Blue Ridge Parkway

There are so many good things about Netflix. My personal experience is that the Internet streaming just works and combined with my Sony BDP-N460 provides a very pleasing viewing and listening experience.  The variety of the content available for instant streaming is quite good – I very rarely use the actual Disc Rental portion of my subscription. Lately I find myself binging on the titles in the Documentaries genre, visiting (and in some cases revisiting) the works of American documentarian Ken Burns.

Over the last several months I have gotten through the Jazz and Baseball anthologies and recently completed Burns’ 2009 take on the National Parks entitled: The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

While I personally wouldn’t rank this as Burns’ best effort, the six part film is beautifully shot and there are more than a few poignant moments of pure Burns’ magic. Burns traces the history of the parks from the 1870s and chronicles the pioneers that were the driving forces behind the creation and development of the National Parks Service. I was woefully ignorant about much of this history before watching the series. While I was vaguely aware of the roles that John Muir (founder of the Sierra Club) and Teddy Roosevelt played in all of this, I hadn’t even heard of central figures such as Stephen Mather and Horace Albright.

Burns films seem to be magnets for viewers – and for critics. When you have 40 million folks watching your art, it stands to reason that there are going be large quantities of your customers that are not going to like what you have created. That is just the way the numbers run. He tackles big subjects and the dude has set a pretty high bar, so it is inevitable that criticism is going to be forthcoming. I am an unabashed fan though and can’t wait for his next work, Prohibition, to come out this fall. I am betting that the new film will provide historical resonance with all sorts of current-day parallels such as the War on Drugs and the ramifications of unchecked social conservatism. Should be good.

I spent a four day weekend in May visiting some attractions in Central Virginia. Included in this trip were visits to Monticello and Natural Bridge as well as Salem where I collected another minor league park. During that weekend and partially inspired by Burns, I spent a leisurely five hours on a drive Saturday through a small section of the 469 mile long Blue Ridge Parkway. I picked up the Parkway at the northern terminus near Waynesboro and drove about 115 miles south to Roanoke where I had to exit for my trip to the game in Salem.

On this trip, the weather wasn’t very cooperative. Seems like everyday (except for the drive back on Sunday) featured fog and overcast skies and occasional drizzle. While the weather put a serious dent in the trek down the Parkway, I managed to take a couple of decent pictures of the natural beauty.

At Otter Lake (right), the rain stopped right as I arrived and held off long enough for a three mile hike around the lake and environs. The reflections of the trees in the water in one of my shots were pretty awesome with the rest of the surrounding nature still toweling off from the rain. Another highlight was the park and hiking area at the point where the Blue Ridge Parkway crosses the James River around Mile Marker 65. There was a walking bridge right under the parkway that crossed the James with some outstanding views.

Unfortunately, the fog just torpedoed the potential out of most of the shots of the Blue Ridge from the various overlooks on the Parkway. Combined with my sorry photographical chops, I was pretty disappointed with the shots. One was still able to imagine how magical that area (and the Parkway) would be in fall when the leaves turn. Really need to get back there in a couple of months.  For what it’s worth, here is a link to a slideshow of some shots taken from my journey down a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway on a rainy Saturday in May: Blue Ridge Parkway Slideshow.