Lake Laura through the Trees

Lake Laura, Basye, VA

When I was at Nancy M's for drawing class last week, I took a break and looked at her view of the lake. It was still covered with a thin layer of snow. Directly across you can see the public boat landing that fishermen use to access the lake.

Nancy and her husband are planning to move back to the city so they are preparing to put the house on the market. It is in Bryce Resort, has three levels and was custom-built. Even though it is 10 minutes or so from the main road, it should sell quickly because lakeside homes are very desirable.

My Investment Townhouse is Ready

My townhome in Woodstock is ready for the tenants who are moving in tomorrow. Today we got the downstairs floors looking spiffy, and just about everything else was done last week.
It's the first time since last spring that we've felt we can relax as far as our properties being fixed up. A year ago my tenant in Northern Virginia lost his job and stopped paying his rent. When he moved out, I decided to sell that house and buy one closer to where we live now. Unfortunately there was a lot of work to do on that house, and even though we found good contractors, we had to make several trips down there to arrange things. By the time that was ready to sell, Frank had a house come vacant near mine and decided to sell it too. His did not need as much work as mine, but it took time because it was also two hours from home. Eventually both houses sold.

We bought the lake house as a replacement for his and it needed repairs and remodeling. Before we finished it, I closed on the townhouse (a foreclosure) and started getting repairs done. Finally both are ready for renters, and as some sort of grand finale, both have tenants moving in tomorrow.

Geese in the Yard

When we arrived at the lake house on Thursday, we saw geese strolling through the yard. When they saw us, they headed for the wetlands nearby but not before I took a few pictures of them.

Not far away, there were more geese next to the lake. They were Canada Geese and there were close to a hundred of them. I believe they were visitors; I haven't seen so many Canada Geese at the lake before.

The geese pictured here are domestic geese, probably farm geese gone wild, if you can call it wild when they are living comfortably on a community lake and getting treated to regular handouts by people who live nearby.

Cornell has a page on domestic geese and hybrids.

Fighting Geese

The geese were marching along peacefully and suddenly two of them started honking violently. I looked and two of them were fighting, attacking each other mercilessly.

Spring is coming and I imagine they were male geese fighting for the right to court a female. After a few minutes they stopped, one of them rushing off and the other one pursuing for just long enough to make sure he was gone.

We Own Part of a Lake

Yesterday we walked the lakefront path again to look at the three lots I bought near our property in Waterlick. We located a couple of plastic ribbons tied to trees which are probably left from a survey. Each lot is about 100 feet wide and covers close to an acre except that part of the acreage is under water. The lot that is closest to the end of the lake has a boundary about 50 feet from the dam. The dam itself is owned by the community and is a popular location for fishing.

The lots are not as wet as they were when we last visited, for the melted snow has had time to drain off. They have numerous cedar trees plus brush and honeysuckle.

One of the people we purchased the lots from had inherited two lots from her parents. When they purchased the lots early in the subdivision's history, the lake was not built yet although it was in the planning stages. She said that her family camped on the property before the neighborhood was developed. Her husband said that now he has Parkinson's disease and is trying to simplify; he seemed relieved to sell the property.

The Lake House is Ready

Yesterday we finished getting the lake house ready for the tenants who are moving in soon. Frank spent a painful amount of time installing a light fixture but finally it was done. We cleaned up and loaded our supplies in the car, but before leaving we walked around outside, enjoying the warm weather and sunshine. It feels like winter is finally over.

Birds Roosting in Trees

I almost called this post "Roosters" because those who roost are indeed roosters, but I realized that folks would look for chickens and be disappointed.

These photos were taken at Shenandoah River Lakes which is in Warren County at Waterlick, VA.

A Thought for 2010

This photo is one that I captured through the sliding glass doors when the snow was fresh. Our snow is pretty much gone now, but I liked this image well enough to use it for a belated new year's message.

Gray Squirrel

He kind of blends in, doesn't he? I added poster edges in Photoshop to try to bring him out, but the colors keep him camouflaged.

