More from West Virginia

I took a lot of pictures in West Virginia this year. We had such a great time and I have lots of stories to tell as well. It's always fun to spend time with your family but it's REALLY fun to go somewhere with them when no one has anywhere they need to go, there's no rushing, no ball games, and no parties. Just two full days of spending time together. We didn't even get cell phone service so we didn't have to look at cell phones attached to the kids' thumbs. You get to know each other so much better when you spend days on end together. You learn each others' sense of humor, fears, likes, dislikes, etc.

Like this fearless one. He climbed up this rock like a mountain goat. It took him no time at all to get to the top, look over, and remember his total fear of heights.

You can't help but look at this beauty and wonder about its creation. Of course we know the Creator, but if it's this beautiful now, wonder what it looked like before the flood destroyed it all? Were these rocks jutting up like this along the top of this ridge then? Was this ridge even here then or is it all a product of the wrath brought on by humans? If this is a destroyed earth can you imagine the beauty before?

On the trail, we saw a tree that had toppled. It had a huge rock in the bottom of it with the roots wrapped completely around the rock. Would you believe that someone in our group (I won't mention any names cuz I can't remember who it was) asked about the rock "growing into the tree roots?" Hmm, I guess it started out as a pebble? Then grew so big that it upended the tree? Really? Or MAYBE, the tree roots just grew around it and when the tree fell the rock came up with it? LOL! I hope no one heard this conversation.

At the top of the ridge was this fire tower. It was a small square building with a narrow walkway all the way around it. There were several men with binoculars there, and chairs, and log books. Man, I was thinking, they take their fire watching very seriously. They were looking through binoculars, calling out coordinates, and discussing "seeing one out the ridge a ways." What? A fire? My curiosity was definitely getting the best of me because I didn't see a fire. I didn't even see smoke. Finally, we had to ask, "WHAT are you looking at?" Their response? Birds. They were bird watchers. For some reason, when I hear "bird watchers" I think of watching pretty, rare, colorful birds. What were they watching? Hawks and buzzards. They were counting them. They were checking wind speed and direction. Logging it in books. So, I guess that makes us bird watchers, too. At the barn at my dad's we watch the hawks all right, we "watch" them trying to kill and steal the chickens. They're not glorified, beautiful birds worthy of watching. And buzzards? We see them often enough picking through roadkill. We definitely don't have to hike up a mountain to a fire tower and use binoculars.

As we were standing up there, appreciating the beauty, and trying to figure out which direction particular towns were, we were told we should come back in three weeks for the "peak". Oh, yeah, I bet the peak of fall is beautiful. This would be a great place to take in the beautiful fall colors. Since my mom and dad are planning a trip back to West Virginia with some friends in a couple of weeks we were really appreciative to have that bit of "peak" information. This kind gentleman followed this with, "Yeah, there should be 500 flying through at a time." Oh, birds again. There is a peak bird watching season? Luckily, through that whole conversation, the nice bird watchers never figured out that we were talking about two different subjects, us the leaves, them the birds. And they never realized that we thought watching buzzards and hawks was "for the birds."

It seems like I find myself in these confusing conversations very often lately.