Archive for Life

exploring

Cider Festival

Last weekend I found a festival that wasn’t just shopping. They had a cider festival at the Frontier Culture Museum, and it was mostly about learning. And drinking. Though, ironically, I didn’t have any cider at the cider festival.

I guess they were trying to keep it focused on learning, so instead of you being able to buy drinks, to drink you had to buy a tasting ticket, which got you 5 4-ounce drinks from all the various cider breweries who were there. But that’s way too much for me. If I drank that much, not only would someone have had to drive me home, but they’d have had to carry me to the car. There didn’t seem to be an option to get just one drink (probably because if you could buy single drinks then there would be people buying many, many drinks). I may send a suggestion to have a mini tasting option the next time they do this, with amounts that really are just a taste.

So I didn’t have cider, but they had presentations on growing apples, different kinds of cooking with apples, the history of cider making in this area, etc. There was also a gentleman talking about traditional basket weaving. The only shopping was cider (you could buy bottles and cans from the breweries, but you’d get a ticket to pick it up on the way out), apples, the basket guy had baskets, and there was a book shop (books on apples, cider, regional travel, and plants/gardening). They had food trucks, and I got my annual serving of apple cider donuts.

Mostly, it was just a nice day out. The weather was perfect, just warm enough that I didn’t need a jacket, but with enough of a nip in the air to feel like fall. The fall color in the trees that still had leaves was so bright and intense, and there was the scent of wood smoke from the cooking fires, with a hint of cinnamon from the cider donut stand.

The next day I was inspired to make my annual batch of apple butter with the apples I got at a farm stand last weekend. I think I finally got it right. It takes a lot of time to cook it down properly and I usually get impatient and stop too soon. At the apple butter festival, the old guys cook it overnight in big cast iron kettles over open fires. I cheat by using the Instant Pot to pressure cook the apples, which speeds up the initial breakdown of the apples. But then you have to boil for a long time to get it to thicken up into butter. I made myself be patient and let it cook, then cooled it and refrigerated it overnight and cooked it some more the next day before canning it.

I’d planned to do work around the house this weekend, but a hiking group I’ve been following on Facebook and saying I wanted to get involved with is doing a walk around town. I think I’ll join them because it’ll be a less intimidating environment for meeting them (and I can easily peel off if I don’t like it) and it will be a walk I know I can do. I need to get in better shape for some of their hikes, but with this I can see what kind of pace they set before I head into the mountains with them.

exploring

Over the Mountain

I had a minor adventure yesterday. I finally went “over the mountain,” as they say around here, to go to Charlottesville, our nearest real city (it’s not really a big city, more of a mid-sized city, but it’s bigger than all the small cities around me). You have to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains to get there. I’ve actually crossed the mountains before to go to an event just on the other side of the mountains, and I drove past Charlottesville on my way home from my last trip to DC, but I hadn’t made it into the city itself before.

It’s only about a 45-minute drive from my house to the place I went shopping, probably less time to get downtown or to the tourist attractions, like Monticello. This was a shopping trip, so I didn’t hit any of the touristy spots or see anything that suggested the character of the town. I was strictly on the main shopping center road where the big box stores are, which is pretty much indistinguishable from anywhere else in suburban America. I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to doing this. I guess it feels like a bigger trek than it really is, since it does involve crossing a mountain, but I used to drive farther than that to go to things around the Dallas area. Now that I have a proper mental image of it, I’m less intimidated and may go more often.

My main goal was hitting a big shoe store and buying some black boots I can walk in. It’s supposed to get cold next week, and I wanted to be ready. I usually walk to church, and I wanted to be able to look somewhat dressy while staying warm. What I had in mind was something like a riding boot, but none of the ones that they had in my size were very comfortable. When your feet hurt walking around the shoe store, it’s a bad sign. I ended up getting something different, some soft suede-like boots with a decent tread on the bottom. They look dressy, but they should be good for walking, and they’re washable. They probably aren’t waterproof, but if there’s snow on the ground I’d wear my snow boots and maybe throw a pair of ballet flats in my choir bag to change into at church.

