Oh, A Campin’ We Will Go…

For Father’s Day weekend, Lisa and I met my parents in Charlottesville. We went out for coffee that night and the next morning Dad and I rolled out early and headed for nearby Big Meadows, one of the camping sites in the Shenandoah Mountains. We’ve been camping and hiking there since I was about seven years old, but it had been at least two years since we had the opportunity to camp out.

Photo Gallery (I’ll get around to eventually *naming* the photos later…)

The photo gallery begins with my Friday at work – you can see the building I work in (and if you squint real tight, you might see my office window on the 6th floor). The second shot is from my window – it didn’t turn out too well, unfortunately. Lisa met me at the Vienna metro station and we hurried up… to wait in I66 traffic. Overall, the trip wasn’t too bad and we made in to Charlottesville in just over 2 hours.

Early Saturday morning, Dad and I drove up, stopping quickly to pick up some groceries. As we were driving, we saw two hot air balloons in the sky. When we finally stopped for groceries, we found that they had made their way down, as if they were going to land behind the Shoppers. The pictures here represent the limits of my no-zoom, point-and-shoot digital camera. I also have a Canon Rebel, which Lisa gave me as an engagement present, but I didn’t bring it on this trip. I’m often torn between my nice Canon, which requires money for developing but has a ton of great features, and our simple digital Olympus, which serves my dual instinct for immediate gratification and frugality (e.g., I’m cheap).

One of the thrills of the trip I was unable to film – while we were driving up, we saw a bear – only the second we have ever seen out there. It was very small, cute, and cuddly, which meant somewhere, nearby, it had a mother that wanted to eat me for looking cross-eyed at her baby. So we looked, and we moved on.

[note: will add more later – have to get to work]