Here we see an exit off I- 81 near Staunton, VA. The road in the foreground above is U.S. 250 (recently mentioned in a Charlottesville post). This particular exit has several restaurants including Mrs. Rowe's, a steakhouse, and a couple of American chains restaurants.
Virginia is lovely in Spring and the flowering trees add bursts of color everywhere. I saw these blossoms near Staunton last weekend. I think they are cherry blossoms.
One of the pleasures of living in rural Virginia is enjoying the lovely scenery whenever we drive anywhere. 
I took these photos at the popular pedestrian mall in Charlottesville, Virginia. People were taking advantage of the warm weather and enjoying the urban outdoor environment.
When we travelled to Charlottesville for an appointment last week, it was lunch time when I left the doctor's office. I asked the receptionist to suggest a place to eat and she highly recommended the Downtown Mall. She gave me directions including where to park for a quarter or two. I hadn't been there in over a decade so this was very helpful.
This marker stands in Charlottesville's Downtown Mall. It tells part of the story of U.S. 250, which become Ivy Road and Rockfish Gap Turnpike west of town, then changes names again and again on it's way to West Virginia and Ohio.Also called Three Chopt Road, this colonial route ran from Richmond to the Shenandoah Valley. It likely took its name from three notches cut into trees to blaze the trail. A major east-west route across central Virginia from the 1730s, it was superceded by Route 250 in the 1930s. Part of Jack Jouett's famous ride and the Marquis de Lafayette's efforts to prevent Gen. Charles Cornwallis from obtaining munitions occured along this road. Today West Main Street and part of University Avenue approximate the Three Notch'd Road's original course through present-day Charlottesville.
Yesterday we drove along the middle section of Skyline Drive between Route 33 and Route 211. Here we are looking west toward the Massanutten Range.
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This is a picture from two years ago. We haven't had squirrels on our deck in a long time because I stopped putting their favored seeds in this feeder. Now I just put Nyjer seed here and put the tastier stuff in other feeders that are safer for squirrels to reach. Our deck is a full story from the ground with no stairs so the squirrels had to leap onto it from tall trees and when they landed, we were startled by the thud and the dogs got upset and barked.
Supinlick Ridge is a long ridge east of Great North Mountain. Part of it is within Bryce Resort but much of it is still undeveloped and pretty much undiscovered. There are several lots for sale on top of the ridge and judging from the ones I've seen that have been partly cleared, most of them have spectacular views (example).
software is on Frank's PC so I have to wait until he's not using it.
The fields are turning green in the Shenandoah Valley. For a couple of weeks they were mostly brown, but that period was very brief because snow was on the ground for most of the winter. 
These figures stand in front of the Old Valley Pike Country Store north of New Market, VA. Across Route 11 among the cedars stands the 54th Pennsylvania Monument.
I was driving to Mount Jackson on Monday, in and out of rain showers. I pulled of onto Scothern Road just west of I-81 to take a few pictures of the sky and the Massanutten Range.
"In the summer of 1861, Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s forces captured large quantities of Baltimore and Ohio Railroad rolling stock near Harper’s Ferry, 40 miles north. To reach the Manassas Gap Railroad line in Strasburg, the equipment had to be pulled by horses and mules up the Valley Turnpike from Martinsburg. Fourteen locomotives and almost a hundred cars were brought here and then used throughout the Confederacy.
Signal Knob, the northern end of Massanutten Mountain, can be seen in the distance from here. During the war, it served as an observation and signaling station from which the Confederates observed Union positions and directed the opening attack of the Battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, 1864. "
We spent a few hours in Strasburg so Frank could get a haircut and we could have lunch. Strasburg is in northern Shenandoah County.
In this house, George G. Crawford, M.D. (1876-1949) practiced medicine, and with his wife, Anne Preston (1880-1966) reared their family. This house is given to the people of Strasburg in their memory and in memory of Ellen C. Hatmaker (1904-1982).
All who have lived, visited and worked in this house remember it with affection.
A one-day class in Civil War history will include a tour of sites related to the First Battle of Winchester. Professor Jonathan Noyalas will give a morning lecture at LFCC Middletown about Stonewall Jackson’s life and legacy followed by the afternoon tour.
I found a few drawings in chalk that I made many years ago. I gave up on chalk rather quickly because it was messy and I wasn't good with it. This is the only one that I'm not embarrassed to show you.l
I'm throwing out some old sketchbooks. I found a few drawings that seem worth saving. The paper is yellowing so I'm scanning them.
The ski season is finally over; spring has arrived. I opened this photo yesterday in order to try out a Photoshop plug-in which is supposed to eliminate "noise" from digital images. Skies are my biggest noise problem, and from what I've read are often a challenge as far as showing digital noise. When I zoom in on the sky in a picture I often see blocky blotchy areas especially toward the upper corners of the image. 
These guys were feeding when I took their picture. The photo above may look a bit unusual until you look at the uncropped picture. The ducks had their heads in the water and their tails in the air.
The Summer 2010 catalog for Northern Virginia Community College is online although registration does not open until the end of March.
My MacBook has a large trackpad instead of a mouse. It's about 3 by 4 inches and that's large enough to draw on. So I downloaded a little program called Inklet and sure enough, now I have a little drawing tablet. I also got an inexpensive stylus but if it works better than using a finger, I'm not skillful enough to tell. 
