Lots of snails down here. They were wiped out by the ice age up north. They pretty much couldn't outrun the glaciers.

More brown eyed susans.

I saw a lot of these but never figured out what they were.

The view towards what I called "P-burg".

These flowers opened down. If you wanted to get a good view, you had to hold 'em in place.

The sign for the Rice Field Shelter on Peters Mountain. Out on the edge of the prairie.

Carrie, Whispers and I all wound up at the same shelter one last time (Carrie would wind up in Duncannon, Penna. only hours after I left where she ended her hike, for now.) on top of Peters Mountain on the Virginia-West Virginia Border. This dark boulder, warmed by the sun all day, was actually across the border in W. Va. and we sat for hours, to watch the sun set and the stars come out over the valley.

Sunset over W.V.

Tomorrow I will tackle the rest of Rice Field.

Sunset over West Virginia from Rice Field.

Sunset over West Virginia from Rice Field.

Sunset over West Virginia from Rice Field.

Sunset over West Virginia from Rice Field.

Sunset over West Virginia from Rice Field.

The lights come on in Peterstown, West Virginia, viewed from Rice Field as the sun sets.

The lights come on in Peterstown, West Virginia, viewed from Rice Field as the sun sets.

The lights come on in Peterstown, West Virginia, viewed from Rice Field as the sun sets.

The lights come on in Peterstown, West Virginia, viewed from Rice Field as the last light fades. We could hear people barbecuing in the valley below.

Undercast on the West Virginia side of Peters Mountain.

And on the (east) Virginia side too.

A monarch. Or maybe a viceroy.

Blackberries!

Haze and clouds over Peters Mountain.

A swallowtail in flight.

The bright underside of a still swallowtail.

Unaware of my approach, the turtle waddles along the trail.

In my presence, however, he darts inside his shell. I step by and let him win the race.

The Allegheny Trail goes 300-something miles to Pennsylvania. I think I'll stay on the AT, 1536 miles to Katahdin.

A babbling brook.

These look like they should be dancing to Tchaikovsky in Fantasia.

Stony Creek. Bridge out. Ankle-deep ford.

Pennsylvania? Not quite. But it looks similar.

Late day views to the west before sunset.

And views to the east, towards the Blue Ridge.

A creek. The bridge had had a bee hive on it and someone put up a sign.

The Big Mountain Hunt Club must like hunting signs, I guess.

Haze.

A bit off the trail, I got to hop this chasm.

I made it!

More 'shrooms.

Rhodo leaves in the stream.

Breaking out on to a field. It was nearly 100 in the shade.

And this picture very well illustrates, uh, I forget. I think I thought the landscape looked like the West. But it doesn't really.

White, orange, other colors.

A big oak. But nothing compared to the next one.

The Keffer Oak is one of the largest trees on the trail. It is far bigger than anything else, and I don't really know how to describe the expression on my face as I stood up against it. In any case, you'd have to have really long arms to be a tree hugger in this instance.

Keffer Oak towers over the other trees by a factor of two. It is that big.

Hay is for horses.

A bluer swallowtail.

Thunderheads building. The only views were under the power towers.

Sweat stains on my pack straps. Gross.

Without glaciation, little streams have slowly carved little valleys in to the long ridges. It is completely different to topology up north.

The Trail crosses a few major divides. Here, we go from the New River basin to the James basin, from water flowing towards the Gulf to water flowing towards the Eastern Seaboard. The distances are river miles, not as the crow flies. The Trail stays in the Atlantic basin except for another foray in to the Mississippi basin (via the Ohio) in Virginia and a short stretch in Vermont where waters flow out the Saint Lawerence.

Rain ahead.

These lizards evolve to have their tails fall off should a predator bite at it. This little guy obviously went through it, but he'll grow another.

I got to climb down the Dragon Tooth. It seemed hard, but this was commonplace in Northern New England.

Up through a field.

Nearly sunset.

When I night hike, this is about what I can see. It ain't much.

For the first time, the trail nears a good-sized city. Here we see the lights of Roanoke only a dozen miles off. It was definitely different than the usual pitch black skies.

The trail near McAfee Knob gets a ton of traffic, so they build these to bypass slanted rock sections and probably to control erosion.

Raspberries!!! I became excited and ate about ten handfuls, and made myself sick.

Hazy view off of McAfee Knob. In another direction you could just make out the Roanoke Airport through the hills. The trail becomes far less rural until Vermont, passing with 60 miles of DC, Harrisburg, New York and Albany.

Everyone takes this shot off of the knob. No one showed, so I had to self-time it. The sun was wrong so I was silhouetted unless I bleached out the background.

