Virginia in the Early Fall

The week after Weston's 2nd birthday, our family, including my brother Alan, got in the car and drove out the the Shenandoah Valley. We were in search of apples to pick and fall colors. We found a quaint family farm out past Front Royal in the Granite Hills area, and came away with a quarter bushel of apples (enough for about two weeks at our house!).

Then we headed for Shenandoah National Park's famous Skyline Drive. This scenic highway is purportedly used for filming many of the car commercials where you see a car zipping around curves with great fall foliage in the background. We drove in about 20 miles hoping to see some brilliant colors, but the changing of leaves this year really didn't peaks until a couple of weeks later (around October 25th).

We still enjoyed the scenic overlooks, the early signs of fall, and the beauty of nature. Well, most of nature. There were swarms of stink bugs in the clearings and along the highways. At one point, the girls refused to get out of the car at a scenic overlook. I had to sit with them while Stephanie and Alan got out to take pictures and enjoy the view.

At the end of the day, we found a shady hiking path with no stink bugs, and we were able to convince the kids to get out of the car. We spend a good hour exploring the trail, looking a fuzzy caterpillars, moss, mis-shapen trees, and all sorts of things. Alan took several pictures, including one of our family:

While we were probably out a little to early to see the colors we had hoped for, the weather was beautiful, and we took away several fun memories ...and a few stink bugs that hid in the cracks of our car doors...

Run away!!