Our Trip Home

Before we left Mamaw's house on Sunday I took the opportunity to set out the recorder to tape the bird calls and such in the yard before. This is going to give me a whole bunch of sound to muddle through.

We were planning on stopping by the Ft. Chiswell Mall before heading down to Hillsville to visit with Wanda and drop off some Christmas gifts for her. As we headed on down the road looking for the mall we came across some burros, this was a good one of the mom and her little one. The spotted burro started walking towards us - he apparently wanted us to get a better photograph of him. Just down the road on the opposite on the side of the road we saw this really unique barn. It is just different from the usual one.

We also happened upon the sign that directed us to the New River Trail State Park. This was a place that Mom had thought about trying to get to so that she could take pictures of the New River. We stopped in the middle of the bridge over the river so that she could get photos of the river as it ran under the Interstate 77 bridge.

After we found the sign for the New River Trail State Park we decided to go on the side trip in order to get photos close up of the river. It turned out that this is a fantastic State Park that is right on the bank of the New River. They had available horseback riding, canoes and riverside campsites. I can hardly wait to head back down with the family for an actual camping trip. I'm going to be sure to take my painting supplies with me.

While Mom & I were taking some photos of Foster Falls, I used the time to tape the sounds of the falls.

I took this photo of the falls while laying on my stomach on a rock in the river. It gave it a real 'eye-level' look of the river below the falls.

Mom was busy working on getting scenic shots of the river, when we saw what we thought were hawks circling. Mom thought that she would try to get at least one of the group of three, but it turned out that instead of hawks circling it was eagles. She did get at least one photograph in which you can make out that it is an eagle.
















The really odd tree in the foreground is in the campsite area with the falls behind it. The other photo is at the top of the falls and shows the reflection of the mountains.

After spending about an hour to an hour and a half at the falls we headed on into Hillsville to visit with Wanda. However, as we got closer to her home we called ahead and found out that she had gone out for the afternoon. Not to worry, we just dropped by and left her Christmas gifts with the staff there so that she would get them on Christmas Day.

Mom & I then decided to go to Roanoke via the "back way", since I77 traffic was really heavy and there was construction work on the bridge. So we took Route 221 North. Oh! What a great idea that that turned out to be. The scenery was gorgeous and there was no traffic. We popped one little hill and here was the beautiful view that we were greeted with!

It seemed like the entire way into Roanoke it was just a treat for the eyes. Quite restful and calming. Once we hit Roanoke we stayed on Rt. 221N all the way through downtown and some of the buildings there were breathtaking. Especially the architecture of the old churches.

The remainder of the trip basically was traveling at dusk and after dark. But we did make one stop on Rt.460 for a sunset - I believe that Mom got the photo of the sunset, but I got this one of the cresent moon above the sunset.

Once with hit Rt.307 we came across deer dead on the side of the road in three different locations. We also noticed that there was a huge amount of traffic going west, we figure that it was students returning back to school at Longwood or Liberty. When we arrived on Rt360 heading on to the house. Thinking that we were almost in the clear when we came upon a police car sitting in the road across the right-hand lane of traffic. It was really unclear if the police car was in or on the side of the road until we were almost on top of it. There had been an accident, but it would have been really nice if there had been some flares indicating that the traffic should get into the left lane.

The girls nearly knocked me down as I got out of the car upon arriving home. Who would have thought that two dogs could have missed me that much. Dean & Sean came out and helped me in with all the stuff I had packed and brought back.

Dean surprised me with a cell phone - to be arriving in the next day or two. The boys had also been working with the dogs and Lilly has learned how to get into her bed - which is at the opposite end of the sofa from Carla.