DON'T JUMP!

It was about a 9.3 second run, so I didn't get much time to pose.

Raspberries. All for me!

Through the rocks.

The trail actually avoids this pseudo-tunnel.

A distant shower.

Tinker Cliffs was another opportunity to take a photograph on an overhanging slab of granite.

No, the trail didn't go down there either.

Down the Andy Layne Trail the stream cuts in to a limestone wall.

Southern Home-style food at the Homeplace. The fried chicken was good, but I think I got sick from all the raspberries earlier in the day.

Me and my feast.

Holy Wah! A yellow blaze (on the Andy Layne Trail). Nice change of pace, actually.

But...

...on the other side, it didn't say anything.

Charlotte building her web.

The trail passes along several of these cliffs.

Suburbia. Seriously.

Roanoke's Reservoir.

And major power infrastructure. The trail was buzzing.

At Howard Johnson, going online is such a pleasure, we call it "ireless internet."

See the double blazes across six lanes of traffic?

The sun sets behind a couple large oaks.

What a good idea. It rained overnight, and he stayed dry.

Foliage really stands out when everything else is green.

My first encounter with the Blue Ridge Parkway. 97 miles by road to Shenandoah. By trail, 120.

View down in to the valley.

Yup, this is the AT. You tourists along the BRP took over its original road to drive your RVs to and fro. (Actually, the BRP isn't too bad, as it was a CCC project and is a very classy road. Like the Merritt.)

The Peaks of Otter, I think. The trail goes around them.

See what nice bridges they built?

The hot, dry trail.

Carrie and Masa.

Bryant Ridge was a beautiful shelter, but had way too many moths. They swarmed my wet socks (it rained earlier) and my shoes and everything. They didn't bother the other bloke there. I was glad for my bug net.

Bryant Ridge: Two story shelter, sleeps 20-30. Great location on stream. Picnic table included.

Here the trail switchbacks and winds up through a green carpet.

Nor do I know what flowers these are.

Blue Ridge view. Probably taken from a Parkway outlook.

Mossy rocks.

A small cascade above Apple Orchard Falls.

Apple Orchard Falls.

Apple Orchard Falls.

Yours Truly and Apple Orchard Falls.

A rainbow formed by the sun and the spray from Apple Orchard Falls.

I hiked 2.5 extra miles to see the falls. So goddamnit, I was going to take a bunch of pictures.

That, and the angle of the sun was quite cool.

With these dark shadows and all.

Apple Orchard Falls, one more time.

A golf ball atop Apple Orchard Mountain.

Whispers!

Flowers and butterfly.

The guillotine.

I tried to express concern that the Guillotine might come crashing down. Then I started calculating the odds of a major earthquake occurring in the second I was underneath. It was something like one in three billion. So I was not concerned.

Ooh, more pretty flowers.

I think it is some kind of lily. I looked it up. A Michigan Lily! From here through Shenandoah, it is quite prevalent.

The beginning of sunset.

More views across the hills.

Clouds in the distance, from whence I'd come, I think.

If I hadn't been stung by a bee, this would have been a fabulous sunset.

It still was.

One of the best.

Matts Creek.

The bridge across the James River. Once a railroad bridge, now the longest foot bridge on the trail.

Long indeed.

That's me reflected in the muddy water.

The James is a big river.

And muddy-brown when viewed from above, looking east.

The James River is the only one which really punches through the Blue Ridge, causing the parkway and the AT to descent a long ways and then go back up.

View from the ridge.

A new bridge over the Pedlar River.

It was late, but I got a long shot of a nice pool near the shelter.

The next morn, I photographed upstream.

More little streams.

Kudzu. I kept calling it Kedzie, a street in Chicago. But it takes over everything.

Open areas along the ridge.

More flowers of an unknown variety.

Will it rain or won't it? (It didn't)

Main Top Mountain (I think) views.

Main Top Mountain and me!

Flowers in the sun.

Yeah. Real helpful.

Swallowtails and Michigan Lilies.

The view down to the Tye River Basin from the side of the Priest.

Bug spray + tortilla package = instant tattoo.

Lots of brown eyed susans along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

View.

The trail just has to climb this jumble of rocks.

Wintergreen, supposedly an aptly named ski area, since the winters there are often green.

Blue Ridge Parkway, mile 0.

Rockfish Gap, where the Blue Ridge Parkway ends and Skyline Drive begins, is mostly abandoned.

But the bridges are still nice.

Extra cheese, yum.

Frond and Azaria wanted me to pose. I wanted to eat.

And eat I did.