Shenadoah National Park

This weekend we visited Shenadoah National Park in Virginia. Here's a few pictures.


This is American Chestnut. It used to be a dominant species throughout the eastern mountain areas but because of an introduced disease it now only exists as a few little bushes resprouting from old trunks.






Lichen-covered rocks on Black Mountain.



This area is called Big Meadows. It is believed to have been a meadow for at least the last 1000 years, probably longer. It is either caused by weird soil or by some sort of management technique the Native Americans used.

A large area of grass wouldn't be unusual in the West but in the Appalachians, every single square foot that can support a tree seems to have one. It was surprising to see such a large open area.


nice view!


Bizarro-Torrance (in Pennsylvania)

Atlanta, GA to Roanoke, VA in 3 days

Over the last three days we have been traveling north from Atlanta to Roanoke, mostly in North Carolina.


Rainbow near the Great Smokeys.


Asheville, North Carolina, which is a cute little town in the mountains.



Blue Ridge Parkway.


blueberries


waterfall


Lichen on Mt Mitchell


Mt Mitchell


wasps


Christmas tree farm


GPS unit (Miss Crumpets) on Blue Ridge Parkway

As always, there are more photos at the Flickr account .

Atlanta

Here's some pictures of my time in Atlanta visiting Eli and other friends.


robots?


measuring a tree.


Eli and Ophie.




Playing music.

New Orleans area

So, last week after passing through rural Louisiana, we went to New Orleans and checked out the city and nearby areas.


Neat clouds.


The Mississippi.


New Orleans


The French Quarter... it's more interesting at night but I didn't bring my camera.


A summer thunderstorm...


Huge spider and her delicious (to her) boyfriend.


Baldcypress knees in Jean Lafitte park.


Mushroom inside a tree


Floating marsh area.


The Containment Theory vulture???

swamp

swamp, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

an mspaint drawing of a swamp, kinda from a photo, kinda not

I love baldcypress trees!



I'm still in Atlanta. I'll be playing music with some friends tomorrow, at a party. It'll be fun. After that, I'll be in the Appalachians for a while and may not have internet access for some of that time.

Leaving California, Part IV

I've been gone for about a week and a half....

and it is actually quite notable how glad I am that I'm not going back any time soon.

I will really miss family and friends, and I will also miss the fascinating ecology/climate/natural history of California... but nevertheless, I am really glad to be gone.

It's funny how I didn't even really understand how badly I needed this change until it happened. There's no going back now, and I find that I am looking backwards a lot less than I was previously. This should be a good two years.

Exploring Cajun Louisiana

_Days 8 to 10 - Louisiana to Atlanta 003, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

we spent two days in this area then we left via the purple route.

Route through Texas

_Days 8 to 10 - Louisiana to Atlanta 002, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

This is my route through Texas. Unfortunately I didn't photograph the earlier ones because I didn't know they would be deleted.

Martin Lake swamp tour

Last week we went on a swamp boat tour on Martin Lake near Lafayette, Louisiana. Many of these tours are cheesy tourist traps, but in this case our guide knew a lot about the ecology and botany of the area, so it was really neat.

Here are a few selected pictures, but there are more on my flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/inyo395/




Baldcypress trees. These trees, which are related to redwoods and sequoias, can survive soils that are saturated for much of the year. In this particular lake, a levee was created that interrupted the occasional drying up of this area. The trees can survive having their bases submerged indefinitely - but will not reproduce, nor will they grow very much (except their bases expanding) unless the water dries up around them. Thankfully they live hundreds of years so it will be a long time before these trees die off.


A huge spider. There are a LOT of big spiders in the swamps.




Gators


Storm clouds and birds (the birds might be too tiny to see in this picture)


American lotus

Breaux Bridge

_Day 7 - Cajun Louisiana 029, originally uploaded by inyopfc.

This is Breaux bridge. We spent two nights in southern Louisiana, which was great, and I took lots of pictures, which I hopefully will eventually have time to post. meanwhile, click on this photo to connect to my flickr account and see more photos. i'll post about the Bayou and New Orleans later on.

Mosquitos

Tonight I'm on a bayou in rural Louisiana! The wireless only works on the porch and there are a bunch of hungry mosquitos here so I won't be uploading pictures today... but there will be some neat ones tomorrow.

Galveston, TX to Lafayette, LA

Well, we are now in Lafayette, Louisiana, the heart of Cajon country (or so their chamber of commerce says anyway). In any event, the food is delicious and I have been eating a LOT of it. The gumbo, seafood, etc, here is SO much better than it is in California (which I guess isn't surprising). I didn't photograph any food though.

Getting back to Texas... This morning we drove through downtown Galveston, which was by the way under 6 feet of water when Hurricane Ike came through last year.



There were lots of dead trees everywhere in downtown. Trees don't like being under 6 feet of saltwater.

left Galveston, and Mrs. Crumpets (my GPS unit, which speaks in an English accent) directed us into the line for a ferry, without telling us! Oops! This ferry took us to the Bolivar Peninsula.



On the way, someone was feeding seagulls, and they repaid the favor by 'decorating' all the cars on the deck of the ferry. In the background there you can see a shipwreck although it looked older than 1 year so maybe Ike didn't wreck that ship.



The Bolivar peninsula is about 20 miles of hurricane wreckage, with a few surrounding houses and debris everywhere. Apparently, it used to have a lot of beach houses on it, but most were destroyed. Barrier islands/peninsulas are not good places to build for just this reason - they are devestated by hurricanes, and the storm surge goes right over the top of them. Nevertheless it was really sad to see all of the destruction to peoples' homes and workplaces.




This is what thunderheads look like in Louisiana. They aren't as crisp and dramatic from afar as the ones in the desert as they hide behind humid hazy air and low clouds. Today we only went through a bit of rain, most of the storms missed us.


Bridge


A green anole, the closer one is a male and the further away one is probably his intended mate. These guys are really neat, they can actually change color between green and brown. I thought I was hallucenating until I verified it on Wikipedia.


A dragonfly.. this guy and the Anoles were just hanging out to welcome us, at the Lafayette Welcome Center.

As I mentioned earlier, we also got yummy Cajon food today, and as always, I went swimming in the hotel pool in the evening. One other thing too - the hotel had a free beer for us when we checked in! Southern hospitality!