Blue Ridge Parkway

I was on my way back from a judo tournament in Waynesville, and decided to use the remaining daylight hours on the Blue Ridge Parkway instead of driving home right away. The first trail I found led to a meadow at the top of a hill. I was really tired from the tournament so I found a shady place and took a nap for a couple of hours.

After getting back in my car I saw that I had less than a couple of hours of daylight left, so I found what looked like the tallest peak in my area and hiked to the top to try to get a good picture of the surrounding terrain. It took almost an hour to get to the top, and then I found that I couldn't see anything because there were trees everywhere and they blocked the view in every direction. I didn't want to go home without getting the photo, so I found a tall tree at the very top of the peak and climbed as far as the branches would support me. From there I could see North and East, and I was able to take a couple of pictures. (Click the photo link at the top left of the page and find the Blue Ridge Parkway album).

My last stop before getting back on the interstate to head home was a West-facing overlook. It was about ten minutes before sunset and the sky was full of orange and purple. I set up my tripod and took two pictures, one ten minutes before sunset and one right when the sun disappeared below the horizon. Both shots are in the Blue Ridge Parkway album on the photo page.

Smith Mountain Lake

Jason and his parents very generously invited Tim, Allison and I to spend Memorial Day weekend with them at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. We had a boat, jet ski, and plenty of skis, kneeboards, etc. to play with. The weather couldn't have been better. Every morning we slept in as long as we wanted, got up for a day full of watersports, then came back to the house to grill out for dinner.

Ripley's Aquarium

After a weekend in Myrtle Beach for the national judo tournament, I stopped by Ripley's Aquarium with Jason and Aubri on our way out of town. They have some really great exhibits there, most of which include conveyor belts that take you through underwater tunnels. I'm not quite sure I like that configuration, especially when trying to take photos of things through the plexiglass. Oh well, it was lots of fun and some of the pictures turned out decent anyway.

Grand Cayman

I got back yesterday from my spring break dive trip to Grand Cayman. We were there a week and stayed at Sunset House, which is a resort right on the water built for divers. The diving was amazing, but still doesn't quite match what we saw at the sister island Little Cayman last year. Dad says that compared to how the reef looked when he was there 30 years ago, it looks completely dead now. I wouldn't know about that, but I was very impressed with several of the dive sites. Several of the dive sites had long swimthroughs to explore under the reef.

Despite the coral being less than what Dad remembered, there was no shortage of marine life. Every species of caribbean fish was there, as well as turtles, octopi, lobster, anemones, eels, etc. You name it, we saw it. Unfortunately, we also saw a bunch of lionfish all over the place. They're native to the Indian Ocean, but made their way to this part of the world several years ago. Since then they've multiplied unchecked because they eat anything smaller than themselves and nothing here can eat them because of their array of poisonous spines. Hopefully they won't have too much of an effect on the fish population on the reef in the coming years.

There were also several interesting things to see topside, including a very well maintained botanic garden. I've included a separate album on the photo page of stuff we saw in the brief intervals when we weren't underwater.