In the same shopping center was a nice used bookstore. They didn’t have any of the specific things I was looking for, but they had a lot, so if I’m over there again I’ll make time to browse. They actually had a huge chick lit section full of all those books from the early 2000s, including a copy of Don’t Hex with Texas. I didn’t notice anything I hadn’t read by any of the authors I used to follow, but I’ll have to take more time to look in the future. I also hit a housewares shop and found a small saucepan with a pouring spout, something I’ve been looking for to make cocoa.

Then I found the fancy grocery store that has a nice cheese shop and bakery, so I know where to go when I need something that I can’t find in our town. Then I ran out of steam and hit something like museum fatigue, only it was shopping fatigue, probably because I delayed eating lunch until I got “hangry,” then couldn’t find anything I wanted to eat that I could get to easily, so I ended up just stopping at another grocery store and buying something at the deli (after having a chat in the parking lot with the kids running the Wienermobile that was parked outside) to eat in my car before I headed home.

I found a few more shops I want to get back to in the future, and now that I know where everything is and that getting there isn’t a massive ordeal and is actually a rather pleasant drive with stunning scenery, I may make more excursions in the future when I need something I can’t find locally. I’ve heard that you want to get home well before rush hour because there are a lot of people here who commute to Charlottesville, so the traffic can get bad, but the fact that people do commute shows that it’s not that far. I guess my brain is still thinking in Texas terms, so I look at distances on a map and think it’s a lot farther than it really is. It’s not a run grab a loaf of bread distance, but it is a good I need an ingredient or kitchen tool they don’t have here distance. Next time, maybe I’ll do some of the touristy stuff and go downtown or to Monticello. I’ll just have to be sure to avoid windy days, because the wind is pretty intense on that mountain pass, and there are lots of warning signs about fog on the mountain. The road goes up high enough that my ears popped on the way up and down.

Life

The Neighborhood Cats

One interesting feature of my new neighborhood is that it comes with cats. There’s a colony of feral cats that makes the neighborhood home, and they wander from house to house. My house seems to be a highway between two of the houses that leave food for them, so even though I don’t leave food out, they still pass through my yard or across my deck. The neighbors say the cats hung out on my deck while this house was abandoned.

There’s a lady the next street down the hill who is the primary caretaker. She has little insulated houses for them and feeds them, and it’s apparently a gray area of whether she “owns” the cats. She considers them hers, but I don’t know that she’s providing veterinary care or has any kind of registration. Some of the cats have tipped ears, indicating that they’ve been trapped, neutered and given some vaccinations, and then re-released. They aren’t friendly or cuddly cats. They usually bolt at the sign of a human. The neighbors say we don’t have a problem with mice or rats around here, so that’s a good thing.

Even though the cats aren’t friendly and run at the sight of me, I enjoy observing them. I’m not really a cat person in the sense that I’ve never had a cat, though I don’t dislike cats. If I see one, I want to pet it. But I’m pretty allergic to them. Whenever I’ve spent the night in a house with a cat in it, I’ve come down with a bad case of bronchitis, so I will not be adopting a cat to live with me. This is almost the next best thing, aside from not getting to pet the kitties.

A gray and black striped cat sits on a wooden deck, looking back toward the camera.
This visitor is a bit friendlier than the others, but it still runs away if I’m outside.

Among the regulars is this gray one. It’s a bit less skittish than the others. I was easily able to get a picture through my glass door, even though it spotted me. I leave a dish of water on the deck, and this one will come meow at me through the door when it’s had a drink or when I need to refill the dish (though it will flee if I go outside to fill the dish).

The main regular, though, is the elusive white cat one of my neighbors said she thinks is haunted or possessed. I don’t know about that, but I know that the squirrels are less skittish around me than this cat is. It will flee if it even sees me through the window. I’ve been calling it The Magnificent Floof because just look at how fluffy this cat is. I’m amazed that a stray manages to stay this white and clean. Although it looks pretty magnificent much of the time, this cat is kind of a dork.

