The View from Squirrel Ridge

I finished reading Struggle for the Shenandoah , a paperback collection of essays on the 1864 Valley Campaign. In addition to an introductio...

I don't know whether my classmates were tired from hiking up the hill or silly from the heat, but I couldn't get a picture without o...

On our second field trip of the season, we met at a shopping center in Leesburg and went to Monocacy and Kernstown. Here's our professor...

The Civil War Trails marker that I photographed at New Hope was not yet in the Historical Marker Database so I submitted it along with phot...

It was hot today, over 90 F., but that didn't keep me from taking some pictures of mountain laurel. It's in full bloom here in Shena...

All was well with the Dale City house today. No more reports of intruders. We got our refund from JCPenney last week. Now we have ordered v...

The split-foyer house that Frank owns in Dale City is still available for rent . It's vacant and still being painted outside, although t...

We didn't stop at this marker along Battlefield Road on this field trip. I assume that's because the traffic zips by dangerously fa...

It's a long drive from Gordonsville to the Piedmont Battlefield and I got separated from the group. I wasn't worried because I have ...

In March, I stopped in New Hope to take a few pictures of the Piedmont Battlefield. This is a fairly new Civil War Trails sign in front of t...

Exchange Hotel, Gordonsville When our class finally got in our cars to leave the Exchange Hotel , a train pulled up and stopped, blocking th...

This marker is in the town of Louisa, Virginia. We didn't stop here on the Trevilian Station tour. I grabbed this photo on a trip from B...

Our tour guides at the Exchange Hotel shared a wealth of information. We stayed longer than our teacher had planned, but eventually hunger ...

This lady was a living history actor at the Exchange Hotel, Gordonsville, VA . When we were in the parking lot preparing to leave, she came ...

I've long been appalled by our casual attitude towards products containing mercury, a highly dangerous element. Two recent reports on me...

When I saw this marker in front of the Exchange Hotel Museum in Gordonsville , I thought it was probably a Civil War Trails marker . However...

We finally had an iris bloom. They bloomed in Shenandoah Valley a month ago (see 2008/05/iris.html ), but ours were so late I thought they w...

The mountain laurel is blooming here in the Virginia mountains. I took these photos Sunday near Orkney Springs.

For our first field trip of the year, we met at 9 AM in Gordonsville. We were studying the Battle of Trevilian Station in Louisa County and ...

I've been working on the field trip photos from two weeks ago in between doing everything else. There's an excitement about the firs...