Mallard Male

Waterfowl at Waterlick

There are always ducks and geese at Shenandoah River Lakes. Some local people feed them with the result that the geese in particular have become rather bold and will even stand in the road as though they were outlaws holding up a stagecoach!

These couples were enjoying the lake in spite of thin sheets of ice still floating in it a few days ago. I imagine the ice is gone now for we have had warm temperatures for a couple of days in a row.

Still Trying to Learn Paint Shop Pro

I'm taking a Paint Shop Pro class from VU, which I should call by their new name Webversity. This is my second try at the class and I'm still feeling clumsy. PaintShop Pro (PSP) is just enough like Photoshop that I keep getting confused, but of course it works differently.

Here's a graphic I made for the "layers" exercise, and below we see a "sig" (signature) graphic. The PSP teachers and students always use such a graphic when they post on the class bulletin board. It takes HTML so you just type in the "img src" code and after you submit your note, the graphic appears below your message (hopefully).

A Big Week for Us in Real Estate

Finally things came together for us on our recently-acquired investment houses. I guess the improving weather brought out potential renters. We got two applications for the lake house near Strasburg. We chose the best one and met the people; they will move in on March 15. As for my townhouse, an agent showed it before the painting and carpet were even done and (to my surprise considering the rough appearance of the house), her client liked it and submitted an application. He had good credit and references so I quickly accepted the application and now the house is leased.

It took two heating contractors to complete the furnace repairs, but Air Quality Systems out of Broadway finished the job successfully. By the end of the week, Ron Anderson finished painting the interior of the townhome (and did an excellent job) and Dan from Lowe's came today and installed carpet. Carlson Plumbing came and fixed the leaking fixtures, plus we made a bunch of minor improvements.

Our other big news was buying three lakefront lots adjacent to the lake house.

First we closed on the 1-acre lot next to our property. It's wooded and brushy but it is waterfront and provides our lot with privacy plus the security of having extra land should we need it for a new well or septic field. Then we purchased two lots between that lot and the dam. Together they make a lot that should be buildable although they've never been perc-tested. We don't have plans for those lots yet but they should be a good investment.

The vertical picture shows the view from one of the lots.

Woods on a Snowy Evening

Yes, we still have snow on the ground. And a light snowfall on Wednesday gave the landscape a wintry look.
This picture appeared a bit plain when I opened it in Photoshop, so I added a colored pencil filter to a duplicate layer. Then I slid the transparency down just a bit and chose dissolve as the blending mode.

The colored pencil filter only looks good if you've chosen your foreground and background colors to complement the image. Even then you may have to experiment a bit.

Suet Enthusiasts

Yesterday morning when I opened the blinds I saw snow coming down and a light covering of snow of about half an inch on the deck . Birds were busy at our feeders, apparently stocking up on energy in case the snow got worse. It didn't. I took photos from the window of birds at the closest feeder, this hanging suet dispenser. Chickadees, titmice, and woodpeckers took turns sampling the suet cake.

I think this little woodpecker is a female downy woodpecker.

Lady Liberty Soliciting at the Food Lion

She's marketing a tax preparation company.

Album Books

	Yesterday I received my first Blog2Print book. It's a compilation of my blog entries for a specific time period. I decided to select November and December of 2009, largely because that period includes some family photos. As you can see, I chose a Christmas-themed cover; most of the cover designs are more sedate.
	I'm happy with the quality of the book, although the formatting options are limited. The photographs came out well. I plan to order a few more of these books. I won't print my entire blog because the size  of the book would be huge and the cost would be very high.

Inspired by the ease of making that book online, last night I created an album at Photoworks. I was purchasing prints anyway and decided to have an album printed using wintry photos that I had already uploaded. This book does not include blog text although many of the photos are identical to ones is used on this blog except that the file sizes are larger. (I save my JPEGs in two sizes, one exceeding 500K for printing and the other under 100K for posting on my blog.)

