Kate's Puppy

"Little Bit" is eight months old. She is tiny but warm and affectionate. She is not "yappy" like some small dogs. Naturally, everyone loves her.

Boys at the Playground

I took these pictures near Kate's home in South Carolina.

Frank, Justin, and Austin

Driving to Atlanta

I planned our trip to Atlanta as a two-day drive with a scenic interlude on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Briefly, we drove south on I-81 to I-77 toward North Carolina, exiting the interstate at Fancy Gap, VA and taking the Parkway southward.

We spent the night at a Best Western in Boone, NC where we had the view pictured here. In the morning we got back on the Parkway, stopped a number of times to look at the scenery, had lunch at Crabtree Meadows and made our way to US 221 South and (eventually) I-85 west to Atlanta, getting there around dinner time.

It was a long drive and I wished I had allowed more time to enjoy the sights.

Nothing Fresh at the Snack Bar

I've loved the Blue Ridge Parkway since I was a child. It's a beautiful place, with fine views and a gracefully curving road.

I noticed a change this time that I didn't like: the snack bars no longer serve fresh food. This is bad news for those of us with food allergies! The sandwiches are pre-made and packaged in a factory, so there is no way to get a wheat-free version (also known as a small salad).

I was really hungry when we got to the snack bar in Crabtree Meadows which is still listed as a "restaurant" in some publications. After seeing that there was nothing allergy-safe for me to buy there, I was glad that I had an emergency food supply in the car. I wound up feeding myself three ounces of canned tuna, some rice crackers, and applesauce. Frank also decided against the refrigerated sandwiches because they looked unappetizing and bought candy instead.

Along the Trail at Linn Cove

There's a trail at the Linn Cove Visitor Center that you can follow to view the viaduct up close. I took some pictures of the trail and wildflowers. That flash of blue in the upper photo is on a butterfly's wing.

This is at milepost 304.4 on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina.

Link: Nature-Talk page about the viaduct.

Grandfather Mountain

Seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Bridging Linn Cove

I wanted to show Frank the Linn Cove Viaduct on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It had really impressed me when I first saw it but it did not have much effect on him. But of course, he does not share my memories of driving around Grandfather Mountain back in the old days before the viaduct existed.

The old road snaked around the mountain in a series of sharp curves that felt endless as you slowly made your way back and forth, up and down. At some of the turns you'd see roadside stands where vendors sold honey or other local products.

Now the Parkway skips all that and you zip past the mountain with little effort. There's a visitors center with exhibits showing how the viaduct was built.

Link: Balcony of the Blue Ridge

Along the BRP

1. Price Lake

2. Mountain Ridges South of Fancy Gap

3. Stone Mountain, NC

See other photos of the Parkway from June 2009 and July 2008.

A View from Route 33

Massanutten Mountain East of Harrisonburg

Because It is Shark Week

At Dinosaur Land in Virginia, there's a model shark so huge you can walk inside. And stranger yet, when you get in there you see this symbol for a fallout shelter.

Those of us who are old enough to remember when bomb shelters were commonplace know that the threat of air raids was more frightening than the threat of sharks.

Disclosure: I combined two images (using Photoshop) so that you can see the shelter symbol inside the shark's mouth. In reality, it's dark in there and I did not see the symbol from the outside.

(See the shark here and here.)

Butterfly in Barbara's Garden

I took this photo of a tiger swallowtail and coneflowers in the front yard and Ned and Barbara's house. I added some Photoshop filters to the image because it looked flat to me.

Leaving Georgia

Yesterday in Sandy Springs

That's Bill S. next to the red car. He was putting luggage in it when I looked out from the balcony.

Relaxing in Sandy Springs

Barbara and Ned were kind enough to invite us to stay with them when we went to see my aunt. Ned is my uncle's cousin. However, he did not want to be in the pictures.

1. Peggy, Linda, Barbara

2. Bill, Peggy, Mike

3. Frank

My Aunt takes Us to Dinner

Frank, Kurt, Doats, Simone, Bill and Peggy

Farmers Market

This summer there's been a Farmers Market on Wednesday mornings at Bryce Resort.

Marie Meets Monsters

After Marie and I hiked at Harpers Ferry two weeks ago, we had lunch and cooled down. Then we went to White Post, Virginia to visit Dinosaur Land. We had stopped there briefly on Thanksgiving but the place was closed. She vaguely remembered going there as a small child, and of course she wanted to go back.

Dinosaurs

Perhaps you are driving east from Stephens City en route to the Virginia State Arboretum and as you pull up to a traffic light, there they are: Dinosaurs!

Yes, you should stop and take some pictures. Admission is reasonable.

Links:

Dinosaur Land website

Story on RoadsideAmerica site

Posing with the King

Dinosaur Land has more than dinosaurs. And the folks who created it understood the value of a photo opportunity. The giant figure of a Kong-style gorilla is designed with a place for you to sit in the palm of his hand Faye Wray-style. We took advantage of the photo op.




This big gorilla doesn't seem scary once you sit in his hand. I wonder how many folks have posed there?

See Marie's album of our dino-tour.

Link: Dinosaur Land

Avoiding Frames inside Frames

In January I wrote about putting your blog in an inline frame. I did that with this blog on a couple of pages including my Civil War Field Trips homepage. (You'll need to scroll down that page to see it, and I coded it to show only posts tagged "Civil War.")

If I clicked on a link in this blog from the framed page, the link opened inside the frame, perhaps inadvertently framing someone else's website, which is not a good thing since it can cause confusion and even charges of copyright infringement. Plus I could create a situation of multiple frames nested inside each other by clicking on a link back to my Civil War homepage and scrolling down to the inline frame which would then appear inside the other frame! You might have to see it to imagine how messy it gets but guess what? You won't see it here because I found a "fix:"

Within the [Head], put the following:

If you know HTML, you'll find that pretty simple to add to a regular page. In Blogger, you edit your template through your Dashboard. You click Design and then click Edit HTML. If you haven't done a lot of that before, you should probably save a copy of your template before changing the [Head].

There are also codes to prevent your site from being framed at all, but since I want to be able to display my blog on my other sites, I'm not concerned with that here.

Congratulations to Webhero

I see that Webhero is the oldest web hosting company! They've been around for 17 years and in terms of the web, that's a long time.

When I first signed up with their service, they were called Catalog.com. The sites I have with them are CivilWarFieldTrips.com, VirginiaPhoto.com, and Colinda.com.