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Photo Trek: Grayson Highlands State Park
Photo Trek: 03-02-2008, Grayson Highlands State Park, Mouth of Wilson, VA
Withstanding the Test of Time
It's a new month, and new Treks are afoot...or at least one new Trek at this point. My goal has always been to explore the state of North Carolina where I live, but occasionally it is a good idea to step out of your comfort zone and do some exploring. Today was just one of those days. My wife Jennifer has been under the weather lately, but is starting to feel better, and actually came up with the idea of going out to take some pictures....not so much for me, but for her. You see, she has recently purchased a Canon A720IS digital and has been itching to use it. We both decided that we needed to get away for a little while, so I set forth on researching a destination.
What I came up with was a state park in Virginia....Mouth of Wilson to be exact. The Grayson Highlands State Park is located along the Southern boarder of Virginia near the Appalachian Trail, just above Allegheny County in North Carolina. I had read about this park in one of my books that highlights several state parks in each one of the fifty states. This one sounded quite interesting, and had several historical cabins on the grounds. This was to be our destination.
After nearly two hours on the road, we arrived at the park. A quick stop at the park office to get our parking pass and we were on our way to find the cabins. This is where a wrench got thrown into the works....many of the roads in the park were closed due to snow and being the off-season. The road that would have led us straight to the cabins was one of these closed routes. Not wanting to waste the two hour drive, and needing to stretch our legs after the trip, it was decided to hike the rest of the way. I am estimating around a mile one way to get to the cabins.
All the way there we were walking through snow that was ankle deep in places, so I was getting excited about the prospects of having some honest to goodness snow pictures to add to the gallery. My hopes were quickly dashed as we arrived at the site...the snow was all but gone from the field where the cabins were. The water soaked ground indicated that we were a day late to see the snow.
We stuck it out and made due with what we had. There were two cabins that really caught my eye, and were situated in a way that allowed some pretty decent compositions. The lighting wasn't quite right, but the sky was this beautiful shade of blue. That is the nice thing about being up really high in a rural setting...there is little to no smog in the sky, allowing the natural blue to shine through. Of course, the blues here were helped out a bit with a polarizing filter (not post processing for those who are wondering). The grass was just starting to show the hint of green, so I purposely underexposed a bit to saturate what green was there.
There have been three new pictures added to the Rustic Room of Four Forty-Six Photography.
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It is a beautiful shot, the cabin looks inviting to me and the sky is just gorgeous.
Lisa -
Sounds like such a nice outing for you and Jennifer. Glad she's starting to feel better. Please have her let us know (through you if you like) how she likes her new camera.
Your photo here is terrific. I love stone chimneys like that too.
Take care,
Nancy -
Nice shot! You'd never know from that photo that there was snow anywhere nearby! I'm heading over to the Rustic Room now. Hope Jennifer is all better now.
Martha :-) -
Nice shot! I recently purchased a PowerShotA570 is myself. I was looking for a small point and shoot with around 6 megapixels to use when I didn't want to drag out my DSLR. You know the kind of shots... "Look at the cute thing the dog is doing". If you drag out the big camera the dog has done moved on to other things by the time you get it out of the case ;p Thus I found myself in the market for something I could grab quick (or throw in my purse). I'm really pleased with the amount of control the camera gives me. I had planned on spending around $100 for my 'toss around' camera. By spending just $50 more I ended up with a camera that allows me a lot of control, has 4x optical zoom, image stabilization, 7.1 megapixels and is still small enough for those 'casual' picture taking opportunities. I've only taken a couple of pictures with it so far, but I'm pretty happy with it.
3/7/08 11:51 PM
gina