A very fluffy white cat sits on a wooden deck, its back to the camera, but turning to look back at the camera.
The Magnificent Floof finally sat still long enough for me to take a photo from inside the house.

For instance … There was one day when I was sitting on my deck. I had music playing and was reading something on my computer, so it wasn’t a surprise that I was there. This cat must have wanted to travel the highway, going from under the fence, up the steps to my deck and then down the stairs that go from my deck down the hill to the street level (my house is built into a hill, so the deck is off the upstairs, which is ground level in back), so it was trying to sneak past me, going between the table and the deck railing. I glanced over just as the cat was trying to sneak past, and the expression on its face made me laugh out loud.

A fluffy white cat looks up from drinking water with an expression that seems to say "Oops, you caught me." A blue watering can lies on its side nearby.
The Floof looks a little less majestic when it realizes it’s been caught drinking. The cats prefer any water in the watering can over what’s in the dish, so the watering can is always knocked over.

Imagine a teenager coming home after curfew to find that all the lights in the house are out. They think this means if they sneak in quietly and get in bed, no one will know they came home late. When they’re halfway through tiptoeing across the living room, the lamp next to their dad’s recliner suddenly comes on, and they realize their dad has been waiting up for them. They’re so busted. That was exactly the look on this cat’s face when I looked at it. It froze for a second, then it backed all the way to the steps down from the deck to the back yard before turning and fleeing.

This morning it was trying to sneak past while I was sitting in the living room, and when it passed the glass door, I said, “Hey, kitty.” It stopped, looked around, then finally spotted me inside the house, jumped in fright, turned, and ran. When it got down the steps into the yard, it turned back to look at the house, and when it saw me through the window, it turned and ran away.

This cat is also obsessed with the groundhog that lives in a hole on the side of the hill (the hill my house is built into continues to rise behind the house. There are few flat surfaces in this whole town). The only time the cat doesn’t bolt if I appear is when it’s waiting outside the groundhog’s hole. Sunday I was watching the cat as it seemed to be making laps around my yard, then started nosing around the groundhog hole. Just then, the groundhog emerged from the hole, and I swear, that cat teleported across the yard. It was in one place, there was a moment of confrontation, and next thing I know, the cat is on the opposite side of the yard. It waited there a second, eyeing the groundhog like it was trying to decide what to do, then turned and walked away like “I meant to do that.” The groundhog stood outside the hole for a while, looking smug and radiating “King of the Mountain” energy. The cat has gone back to the hole a few times since then, but is being much more cautious about it. It seems to like stalking the groundhog, but it would rather not actually encounter it.

Aside from not having to worry about mice, one other nice thing about the neighborhood cats is that I finally have cat pictures to post on the Internet. That seems to be the key to engagement. I wonder if I could leave out one of my books and get pictures of one of the cats with it. It’s tricky to get pictures. I have to take pictures through the glass door and do it quickly before the cats notice me and flee. Or I could edit cats into pictures with my books. Cat pictures in general are the key to getting attention online.

Life

Halloween Weekend

I’m trying to plan this weekend’s adventures. The fall color is still around, but it’s really windy today, so I’m not going to try to head into the mountains, where it will be even windier. I ran some errands this morning and explored the huge used bookstore that I think might contain extradimensional portals. The guy running the place was walking around, asking customers if they heard something weird and saying he thought the place might be haunted. I don’t know if it was a Halloween bit or if it was just the perfect weird used bookstore. The rest of the day will be a workday at home. I live on a short dead-end street with only one kid living on it, and she’s way too shy to knock on a stranger’s door, so there won’t be any trick-or-treaters. My neighbors say we don’t get any here. There was some talk of a party on the block, but I haven’t heard anything lately. It may be an impromptu “drinks on the porch” session, if anything.

