After a traditionally leisurely start, we were driven out west about 90 minutes away to visit Skyline Drive.
Skyline Drive is a picturesque road at very nearly 3000 feet altitude] running north-south for 105 miles along a ridge in the Shenandoah National Park. For comparison, Scafell Pike is England’s highest peak at about 3200 feet/980 metres. The main idea was to see the fall colours of the trees. We joined at Swift Run Gap and turned south.
As is often the case, nature had other ideas; most of the leaves had fallen so much of the colour had gone. It did leave some impressive views down into the Shenandoah River valley, though. At this stop we were inundated with ladybirds, or ladybugs as they are called over here. The term bug seems inappropriate to me in that these are beetles and not bugs. On the other hand, they aren’t birds either so I shouldn’t complain about this particular piece of American terminology.
The ladybirds kept landing on us in various places. One girl also at the overlook ran away into her car ‘cos she couldn’t stand the ladybirds crawling all over her. When we returned to our car to continue our journey, several ladybirds hitchhiked with us and were now crawling all over the inside of the car. In the back seat, we rescued those that we could.
We made another stop at Loft Mountain Wayside for a picnic in the splendid sunshine. We were continuing to benefit from what is somewhat unseasonable excellent weather. I can’t believe the luck we’ve had with the weather this year following almost six weeks mostly of sun in Spain.
After our picnic we completed the drive to the Rockfish Gap Entrance Station where we clambered onto the I64 to head head east back towards Richmond. The interstate is pretty much lined with trees on both sides all the way and these, at least, did put on a show of some autumn colours.
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