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Showing posts with label blue ridge parkway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blue ridge parkway. Show all posts
Friday, October 14, 2011
Saturday, December 05, 2009
TTL #10: "Mountainesque"
"Creek in the Foothills"
Blue Ridge Parkway, NC - February 2001 (Click to embiggen)
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Thematic Photographic 75: "Travel" v.7.0 - One-Tank Destinations II
"Speed Checked By Radar, Enforced by Natural Selection"
Somewhere on the Blue Ridge Parkway in NC - February 2001 (Click to embiggen)
Hosted by Written Inc.If the unthinkable should ever occur and I get bored with the North Carolina beaches, a little further from me in the other direction are the North Carolina mountains. Which include a substantial portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The Parkway is a nearly 500-mile strip running along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and Virginia that will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2010. I canot possibly tell you about all the points of interest in a blog post, or even a series of posts. (There are guidebooks for that which tell you what you can find at every mile marker along the way in much greater detail and with far more authority.) But I can show you what a substantial portion of your view will look like if you're there in Februrary. Even with the trees bare, the views are breathtaking. And you'll get a short course in the history of the region you can't learn from a book either. But be careful. There are stretches of this man-made wonder that still have no guard rails. And it would be easy to make a really bad mistake. One that might not be discovered for a long, long time. Because overdevelopment in this part of the state would be a tricky proposition. It's hard to build much on a cliff side.
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Thursday, August 06, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Thematic Photographic 53: "Road" v.1.0
"Speed Limit Checked by Radar, Enforced by Natural Selection."
Blue Ridge Mountains, NC - February, 2001 (Click to embiggen)
Hosted by Written Inc.This week Thematic Photogrpahic takes to the road, the highway, the street, the lane, the... you get the idea. As usual, you can interpret the theme any way you like. For my opener this week though, I opted for the very literal approach. The Blue Ridge Parkway has long stretches of road with no guardrails, which is more than a little unnerving -- especially if you're on the passenger side of the vehicle. The tradeoff is that the Parkway also features some of the most breathtaking views in the state. And apparently I thought this bend in the road fit the criteria since I obviously couldn't resist shooting it. Here the guardrail was naturally occurring, but just ahead?
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Friday, May 08, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Watery Wednesday #16: Price Lake
"Trust Me, It's Cold"
Blue Ridge Parkway between Boone and Blowing Rock, NC - February 2001 (Click to embiggen)
Two of the better known parks along the Blue Ridge Parkway are the Moses Cone Memorial Park and the Julian Price Memorial Park. I don't know if Mr. Cone and Mr. Price knew each other in life, but the parks bearing their names adjoin each other, and both feature impressive impoundments well stocked for fishing. This is Price Lake on a chilly February morning in 2001.
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Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Thursday Challenge #12: "Clouds"
"No, You Go First!"
Blowing Rock, NC - February 2001 (Click to embiggen)
Next Week's Challenge: "Clothes"
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Thursday, January 22, 2009
Thematic Photographic 33: "Surprise" v.1.0 - Stone Faced
"Man or Beast? (Or Just a Rock?)"
Blue Ridge Parkway, NC - February 2001 (Click to embiggen)
Hosted by Written Inc.When Carmi announced this theme, I got chills. Not because the theme was so exciting -- though it does seem promising -- but because of the photo he used to introduce it. As soon as I saw it and read the story behind it I thought of this similar shot I took on the Blue Ridge Parkway near the Linn Cove Viaduct somewhere between Boone and Linville Gorge back in February of 2001. Despite the somewhat glaring quality of the mid-afternoon light, the figure (that I have to assume was not carved there intentionally) was so brazenly apparent to me that a photo was almost a moral imperative.Note that I call the formation "unintentional". It very well might have been created by natural forces. If this is where I think it is, then it overlooks the Linn Cove Viaduct which was completed in 1983 as one of the final stages in the constructon of the Parkway. One of the mandates for the construction of the Parkway when it was conceived was that it should be built to conform to the mountains, not the other way around. Blasting and traditional cut-and-fill methods were to be used to create the right-of-way only when every other option had been exhausted. To that end, engineers and landscape architects devised the viaduct which remains the most complex concrete bridge ever constructed.I'm sure that this outcropping is near the viaduct, but not certain how near. So I can't say with 100% certainty that this figure wasn't created by human hands (or explosives). But whether man or nature was the artist, I feel pretty sure that it was pure serendipity that wrought this... face? Owl? Gargoyle? You decide!For more on the Viaduct, visit http://www.blueridgeparkway.org/linncove.htm
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