For Saturday, I saw something on Facebook about an open house at a sawmill. They mostly sell bits of lumber for woodworking, but for the open house they’re doing lathe demonstrations and have some small items they’ve made, like cutting boards and Christmas decorations. That might make for a fun outing. They’re near but not in the mountains, so it would be a scenic drive getting there, and they’re close to some other things I might want to visit.

Sunday evening is my first “concert” with the choir I’m in now. It’s actually an Evensong service, but it’s mostly music, with the choir singing a lot of the liturgy. I’m Methodist but am going to an Episcopal church because all the Methodist churches (and there are a ton of them, about five I could walk to) are tiny and don’t have choirs or much in the way of activities. The Episcopal church has been around since the 1740s, has an amazing choir, a spectacular organ (and the organ building company is local, so some of the people who built it are in the choir), and a lot of activities in the community, as well as being in a building on the National Register of Historic Places, with the stained glass from the Tiffany workshop from the 1800s, so I ended up going there. It’s not too different from what I’m used to, but Evensong isn’t something I’ve done before. The only Evensong service I’ve been to was at Westminster Abbey. The music is beautiful, but challenging, especially because this choir needed altos more than it needs sopranos, and since my range goes that low and I can read music, I’m singing alto. It’s taking some getting used to and requires a lot of focus. I definitely can’t go on autopilot.

The interior of an old church building in Gothic Revival style. There are dark wood beams overhead, dark wood floors, pointed archways, and stained glass windows with light pouring in from outside.
This is the church I’m singing at now, but I took this picture when I visited the town as a tourist. The church is a tourist attraction and is open during the week to tourists. The stained glass is spectacular.

I’ve been treating October as a light working month. I’ve been brainstorming the replotting of a book I drafted years ago. When I reread it, I really liked it, but the plot needed work. I’ve finally figured out what to do to fix it, so next week I’ll dive back into serious writing.

exploring

Looking for Leaves

For Friday’s exploring, I ended up going to run some errands in the town just east of here (the towns are about the same size, but we got to keep the small town historic charm and tourism, they got the big box stores). I had a gift card from Panera from my former upstairs neighbor (an apology from when she started feeding squirrels on her fire escape, which left my porch covered in debris, but it may have been a passive-aggressive apology, given that there isn’t a Panera in our town), so since there was one near my errands I picked up some lunch there. Then I drove up to Shenandoah National Park to check out Skyline Drive.

The traffic wasn’t too bad, probably because a lot of people don’t know that the park is open despite the shutdown. They just aren’t collecting admission, and there are no rangers on duty. There were big signs at the entrance warning that there were no rangers, so rescue in case of emergency could take a long time, as well as reminders that trash may not be collected, so take your trash with you instead of putting it in a trash can.

It was a really pretty drive, but the best fall color always seemed to happen in places where there was no way to stop and look at it. The areas around the scenic overlooks where you could pull off the road weren’t quite as pretty. It was also windy and a bit cold, although it wasn’t windy at all in the valley. Now I know to be careful about what days I choose to go up into the mountains or, as they say around here, go “over the mountain” to get to Charlottesville.

A view of a mountain covered in trees that are various shades of fall colors, with more mountains in the background.
One of the scenic overlooks on Skyline Drive. Of course, the prettier colors were away from the places where you could stop.

I ended up skipping the bookstore because it turned out their sale was just a big Christmas sale of decor, and I don’t really need more Christmas stuff. I’ll have to go up there to look at books some other time.

Saturday was a bit chilly, and that seemed to have curtailed the event at the Frontier Culture Museum. The cats weren’t even out and about. But I got to walk around, saw a small demo of blacksmithing at a portable forge, and greeted the resident enormous pig. Then I walked downtown later but didn’t really find anything at the sales. It was kind of cold, so there weren’t too many kids doing the downtown trick-or-treating.