I should receive this album in a few days.  Since I haven't put photos in a paper photo album in years, purchasing some already printed should relieve my guilt at not keeping the family albums up to date.

Possum O'Possum

A possum has been visiting our yard. We've seen him three times in broad daylight. Apparently he didn't find much to eat with snow covering the ground so he (or she) ambled over to sample seed and corn that I had scattered on the ground for the squirrels.

I don't often spoil the squirrels with their own food, but they've been ravenously attacking the bird feeders and I wanted to draw them away and give the birds more time to feed.

The possum didn't stick around to have his picture taken and didn't pause to look back like a deer often does. Instead he waddled away slowly but steadily until he was out of sight among the trees.

Historic Bird Haven is For Sale

Basye, VA

MLS #SH7138620

The old Bird Haven estate is on the market at $2,900,000. It consists of 487 acres and includes the house pictured here, which is still in use as offices.

Since my husband works for Creekside Realty which is marketing the property, we toured the old house recently. I was pleasantly surprised to see a display of artifacts dating from Bird Haven's history as an artisan center which had it's heyday in the 1930's.

We have seen another exhibit relating to Bird Haven's Shenandoah Community Workers at the Timberville Museum, which included a few fine craft items and a picture (below right) which matches an old building still standing on the property (below left). That building is now in disrepair but was once a place where local craftsmen fashioned "furniture, toys, fireplace equipment, hooked rugs, and quilts, from patterns evolved by their ancestors" according to a WPA guide. See my earlier post on Bird Haven.
According to Touring the Shenandoah Valley Backroads, this was near the site of the Alum Springs Hotel, a resort in the 19th century. Author Andi Sutcliffe writes that it became very popular in the 1870's "as much for its elegant restaurant as for the healing powers of its springs."

The acreage is listed as waterfront, which must refer to Lake Birdhaven, shown on Google Maps as Lake Carroll. (I've also seen it mapped as Beetle Run Lake, but I think the name Birdhaven sounds prettier.)

Farewell to February!

I'm usually glad to see February end and even more so this year. We had way too much snow, with unrelenting cold weather that made it hard to get around for weeks on end.

The ski resort benefits from the wintry weather though, for it encourages folks to come out from the city and try their skills on the slopes. Now the ski season is winding down but there were still crowds at the core of the Bryce Resort this week.

Community Store

Funkhouser's Store, Basye, VA

This general store serves Basye, Orkney Springs, Bryce Resort and sportsmen enjoying the nearby National Forest. The variety of merchandise is impressive.

I added poster edges in Photoshop to increase the contrast of the picture and give it a slight painterly quality.

BASYE – ORKNEY SPRINGS, BRYCE MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY

This is part one of an article written by Basye artist Nancy Meyer.

You have to look very closely at a detailed map of the Commonwealth of Virginia to find little dots with the names “Basye” and “Orkney Springs”. The two villages are situated in a small valley between Great North Mountain in the Allegheny Mountain Range and Supinlick Ridge to the east. Both villages are unincorporated, very old and very small rural communities set at the eastern edge of the George Washington National Forest in Shenandoah County

The entire area is one of the best-kept secrets and most beautiful places in the Commonwealth of Virginia to live and play. Here you will find the pure forests, crystal streams, clean mountain air, roaming wildlife, and decades-old family names very well-known in the Shenandoah Valley.

Over a century ago, Basye was just a settlement along the road to Orkney Springs…named after a long-gone family. Orkney Springs’ name dates back to families who originally came from Scotland.

What of the ghosts of the valley families that once lived, worked and died in this very place? Fifty years ago the land along Stoney Creek where Bryce Resort now sits was home to a number of farmsteads with structures, large vegetable gardens, fields of corn, wheat and barley; livestock included chickens, cattle and hogs.

