historical Highlights part 5

As I mentioned last time I was saving the afternoon for this post. We got to ride on the Sky drive in the Shenendoah area. It was so pretty. The drive takes you through the Blue Ridge mountains. Our tour director put on John Denvers song Country Roads which I still can't get out of my head. Shenendoah means daughter of the stars in indian.

It was here one of the highlights happened and if I had a bucket list this was high on it. As we are driving we are told to look out for wildlife, someone yells bear. The driver stops and I am Momma bear, oh baby cub, oh two cubs oh wow three cubs. Two were trying to run up a tree. They were so cute and it was a real highlight. they were black bears and the mother bear wasn't as big as I expected.

We arrived at the Big Meadows Lodge. 

We saw dear after dinner at the lodge there were three and they were fun to watch. In the morning I almost ran into a couple when I got up early to try and catch the sunrise. The photo below is the view from outside my room. 
While watching the deer one of the fellow tourists was joking with me saying if you want to get friendly with momma bear remember to cuddle the cubs. I replied I am not that silly I know you have to cuddle the momma bear first before cuddling the cubs! I then said to him do you want me to be attacked! I know if I see a cub to vacate the area. It was friendly banter. 
In the evening we had a talk by a local guide on the flora and fauna of the area. the guide was wonderful she went to university in Queensland which gave us some common ground. Her talk was so interesting and informative. She showed us many of the animals we may see including bob cats and how hard they are to find and how she saw one once for a few seconds and how exciting it was. They are a shy animal. We also saw alot of the flora of the area. She got to talking about cougars or mountain lions which I would love to see. After the talk there was another couple not on the tour who had been at the talk and with the guide and the couple we were talking about cougars and how they will stalk humans. We were all saying we would love to see a cougar in the wild and I was saying I would be the one who walked a different route each day but cos someone else didn't would be the one attacked by a cougar. I think said But what a way to go attacked by a mountain lion, The guide and the guy said yes how cool would that be. the girlfriend wasn't so sure. It was a chat you need to be there to get the gist of the thought but it was so much fun and having other cougar lovers there was fun too.

In the morning I did get up early and went for a walk and saw some amazing views. below is one of them.
I couldn't get a good photos of the sunrise but It looked so pretty.

The below photos is from one of the stops we made to take some photos. While travelling through the area I was thinking about mum and how much she would have loved it there with the views of the mountains. She loved mountains and it was one thing she always missed when they moved to where I live now. 

Lunch was at Harpers Ferry where the ablolistionist John Brown was caught and then hung. It was also part of the civil war with a battle that took place in the area. We were able to look at the old area but I have to say it was a little disappointing. We were given a map of the area but having a guide would have been nice. The afternoon we then headed to Gettysburg which I was so looking forward to and will write about next time.