A blacksmith dressed in Revolutionary War-era attire works the bellows at an outdoor forge set under a tree blazing with bright orange leaves. Metal ware he's made are spread out on a nearby picnic table.
I don’t know if this smith set up near this tree because it made such a lovely backdrop, but it certainly worked.

So far, I think some of the prettiest views of fall colors are at the end of my driveway, where I can look at the trees down the hill from me.

A view of trees with orange and gold leaves. There a tree with bright red leaves in the middle, just peeking through all the other trees.
The view from my driveway. I don’t quite get the full view from my house because there are trees and hedges along the front of my lawn. That red tree is spectacular seen from the other side and down the hill.

I don’t have any particular ideas for this weekend. I need to hit either an orchard or a farm stand and get my supply of apples for pies and apple butter. I haven’t had my yearly dose of apple cider donuts, but there’s a cider festival at the Frontier Culture Museum next weekend, and the cider donut guy will be part of that. I’ll get to see how they make cider. The trees haven’t entirely changed colors yet, so fall may be prolonged. In my backyard there are trees that are just about bare, trees that are gold, and trees that are still green. We have reached the point where enough leaves have fallen that I can see the mountains from my house again. I love coming downstairs in the morning to a view of the sun rising from behind the mountains.

Life

All the Fall Things

It struck me that it was this time two years ago that I came here on a vacation/scouting mission to try to decide if this was a place I wanted to move to. That was a weirdly scary trip because I had no idea what the place would be like (as I learned in last week’s exploring adventure, there can be a big gap between the tourism website and the reality), and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to like it. If I’d been disappointed in the place and had known for sure it wasn’t for me, then in some ways life would have been a lot easier. I wouldn’t have had to make any big decisions. My life could have kept on going the way it was and I could have quit daydreaming about moving, at least to this place. I could have delayed the decision while trying to find some other place to target.

But if I liked it, then it would change from an idle daydream to a reality, and it meant I would have to make some big decisions and possibly uproot my entire life.

I did like it. In fact, I felt right at home instantly, like I’d always been here. It took me a while to firmly decide to move and to actually take action, but I think in my heart I knew all along that I was going to do it.

Now I have to remind myself that I live here. I’m not a tourist. If I don’t get around to seeing or doing something, I can see or do it some other time. I’m really feeling that this weekend, as there are so many things going on. It’s peak fall color, the last weekend of a lot of the “warm weather” activities, like the sidewalk cafes downtown and the steam train on the scenic railway (I passed it while driving last Friday, but I still haven’t managed to catch it on the nearby tracks to see it up close). Today may be the best day for the Blue Ridge Parkway or Skyline drive, as the wind is low, it’s sunny, and it’s a weekday (it still may be crowded), but I had a meeting this morning, an online meeting this afternoon, and there’s a special sale at a big bookstore nearby. I’m going to have to choose what to do and maybe find a way to squeeze it all in. Then Saturday there’s an event at the Frontier Culture Museum, as well as the downtown trick-or-treating (it’s so fun to see all the costumes), plus the houseplant store downtown is going out of business and selling off their inventory, and I want to add to my indoor jungle.

One of the things I like about fall, the fact that it’s ephemeral, lasting only a short time and constantly changing, is also the challenge about it, trying to fit in everything I want to do in my favorite season in a short period of time. The mantra is “there’s always next year.” I’m not a tourist fitting everything into a few days. I live here.

Now to go see how much I can cram into today.

exploring

Mountain Exploring

Last week’s adventure took me through some serious mountain driving to some lovely views, but also a town with a big paper mill, so it wasn’t exactly pleasant for exploring outside the car.

First, the drive. On the map, it looked like a straight north-south route of a major road that ran through a couple of old spa towns. In practice, this road skirts the side of a mountain range, so there were lots of twists and turns and going up and down hills. The scenery was spectacular, but I’ll admit the driving was a little unnerving. I was gripping the steering wheel pretty tight.

