Winding Down on Willy Nilly Friday

We're only three weeks into 2021 and we've certainly seen some highs and lows! Our country made it through the attack on the Capitol and the Inauguration, but we are still in the throes of the pandemic. We have lost over 400,000 lives already to Covid-19. Two vaccines are available but there are not enough qualified personnel in our part of Virginia to keep up with the demand. So we wait. 

I haven't been to a restaurant in ages. I go into stores less often and very cautiously. Meetings are done online. Thank goodness we have the internet! 

Well, I can still go for rides and take walks in uncrowded places. It is easy to find them except on weekends when every family seems to be outdoors. 

Yesterday I found Seven Bends State Park to be very quiet. Here's one more picture from there,  more abstract than the others and in Black and White. 

The floral image is from my archives. There are three floral themes I'm linking to: Friday Bliss, Garden Affair, and Floral Friday. 

Looks like I inadvertently returned to the red, white and blue theme I used on Inauguration Day. Well, they are great colors! 

My skywatch shot has a similar color scheme, but with orange tones in the sunset.

The rest of today's pictures are from 1998 on Maryland Heights. This was a hike in the fog from Harpers Ferry to the Civil War fort on the mountain. I don't think I could do that steep hike now so I'm glad I went when I could.

I wanted to share these because Harpers Ferry is one of my favorite places. 

I posed at the overlook that is photographed by everyone who goes up there. You can see the bridges across the Potomac, and the town of Harpers Ferry. The river on the upper left is the Shenandoah and it meets the Potomac at a point that's out of the frame to the left. 

Originally I was going with a group from the NVCC Civil War class. It rained that morning and only two of us showed up. The rain had let up but we the found the heights shrouded in fog. 

I think my lens got fogged up too. The few pictures I took of the old stone walls are blurred by mist. This was 22 years ago and I did not own a digital camera, which would have been extremely expensive then.

The fort was built by Federal troops in 1862.  I think the sign in the final shot shows the 30-Pound Battery. 

My companion on this hike was a classmate and I think his name was John Campbell. In that class we typically knew each other by first name. It was pretty much a series of interpretive trips to Civil War sites and there was no roll call. Anyway, he hiked up the mountain with ease and I struggled to keep up.