We arrived back home from our trip to Skyline drive late yesterday afternoon. All in all it was a really nice little vacation. The leaves had already fallen at the higher elevations and the colors were not as brilliant as in past years. The weather, however, was perfect. We had two days of brilliant sunshine and very few clouds. The temperatures were moderate with lows in the upper 30’s and highs in the low 60’s. The accommodations at Skyland Resort were very adequate and the food was much better than expected. We did a little hiking, a lot of stopping at the vistas, and made it down to Big Meadows in time to see all the deer at sunset.

We were even fortunate enough to see a black bear up a tree. I got some pretty good photographs although I was dissappointed in some of them. I still have a lot to learn about my camera. I should have tried some of the presets instead of shooting most of the shots in raw. But I managed to get quite a few good shots, one of which I will post with this entry. Teresa managed to get some shopping done in Sperryville and Fredricksburg. I even did a little shopping myself, buying two coffe mugs, a book and maps on backpacking the AT, and a book on nanotechnology and two street maps to Florence and Rome for our upcoming Italy vacation. The Borders bookstore in Fredricksburg is much better than our local Barnes and Noble, with a much wider selection of titles. More on the vacation will follow. I still have three days left in my vacation so I will be doing some more traveling soon.