Orkney Springs

Orkney Springs is located at an elevation of 1400 feet and Basye at an elevation of 1350 feet at the foot of Great North Mountain and the George Washington National Forest in Shenandoah County, Virginia. There are seven springs south of Shrine Mont which allowed the development of 3 spring resorts before the turn of the century. These springs are the head waters of this particular branch of Stoney Creek. Stoney Creek runs through Orkney Springs, Basye, and the Bryce Resort valley. It empties into the north fork of the Shenandoah River, which makes its confluence with the Potomac River at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia and on to the Chesapeake Bay.

The lands surrounding Orkney Springs were provided by a land grant in 1774. The area was filled with medicinal waters containing mineral salts that create a bright yellow mossy fringe to accumulate on the rocks they touch. The community began to grow in the 1830's with commercial development evolving in the 1850's. Surviving from that great development period is Virginia House, a hotel with 3 stories of porches around the front and sides constructed between 1873 and 1876.

The oldest building in the complex is the 1853 Maryland House, also a structure with porches and a court yard in the center. It was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Other hotels, specifically the Orkney Springs Hotel, built before the Civil War, are prime examples of early architecture and are listed in the National Register of Historic Landmarks.

Shrine Mont and the Orkney Springs Hotel complex with two youth camps are owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. In addition to church families conducting retreats and cultural mini-conferences, it is home to the Shenandoah Music Festival’s annual summertime concerts.

The George Washington National Forest has 47 blazed and named hiking trails, old logging roads and some homesteads. Great North Mountain is 2,600 feet elevation and has an extensive orange blazed trail on the top. It is just 8 miles on State Route 720, Crooked Run Road, from Basye to the top. This is a hunting ground in the fall for deer, bear, and birds and was the source of iron ore for Liberty, Van Buren, and Henrietta [Alum Springs] furnaces. It is laced with old trails and wagon roads and is a hunting paradise.

The area is conveniently about 2 hours away from the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Area and parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Many residents move here from large cities and high-pressure jobs to find an active but less stressful environment. Some move from the north seeking warmer weather and some purchase a second home here planning eventually to become permanent residents.

The Valley has a rich history going back to the 1700’s and provides Civil War buffs a field day with its history, details of the war, and the war’s impact on all of Shenandoah County and surrounding counties. Many just like it because it is a true mountain and farm community with people interested in helping each other.

Next: About Bryce and the Surrounding Communities

About Bryce Resort and the Surrounding Area

An excerpt from BASYE – ORKNEY SPRINGS, BRYCE MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY

A major focal point of Basye/Orkney Springs and Bryce Mountain is Bryce Resort. A family named Whitacre owned and lived on 156 acres next to the Basye settlement. They sold their farm in 1904 to the Brice family who developed the land as a small, old fashion family vacation spot. The resort was in the Basye village. It had cabins, dining hall and an out door recreation park next to Stoney Creek. During the 1960- 70’s, Pete Bryce and others developed a large mountainous forested area adjacent to Basye into what is now the Sky Bryce Homeowners Association, Inc. Fifty miles of roads were paved and water, sewer and underground electrical and telephone service was developed. . For flood control purposes the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers built a dam which formed the 45 acre Lake Laura. In 1971 and was paid for by the department of Agriculture.

The Bryce Resort lodge and ski/golf facilities were built and time share companies followed in the 70’s . Today inhabitants include:

• Permanent full-time homeowners
• Families of the people who settled the area
• Families who work in the surrounding communities, towns and cities
• Weekenders and vacationers who maintain second homes
• “Snow birds” who come in the winter for ski season
• Time share owners.

The make up of the communities include:

• Sky Bryce Property Owners Association, Inc. with 2,776 lots
• 13 other independent smaller homeowners associations
• 3 Time share companies
• Vacation rentals through 2 property management offices
• Historical structures and traditional family homesteads
• The village of Orkney Springs
• Shrine Mont, a retreat owned by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia
• Bryce Resort, a member-owned resort of 350 to 400 members. The resort owns the golf course, ski slopes, outdoor private sports complex, the lodge complex, the roads, and property around the lake with the public beach. For membership information call 856 2121, ext. 220. Contact the ski and golf offices for info about these sports.

