Part 2

After returning to Abingdon from Holiday Lake, I had another Elderhostel to get through. This is a biking program that we do every year. The hostelers spend several days biking on the Virginia Creeper Trail, which used to be a rail line into North Carolina, and one day spent on naturalist studies in Tennessee and Virginia.

Shady Valley, TN. Eons ago a meteor formed this bowl, it was once a marshland, then a forest, now being returned to marshland.

A Salamander we found in Shady Valley. Scientists come from all over the world to study salamanders here, apparently there are more varieties than anywhere else, and a few that don't exist elsewhere.

This 1/4 acre cranberry bog is all that remains of the vast cranberry bogs that filled the Valley. This site is the smallest parcel of land owned by the Nature Conservancy, which is the largest single land-owning organization in the world.

A stand of old-growth forest in Shady Valley. The sun barely reaches the ground here.

Backbone Rock. The highway goes right through the rock, like Natural Bridge. This is a big recreation area, there was a group of kids climbing and rappelling off to the right.

The view from atop Backbone Rock. Look at the previous picture. Yes, we hiked/climbed to the top. Yes, we walked across. Yes, this is what it looks like peering over the edge.

A creek that runs parallell to Backbone Rock, under the road. It reminds me a lot of Passage Creek, near Elizabeths Furnace. In fact, the whole area bears a strong resemblance to the Lee Ranger District of the George Washington National Forest.

Climbing back down from Backbone Rock.

As you can see, this Elderhostel program is a particularly interesting one. We're doing it twice more this fall, so hopefully I'll get some biking pictures, maybe on the trestles that cross over the Holston River.

It's now quarter to one in the morning, and I have campers coming tomorrow. So I'm off to bed, and I'll talk to you all in August. Except for when I'm home in two weeks for Adam's wedding. And when I call on a weekend sometime. And maybe an email during the week. You get the idea.