Skip to main content

Anniversary Weekend

This past weekend my husband and I celebrated our 1st Anniversary. We celebrated by going down to a little bed and breakfast in Vesuvius, VA.  Which is in the county of Rockbridge (not Rock Ridge) but there was a railroad slated to go through Rockbridge but was never completed.  We stayed at SugarTree Inn, in their small cabin. The cabin itself was nice and spacious and had a Jacuzzi tub and large stall shower. (I’m so installing a Jacuzzi tub when I get a house.) The inn was in a pretty secluded spot on very curvy windy mountain road that would probably be fun on a motorcycle or a high end sports car.  Now the driveway, which seemed like a mini road, was ‘fun’, it had a steep incline and some very tight curves.   However the down side of the location was there was very little to no cell reception thus really no internet. Also I have had better breakfasts at Hampton Inns. The breakfasts were on the boring side basically eggs, grits, ham and baked oatmeal every day and only served for one hour in the morning. The other bed and breakfasts I have been too offered a better variety of food and a longer breakfast time.  While place was nice, I don’t think we’ll go back to that particular bed and breakfast.

Monticello (rear)
Over the weekend we stopped at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home.  Jefferson’s home is interesting but is smaller than Mount Vernon.  You could take pictures of the grounds but not inside the house itself.  Overall I would say it is nice but is a bit overpriced for the depth of the tour and what you actually get to see of the house. 






One of several waterfalls
Now since the government was closed, it meant the National Parks were closed. This changed our vacation plans, since we wanted to drive and hike along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Thankfully we did find a few things open in the area. We did a hike at Crabtree falls.  The hike was a 1.7 mile hike up the mountain with several little waterfalls dotting the trail.  The trail had several switch backs, I would consider it a moderate hike. The trail was an up and back trail so it was a total of 3.4 miles round trip. There was a beautiful view of the valley when you got to the top.  

We then went to see the Natural Bridge, which honestly should not cost 20 dollars per person to go see. I realize the admission
included the butterfly garden, Indian village and wax museum. But most of the stuff was not well maintained or and was kind of pitiful.  It defiantly fell under the category tourist trap.  




The next day we went to Cyrus McCormick Farm and the fall festival (it was free). The farm is a historical farm, and was the birth place of Cyrus McCormick which invented the first mechanical grain reaper.   We walked around that for a little bit then went into the town of Lexington, VA to wander around. In Lexington we stopped at a small private war memorabilia museum. It was owned and operated by a nice little old lady. It was a pretty extensive collection of items, which were collected by her husband.  She gave a very nice 45 minute tour.  After that we headed up to Rockbridge Winery for their fall festival and tasting. It wasn’t much of a festival but we did get to taste all their wine. I was surprised Jim actually tasted some wines and liked a couple of them.  That was the last thing we did on our weekend getaway.

Cyrus McCormick Farm
Overall it was a nice weekend, just wish we could have enjoyed the National Park. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode.  I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs.  I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work.  But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated.  While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing.  I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year.  I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023.  I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...
Post a Comment
Read more

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations.  I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience.  For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions.  I used ISO 100 and 400.  My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot .     I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool     The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos.  I started with a fashion grey seam...
Post a Comment
Read more