Jefferson National Park, Cascades, Virginia (Fair Warning: Bugs and a Spider)

 This is a pathway to nowhere that seems to have continued onto a bridge at some time in the past, but that bridge has crumbled long before now.

That small cave to the left is dark and probably not as deep as it seemed to be. Probably.

Either that, or that's where the troll lives.

 You can see that the stairway ends, terminating in empty air over the river. I wonder what this used to be, why it was there, and how it was used.

I'm sure somebody knows but I am not that person.

The water was fast-moving, beautiful, and not too high. The last time we came out here the streams were flooded and we couldn't actually go further onto the path. Today was a perfect day for this.

 This bridge splits the path into the "easy" path and "difficult" path. We took the "easy" path.

Just for the record, "easy" does not mean "stroller friendly."

This little guy was crawling across the pathway. We had seen several corpses of millipedes along the way but this was the first (and only) living one we noticed.

It was fast!

 Downed logs littered the pathway on either side of the path and this one just struck me as particularly photogenic.

Either that or I was trying to be artsy-fartsy with my picture-taking. You decide!

(If this were black and white you could be SURE it was the second option.)

 This is a preview of what's going up on Father Fails on Friday.

My daughter is adorable.

 

 The stroller was a pretty quick downfall for us. We were probably less than halfway to our destination when we came across a large mud pit that would have been passable without the stroller.

It may have been passable with the stroller but the stroller would have never been the same, I'm sure.

This big guy was hanging out on the sign announcing that we were entering the Cascades. Laura pointed it out and I took pictures as everyone else stood far away.

We noticed it on our way out instead of our way in, thankfully. Otherwise we'd have all been jumpy about walking in the woods since this one was roughly the size of my palm. I'd have been trying to spot any others hiding in the trees, ready to pounce at any second.



I'm a little sad that we didn't make it to the actual Cascade falls but it was a beautiful day with my family. We had a lot of fun and I regret not trying to come out here more often while we lived here. Now that we're leaving in a week I wish we had taken a few extra picnics over the last couple of years.