Well, that didn't go well...

On Saturday, the girl and I spent the entire day at Skyline Drive, in Shenandoan National Park, trying to take pix of the fall foliage. Well, I was trying to take foliage pix. She was trying to humor me. After a long-ass week, I drug the poor girl out of bed at 7:30 in the morning. Checked the weather and Bob Ryan says "yeah, it's foggy, especially out in the Shenandoah, but that should burn off in a couple of hours". Cool, it should take us a couple of hours to get out there.

What a grey, wet, cold day. Thanks Bob. I tried taking pix. We took a short hike. I looked for interesting subjectmatter. But nuthin. I was totally uninspired. It didn't help that every shot I tried to take had the bright-ass cloudy sky in it, which threw off the exposure. The only highlight to the day in the park is that I think I've figured out an exposure trick which I've read about but never totally understood. Oh, and I finally bought a $20 annual pass (after going to the park prolly 4 times in the last year and spending $10 each time. Who says I'm no good at math?).

The day wasn't a totaly bust tho. As we drove back to DC, the skies cleared and evidently people around here experienced a nice day (thanks Bob). We decided (well...I decided, the girl was simply drug along for the ride) to check out an old stone house that sits next to the highway. It's been there forever, and I've always loved the way it looked. I thought it might be a historic site or something, but I'd never taken the time to check it out. We got off the highway and proceeded to wander around a bunch of two lane (sometimes only one lane) country roads, eventually wandering our way to the building.

Turns out we'd found the Beverly Mill, an 18th century mill which was reciently (1990s?) destroyed by fire. Unfortunately, due to it's unstable condition, the mill house itself (the structure I'd seen from the highway for years) is closed and fenced off (to protect it from vandals). The mill sits on a bunch of acres of land and evidently has a number of hiking trails. We arrived there just about 5:30pm and it was already getting dark, so we didn't explore any of the trail network, but it might be something cool to look into in the future. I was able to get a couple of "fading light" shots of the old mill and a couple of other foundation remains. I have to see if any are worth displaying.

Oh, also...I've had an inspiration for some new photography stuff. Have to get some materials together before I can try it, but it should be pretty cool. Stay tuned!

Oh and...the Bad Religion show is tomorrow night. I can't wait. I'm a late comer to the Bad Religion camp (just found them a copule of years ago and fell in love) and haven't had the chance to see them live yet. It should be a good time...we have a cool group of people going.