Two of The Girl's high school buddies (now married to each other for one convenient package) invited us to join them for a weekend of "camping and hiking" in Shenandoah National Park. I was so excited that it was only a slight letdown when I learned that their idea of "camping" was "cabin with a hot tub."
That's ok. I still got to go hiking.
I also took charge of the menu, as is my wont (my wont is also to use the phrase "as is my wont" at every opportunity), and baked two apple Dutch Babies to fuel us for the first morning. The oven was only large enough for one at a time. Oops.
It's also my wont to go swimming in frigid streams whenever I get the chance. As luck would have it, we found this pool right around lunchtime, and there was nearly enough sunlight for me to dry out afterwards while munching a pepperoni roll. Sadly, it was not nearly deep enough to allow jumping, but it was still so cold that when I stood neck-deep in the middle of the pool, I couldn't get my chest to expand enough to yell over the sound of the waterfall.
The Girl informed us these were mountain laurel blooms. Most of the other blooms had passed.
On our last hike, I saw a small sign for "Cave Cemetery." Following it, I found a small graveyard which I assume was a family plot; most of the surnames were Cave, and a protected chart on a signpost indicated that their were several unmarked graves for the Cave family. There were a couple wooden markers dated as recently as 2006, and some obvious replacement markers for graves dating back to the Civil War.
I've always been fascinated by natural history (I'm especially proud of my 5 year old godson's encyclopedic dinosaur knowledge, which far surpasses my own at that age), and although the Shenandoah is not known for its fossil beds, I did learn a valuable lesson about evolution.
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