Bryce Restaurant offers a grill and dining room open to the public. It caters many private parties and weddings. During ski season the Fireside Grill is open and during the summer the Grill at the sports complex is open.

Basye is an unincorporated village with a fully stocked general store, It also serves as gas station, hunter check-in point, and is an invaluable source of information to new visitors. There are also two restaurants, a post office, a car wash, and two real estate offices. Several active churches are nearby: Brethren, Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, and United Church of Christ.

The Basye-Orkney Springs Volunteer Rescue Squad fights fires and offers quick ambulance service in emergencies taking people to Shenandoah Memorial Hospital in Woodstock, a part of the Valley Health System.

Most of the activities and events featured at Basye/Bryce are open to the general public, including:

• Skiing; snowboarding; tubing; competitive ski races; ski lessons
• Tennis
• Swimming
• Golf
• Basye Community Library featuring adult and children’s book groups
• Various Church activities and Bible study groups
• Bridge, sewing, quilting and knitting groups
• “Take A Hike” group
• Art classes
• Sky Bryce Flying Club
• Creekside Fitness Center
• Seasonal activities and summer camps for children.

Next: Nearby Shenandoah Valley Activities.

Northern Shenandoah Valley Activities

Note: This is the last part of a piece that Nancy Meyer wrote about the Basye-Orkney Springs Community.

The Shenandoah Valley as a whole offers a wide variety of activities, events and opportunities for enjoyment by the whole family. Many of these are listed in the local, weekly and monthly newspapers and Virginia tourist booklets. Numerous volunteer organizations offer opportunities to help others and to meet new people and neighbors, including:

• Orkney Springs Basye Volunteer Fire Department and Rescue Squad
• SEARCH Thrift Store in Mt. Jackson supporting a group home for mentally challenged adults
• Mt. Jackson Food Pantry
• Lion’s Club; Mt. Jackson Lioness Club; Ruritans; Masons; Elks; Moose Club
• Shenandoah County Memorial Hospital, member of the Valley Health System
• “Friends of the North Fork Shenandoah River”
• Shenandoah County Public Schools
• Music Guild supporting the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival in Orkney Springs
• Masterworks Chorus
• “Art Group” in Mt. Jackson
• VECCA; Valley Education for the Creative Arts
• Active art workshops and Gallery 7 East in Woodstock
• Mount Jackson Garden Club
• Basye Orkney Springs Library: Part of the Shenandoah County Library system
• Shenandoah County School System

The Shenandoah Valley Economic Tourist web site offers a comprehensive list of Valley activities such as numerous wineries, several caverns, Civil War battlefields and museums, historic homes, Cultural Frontier Museum and it’s proximity to Shenandoah National Park. Throughout Shenandoah County from Strasburg to New Market and beyond there are dozens of antique shops and shopping complexes.

Places to visit include wineries, caverns, battlefields, historic homes, Shenandoah National Park, Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester, Belle Grove Plantation, and art galleries. Winchester to the north and Harrisonburg to the south offer dozens of attractions, activities, and shopping areas. Harrisonburg is home to James Madison University and Eastern Mennonite University; Winchester is home to Shenandoah University. Middletown is home to Lord Fairfax Community College and the Wayside Theater. There are many other small colleges.

The Basye/Orkney Springs/ Bryce Mountain Community is a very special multi-faceted place with a variety of cultural groups. It is a very beautiful environment with outdoor activities and spectacular scenery. For those leaving large urban areas, it offers the amenities of an old fashioned caring community.

There are now quite a few web sites that provide additional information, including local builders, time share companies, churches, and many local businesses.

www.bryceresort.com

www.skybryce.com

www.caros.net/basye

See the first part of this article.

Lake House Still Available

The house near Strasburg is still up for lease. Frank just lowered the monthly rent to $1295 -- a bargain considering the size and amenities!

Activity on the house has been slow because of the harsh winter weather. We hope that the right people will look at the house soon. Good credit is required.

Listed for rent on Realtor.com

One of my previous posts about renting the house