Since we had not forgotten our primary objective was fall colors we left Winchester, Virginia for a leisurely trip south on Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park.
The road and most of the overlooks tend to be looking west toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Skyline Drive is mostly a product of the 1930s with much of the construction by the CCC. After around 75 years nature is reclaiming some of the road cuts with a profusion of colored lichens, vines, and hardy plants that Lori enjoyed even more than the overlooks of just another valley.
I somewhat tend to agree with her when I look at the distant haze that obscured the horizon on most days. I actually took a large number of photographs with variable exposures hoping to use some HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing to at least minimize the haze effects but I have not spent a lot of time on that yet.
I did try to keep an eye on the cloud cover and return to some special overlooks when sunset possibilities looked good, Generally it was about an hour drive from where we stayed, waiting through the sunset, and then an hour drive back in the dark which makes Lori very uncomfortable.
In general the fall colors were the best we had seen so far which is to say nice but not the spectacular we had hoped to find.
As so often happens the colors change slowly so that some of the trees may have totally lost their leaves while others are still green. That effect really shows up more here on the longer distance landscapes.
Leisurely meandering did allow us to stop and hike some of the trails like Black Rock Trail which leads up above the tree line to some rather nice overlooks.
The Loft Mountain Trail was a lot more of a walk in the woods. I did come around a corner and surprise a deer but not having the camera instantly ready it was gone in a flash.
Finishing up is probably one of the better fall color photographs and the decomposing base of a tree that just intrigued me with the variations in shades as nature naturally recycles.