When Life Hands You Frozen Lemons, Make Lemon Slushies

A couple of weeks ago, a group of five us headed up to hike the Patterson Ridge Trail in Shenandoah.  We knew that it was going to be cold, starting out near freezing and ending up about 35 F, but no precipitation was called for.  Nor was any showing up on weather radar as we made the nearly two hour drive to the park.  About 5 miles from the park, the temperature was 38 degrees, but it started dropping.  36.  35.  Drizzle. 33.  32. Freezing drizzle.  31, and more.  By the time we got to the park gate, it had dropped 11 degrees in five miles of driving and everything was being coated in ice!  The park closed, along with all 105 miles of the Skyline Drive.  What do do?  We talked it over in the car, and headed to Ragged Mountain near Charlottesville, a place I had never been but had wanted to hike anyway.

The hike was about 7 miles, and temperatures were in the 40's, with no precipitation.  Here is a track of the trail we hiked in this wonderful natural area.  We hiked clockwise, starting and ending at the star.

Here are the five of us near the start of the hike.

This hike didn't offer any grand mountain views, but we did have pretty views of the reservoir and of the fall forest.

This floating bridge was amazing. I don't think that I'd ever crossed one before.

More water and forest views....

A skilled wood carver made these owls a couple of miles in.

The leaves are falling fast, but now and then we saw a little foliage.

More wood carving: an eagle catching a fish,

and a bear with her cub.

We also enjoyed meeting this mountain man, the final carving encountered on this very nice hike:

Well, we didn't have a Plan B when we started driving to the mountains, but among the five of us, we quickly came up with a good alternative once the initial plan was squashed.  It turned out to be a very fun hike with a good group, with no slipping and sliding.