The spa towns might be good for a return visit for a spa day. One of the towns is now essentially an Omni resort. They bought the old hotel, the town is surrounded by golf courses that appear to be owned by Omni, a lot of the buildings in the town are also Omni facilities, and they own the historic baths in the adjacent town. You can go to the baths for just soaking time without being a hotel guest, and you can get a weekday day pass for the hotel spa area, but that’s outdoors so it’s closed in the off-season. If I have something really good happen (a new, big traditional publishing deal, movie option, bestseller), I may indulge myself.

After driving for some time along the side of the mountain, I reached the waterfall. It’s right there on the side of the road, and I guess they knew that would result in some traffic issues, so there’s a parking area and walkway for viewing the falls. I could hear the roaring, then I rounded a corner and the sight took my breath away. I literally gasped out loud. I’m fascinated by waterfalls, and there are apparently a number in this area, so I need to track them down.

A waterfall spills off a hillside. It's surrounded by trees with faint autumn colors, and there's a blur of mountains in the background.
This waterfall is a nice roadside attraction.

I drove a little farther and came to the town that was my destination. It looked cute on the tourism website, but what they left out was the fact that there are several paper mills in the town. If you’ve never been around a paper mill, consider yourself fortunate. They smell awful, like the whole town has been covered in manure and they’re blowing manure scent into the air. I initially was looking for a downtown park on a riverbank that had some interesting features, but I didn’t find it while driving through town. I ended up at another park on the edge of town, where I ate my picnic lunch while sitting in my car and watching the river go by. It looked lovely, but it reeked if you were outside. I got out long enough to take a few pictures of the river and to use the park’s bathroom facilities.

A river flows over rocks and tree branches, with trees leaning over the water.
Beautiful river that was soothing to look at. It’s a pity they built paper mills along it.

Then I went to my next stop, an old covered bridge. According to the signs, the bridge was built in 1839 and stopped being used for vehicle traffic in 1929. So, probably mostly horses and wagons/carriages, with maybe a few years of early cars, and I would suspect that cars were a big reason it closed because the whole thing is wood, even the roadway part. It was later turned into a park, so the bridge is now just for getting from one side of the park to the other, crossing the creek. This is apparently a fairly unique design, with the bridge being arched (it’s called Humpback Bridge), and may be the last of its type still standing, at least in this general area.

An old wooden covered bridge arches across a stream. In the foreground is a picnic table, and a tree with bright red leaves frames the picture.

I have a weird fascination/repulsion thing with bridges. They scare me, but I’m also drawn to them, and if there’s an interesting footbridge in a park, I have to cross it. This one was a little freaky because you’re closed in while you’re crossing, but there’s just enough of a gap between the wooden beams that you can see the water below. You can have claustrophobia and a fear of bridges at the same time! But it made for some pretty pictures.

I took the freeway to get back over the mountains because I didn’t think I could manage another mountain drive. Even the freeway had some twists and steep climbs, but not a lot of traffic. Then I got off the freeway and took another road heading north through the valley. I realized that even though the mountain driving can be harrowing, I feel a lot better when I’m nestled among hills and mountains. I felt kind of exposed and unsettled driving through the valley, even though I could see mountains on both sides. I liked it better when the road started getting closer to my town, where there are more twists and hills, while not quite as scary as the mountain driving.

I don’t know what I’ll explore this week. The forecast is for a lot of wind, and you don’t want to be driving through mountain passes when there are high gusts.

Life

Adventures in Plumbing

My plumbing has now been fixed, and it was definitely an adventure in owning an older home. The plumbing setup in this house is rather interesting, and even the plumber couldn’t be sure if it was an afterthought, if the house had been built without indoor plumbing and the plumbing added later or if it was built with plumbing but the plumbing was replaced/upgraded along the way. The house is from 1945, so you’d think there would be indoor plumbing by then, and it’s surrounded by older houses, so it’s one of the “new” houses on my block, but that’s a borderline time when it all depends on the budget of the person who built the house and how far out the city water had come by then. Now I’m considered on the edge of downtown, but this would have been “suburbs” in 1945. My house is on what used to be a large farming estate that was gradually sold off, but was one of the last lots sold, as the original manor house for the estate is three doors down. At one time, this was considered the country, but there are houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s surrounding my block, with the houses on my block (aside from the 1850s or so manor) mostly from the 1930s.

