Sunrise ceremony

Recently I was able to go to Arizona and witness an Apache sunrise ceremony. It is a young woman's coming of age ceremony. It is a cross between a spiritual celebration and a test of endurance and strength of will. The young girls who begin the 4 day event definitely are strong young women when they finish. Supported by family, friends, and community they are pushed to new limits and hopefully emerge with the knowledge that they are physically and mentally stronger then they realized, that the support they have will be there in the future and that they now know where to find that inner strength to face any of life's challenges.

Never having been tested like that I do not know how I would have done. I would like to think I would have been able to make it. Heidi, the young lady above, should definitely be proud of herself. I am very impressed by her and wouldn't be surprised to see her do amazing thing in her future.

Welcome to Fall. On one of our drives to Shenandoah we stopped just to enjoy the view.

Well

car meets deer

So I realize that its been a while. Back in Nov. on our 3rd trip to Shenandoah although we had a wonderful day, it ended with a wildlife encounter that kind of spoiled the mood.

I saw the first deer and even the second out of the corner of my eye, as it ran around the front of the car. The third one however-hit the drivers side window and broke all the glass on the left side including the windsheild pictured above.

After denting the roof, breaking the glass, and scaring everyone he bound off into the woods. I am very happy to say that no one in the car was injured. Now the car looks totally renewed and you would never guess it was damaged. (Of course a totally nice looking car is not real photo worthy)

The park was nice and quiet. Being a Monday afternoon in the Fall, most of the crowds were gone. Lee and I now have 2 park annual passes. One for this park and one for Great Falls. I think next year we will simply invest in an annual park pass that gets us into all of the National Parks that require a fee. It is definitely worth it to support such beautiful places.

Fall...heading to Shenandoah. I tried to stop at the Hollis Farmers Market only to discover they were closed. But the drive was very scenic.

Thursay I will be heading to Shenandoah National Park again and hoping it will be in full color. After the farmers market disappointment, I went to the park, but the trees weren't quite at the peak of their fall color.

Shenandoah National Park

When we went down to visit Luray Caverns we also took the opportunity to go to the Shenandoah National Park. We stopped at several of the overlooks and walked the trails to the Stony Man Cliffs. We hiked about 3 miles the first day and 5 miles the second. We had beautiful weather. Only the haze over the mountains limited the vista.

Luray Caverns

Lee and I had an opportunity to go to Luray Caverns this last weekend. Amazing. Stone in so many magnificant shapes. to think that little drops of water formed or helped to shape these amazing pieces. It was a little dark for photos and I will be doing some lightening of some photos llater, but here are a couple that turned out well just the way they were. It is about a mile walk. A nice 70 degree temp. (especially when it was almost 100 degrees outside.) Anyone in the area should check it out.