovely weekend!Thanks to Elliot, Kate and Mom who all came the distance to see me and this lovely place I call almost home.

So much visiting has really put me in the mood for coming home in June. I am going to be driving, since I found out flying the cats would be crazy obnoxious considering it is only a 10 hour drive. I have only four weeks left in Virginia, so I'm planning some day trips and outings. Matt comes to visit the weekend before I leave, and we will be doing all the outdoorsy stuff, like river rafting and hiking. Looking forward to that for sure.

In the mean time, it is just me. Sitting around in Basye, drinking small bottles of wine through a straw, which I started about halfway through waiting for all these pictures to upload, continuing to work on getting out of the grumpy funk that has invaded Loraland over the passed two weeks. I'm thinking that all the new music I discovered today may help, including this. Which is Churchill. Love the folksy, slight country rock vibe. Repeat button abuse is happening presently. Also, the plan is for doing more outdoors stuff in the evenings after work to get rid of the too-much-driving blues. Will keep everyone posted on how that goes!