The problem turned out to be the bathtub drain that was connected badly with too short a pipe used as a connection between pipes, and whoever installed that had tightened it too much, probably to stop it from leaking, but that ended up breaking the washers, so it leaked even more. It probably didn’t show up on the inspection or in the first few months I lived here because it was holding, but with use that short pipe slid deeper into the connection, creating a gap. Of course, the part that had to be replaced was in the one spot that was hard to access. I was impressed that there was no swearing from the plumber as he stood on a stepstool in the basement and angled a wrench in to try to get it loose. There was some coaxing, and possibly a magic spell or two, as well as I think a few prayers, but no bad language. He was worried he’d have to cut out other pipes to access this part and then replace those pipes, but he managed to pull it off the “easy” (and less expensive) way. He was a little amazed at the “creativity” of some of the plumbing. It’s a good thing I’ve found a good plumber because I might need more help in the future. A lot of it looks like it was replaced when the house was restored, but this part looked like it was older. Not too old — it was PVC tubing, so that wasn’t from 1945 — but not done earlier this year. It might have been a relic from the previous owner, who also did some of the creative work to add central air and heat. I’ve thought it was weird being able to see all the plumbing from the house from the basement, but if this had happened in my house in Texas, they’d have had to cut into drywall.

Speaking of Texas, the Texas connection continues, as the plumber had also lived in the Dallas area. He knew my old neighborhood, and I knew of the place where he used to be a bartender.

Watching the plumber persuade the connections to loosen gave me the idea of a story about a plumbing wizard. That seems to me to be an appropriate use of magical power. Now I need to think of a plot.

And now I’m off to have an Autumn Adventure. I have a general idea of where to go and a paper map to back up the map on my phone that links to my car (since cell coverage can be spotty). I’m packing a lunch, bringing my hiking boots and heading into the western mountains, where fall color is supposed to be at its peak today and tomorrow. I’m also bringing my notebook, in case ideas strike me.

Life

Hiking Close to Home

Tomorrow is publication day for Weaving & Wyverns, book 4 in the Tales of Rydding Village series. I will be celebrating by waiting for a plumber, since I noticed something that seems to be a leak in a pipe. Fortunately, all the plumbing in this house is grouped together in the basement and the pipes are exposed, so it should be easy to get to them. There’s even a removable panel in the room behind the shower to get to those pipes. I hope it’s an easy fix. But while I’m waiting during the appointment window, I’ll be able to obsessively check my Amazon ranking. Normally, I try to get out of the house on release day so I don’t get weird and obsessive about it. Maybe the plumber will get here early in the window and finish early, so I can then celebrate the rest of the day.

Yesterday, I took my notebook and a lunch in my backpack and walked to a nearby park to do some hiking and brainstorming. The park is about a 10-minute walk from my house, and it’s the more “wild” of the big city parks. There are sports fields, playgrounds, tennis courts, and a swimming pool, but those are around the base of the hill at the center of the park. The hill has been left forested, with hiking paths winding through the forest around the hill. The top of the hill has a nice picnic area with a view of the mountains.

When I visited the area before moving here, I’d thought I’d rather live close to the “nicer” city park than to downtown because I’d want to go walking more often than I’d want to go downtown. I’d picked out the general area where I wanted to live, and that was where I got an apartment. Living there for a while turned out to be a good idea because that park isn’t great for walking. There are no dedicated walking paths, just what used to be a carriageway through the park that’s now a street, and walkers have to share the street with cars. That’s also where all the big special events like festivals, art fairs, and outdoor concerts are held. It’s a very pretty park, but living nearby can be loud. And it turns out that I go downtown quite a bit.

