I took somewhere around 350 photos on our mini-vacation to Pittsburgh. We traveled up through Tennessee (Chattanooga, Knoxville) through a tiny bit of Virgina (Bristol) and then through West Virginia. We normally stop over for the night in Beckley, W.V. but this time we left early enough that we decided to drive straight through. Ten hours in the car with only short stops…is a long time for these old bones!
I’ve selected a few of the trip up to Pittsburgh and next week I will post some taken in Pittsburgh and on another day I’ll post some from our trip home.
Some of those on the way up were taken through the car windows…some were taken at places we stopped.
The next few photos were taken at the Virginia Welcome Center. A very nice
facility that has picnic tables and beautiful trees and clean restrooms and no
trucks. There is a separate facility for trucks a little way down the road.
Not that I have anything against trucks…really, I don’t!
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| Love the trail from the jet, the sun spots and the brilliant blue of the sky! |
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| There’s a corn field in the distance on the other side of the fence. I tried to capture the way the sun was shining on the stalks. Didn’t turn out. I love the yellow leaves against the brilliant blue of the sky in these photos. |
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| I had to work on this photo in Photoshop. The sun was really bright and caused a haze over part of the tree. This is a not a “technically” good photo but I kind of like the way it turned out after playing with it a bit. |
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| I love yellows and blues together and this tree was really breathtaking against the sky. The wind was whipping around a bit and I tried to capture the falling leaves in a couple of shots but only managed to get a couple of leaves in the them. They were moving very quickly! |
I walked back down the exit to take a shot of the welcome sign…just in
case we forgot where we took the photos..kind of touristy but I like it.
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| This little girl was so cute entertaining herself by playing in the leaves. We ate our picnic lunch here and she played the entire time. She would gather up leaves into a big pile and then jump in it. Then she would pile them up and throw them up into the air. She was having a grand time using up her pent up energy while her parents were resting. |
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| We stopped at the New River Gorge. This is one of my favorite places to stop on our trips to Pittsburgh. I have photos from summer and winter but this is the first time we’ve made the trip in the fall. We missed the color peak but it was still very beautiful here. |
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| View of the New River bridge. I don’t have any of the statistics about the gorge or the bridge but you can go here and here and find out all about it! |
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| There were still some pretty trees…with late afternoon sun shining on them. |
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| See the tree growing on the rock? There cannot be more than a few inches of soil for those roots, yet there it stands! I never cease to be amazed by nature! |
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| A nice contrast…beautiful poppies growing in the median and the autumn leaves! |
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| One of my favorite things about being in the mountains is seeing the shadow of clouds on the mountain tops! |
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| At first glance it appears that there is color in the rock where the mountain was cut to make way for the road. Nope, the color is from trees in their autumn finery, growing in a bit of soil that has accumulated. Nature always manages to recover from man’s intrusions. |
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| Dark, stormy sky and sun shining on the mountainside..beautiful! Love the way the houses are nestled into the mountainside. |
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| Stormy sky and sunlit mountainside…stunning! |
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| An early moon rise over the mountain peak with the sun’s last light illuminating the trees! |
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| One of the many tunnels in Pittsburgh. I always take photos when we are going through. It keeps my mind off of the fact that we are riding through a mountain. I am always so very happy and thankful to come out on the other side of the mountain!!! |
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| I like to experiment with photographs of lights at night. This is the Pittsburgh skyline… looks a bit like pagodas to me. A little fun! Well, that’s the end of selected photos from day one. It took a couple of hours to narrow it down to these.
Tomorrow is Silent Sunday…I may use one of the photos from the All Saints Catholic Cemetery as the background for tomorrow’s scripture…I think it will be appropriate for All Hallows Eve!
Thanks for taking the time to stop by…
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VElish Art Studio 
I think that was my husband in that second truck driving by the big rocks! Really, it could have been!
All I have to say Vicki is that you must have a really nice camera not to mention a wonderful eye! Your photos are spectacular! I could easily choose several that I would frame. What a beautiful trip!
Love Di ♥
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Vicki! I think this batch of photos may be some of the best I've seen. The colors and composition are stunning!
xox, Daffy
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Very nice photos 🙂
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