I ended up buying a house in a totally different neighborhood than I planned, and that turned out to be a good move because I’m still about a 20-minute walk from that park for going to festivals and concerts, but I’m 10 minutes from both downtown and the park that’s actually good for walking. I have good hiking trails in walking distance of my house. You can almost forget you’re in a city, but since the park is in a city, I don’t have to worry about bears (at most of the hiking areas around here, there are signs at the parking lots about what to do about bears) or getting lost. There may be times you don’t know exactly where you are on a trail, but all the trails will eventually lead you to a parking lot, picnic area, or park road, and you can’t go all that far in any direction without coming out of the woods. There’s one trail that does a lot of winding around the hill just to give you a little more distance, but it intersects with other trails that are more direct and with some of the frisbee golf holes that will also get you out of the woods. But you still feel like you’re in the wilderness (unless a train goes by on the tracks that run alongside the park).

I got some good brainstorming done sitting at the picnic area on top of the hill. With no Internet access, my only distraction was the view of the mountains, and then I got some quality thinking done while walking back down the hill and walking home. I need to get in better shape by doing that more often. Then I might be more up to “real” hiking. There’s a local hiking group I’d like to get involved with, but I need to build up to the kind of hiking they do.

So anyway, Weaving & Wyverns tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it. I have so much fun writing these books.

exploring

Festival Season

It’s festival season around here, with all the various small towns (there are no big cities in this general region) having festivals every weekend. You could hit several in one day and still have to choose which ones to go to and which ones to pass on this year. I love the idea of fall festivals, so I get excited about going.

And then I get there and find that it’s actually just shopping. A “festival” is basically an open-air shopping mall with food trucks and maybe some music. Sometimes you even see the same vendors week after week at the different festivals. You’d think I’d have figured this out by now, but I still get excited about the idea of a fall festival. It sounds so quaint and romantic.

I went to one last weekend that was huge. The town is pretty small, and the entire downtown area was filled with those pop-up gazebo things and people selling their wares. There were lots of wood carvers selling cutting boards and decorative items, quilters selling various quilted things, metal work, soaps and other body products, plants, toys, etc. I did find an interesting item for a gift (so I’ve made a start on Christmas shopping), but it was hot and I was tired, so I didn’t linger to find the entertainment they supposedly had (I just saw a guy in a leather kilt playing the violin, but I don’t know if he was official entertainment or merely amusing himself). I was basing my plans on another festival I went to last year, where you could just pop in and out, but this thing was huge. You had to park at the high school on the edge of town and ride a school bus to the festival itself. I left my house after lunch, and it took me half an hour to get to the town, then half an hour to park, wait for the bus, then ride the bus to the festival, and then the driver said the last bus was leaving at 4, so I only had an hour and a half for the festival (and from what I’ve seen online, it was good that I left when I did because they ended up having big lines and long waits for shuttle buses at the end of the festival). It was a really neat little town, so I may go back when they’re not having a festival to take a look at it.

Now I’m trying to decide what to do this weekend. There’s a festival I went to last year on the border with West Virginia. The festival itself wasn’t much, but there were things going on in the surrounding area, and the scenery was fantastic, so I may head over there on Friday, and this time I’ll go over the border so I can add another state to my list. I didn’t find the apple cider donuts and the syrup mill last year, but now I have a better idea where they are. There’s also an arts festival at another nearby town on Saturday, but it looks like it might be a bit overwhelming. I may stay closer to home and do some activities in my town. There’s a concert taking place downtown on Saturday afternoon. Or there’s a ranger-led nature hike at a state park about an hour from here. That will have to depend on the weather.

The trees started changing colors in August but have stalled out since then. We’ve got a potential freeze alert for tomorrow morning, which might escalate things. Next weekend is probably closer to peak color here, so I’ll have to plan a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There’s so much fall to pack into just a few weeks.