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ALLAN BOVEE - PHOTOGRAPHY ADVENTURES IN NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY NOVEMBER 2007
I started in the Virginia town of Waynesboro, which is located on the southern border of Shenandoah National Park. I could easily drive the 105 mile Skyline Drive through the park and back in a day and was impressed by the beauty and fall color throughout this region. There are numerous turnouts to pull off the road and take photos. From the southern end of the park all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina, a distance of 469 miles, runs the Blue Ridge Parkway. The road winds along the backbone of the Blue Ridge Mountains and as you start the road the first mile post is #1. While driving this road you feel you are in a National Park, yet can leave it at various points to return to towns for supplies and campgrounds for the night. Immediately on entering the parkway, I knew this was far superior to the Skyline drive. The mountains are larger and the scenery is more wild. From the Skyline drive you view more of the Shenandoah River valley and all the farms and settlements. On the Blue Ridge you are more in wilderness and it seemed more spectacular to me. They are both very nice drives, and Waynesboro is a great place to base camp from. Also, while in Waynesboro, it is a short drive to
Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. I have always been a fan of this president
and have read biographies of him and his contemporaries such as Lewis and Clark,
Ben Franklin, Daniel Boone, and others. I feel I could sit down and drink a
glass of wine with him and talk about my adventures in nature and he would be an
able listener. I in turn would have liked to hear his plans for the nation and
about his natural history pursuits and inventions.
Virginia is a beautiful state but I couldn't explore further and further along the Blue Ridge Parkway and return to the same campsite each day so I moved to North Carolina. I felt if I got to Mile #469, I could work back towards the middle where I left. The drive down went well until the last twenty miles before I got to Cherokee. Looking at a map I figured the twenty miles was shorter on Highway 19 rather than going around on Highway 74. But the short cut was up and down the mountains with a lot of steep curves and the campground owner couldn't believe I had brought my trailer through there, he shook my hand and said well done! But now, I was at Mile #469 and just two miles from the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I soon discovered that the last twenty five miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway was the best of the whole road. I took the route as far back as I could in day trips and almost completed the entire 469 miles except for a little stretch in the middle. Some days I would travel on the expressways like I-40 to get a boost along the way and go over and pick up the parkway and drive back to camp. But nothing came near to the last 25 miles for scenery and fall color. Every turn I made resulted in another gasp at the unfolding scenery. At every turnout I had to stop and look for a photograph and there are a lot of turnouts, 260 in the 469 miles. Twenty six tunnels are located along the parkway. There are many visitor centers with history, culture, or nature exhibits and information. Its just a wonderful drive.
I had some great weather for photographing the fall
colors, overcast and no wind. As long as you don't include too much of the sky,
the photos will work with the oversaturation the overcast brings and with no
wind, I could shoot all day. But I would have liked to see some great sunsets in
the Smokies where the notches and mountain top views are spectacular. All I saw
was overcast skies getting darker and couldn't get the shots I wanted there. But
that just leaves something to do next time and since I got all the fall color I
could want, I can come back in less popular times to do sunrises and sunsets.
On the way home, I decided to drive through West Virginia again and camp there for one night as a drive from Cherokee non-stop to home would be a little much. Despite all my planning, I had a rather difficult time. I found four campgrounds to stay in and figured to stop at whichever one was convenient on the way north. The first one was about eight miles off the expressway but when I arrived it was closed, it had gone out of business. So, I decided to be smart and call the second one before I got there but there was no answer, they wanted you to leave a message. So, I chanced it, and drove eleven miles one way to the entrance but it too was closed. I could see campers back in the woods but figured they must have leased the whole campground for the weekend and closed it to anyone else. So I got back on the expressway and asked at the next service plaza (Interstate 77 is a toll road through half of West Virginia), for a campground. They recommended the Rippling Waters Church of God Campground in Romance, West Virginia, about an hour and a half away. I called and a nice man told me to come on up. It was dark by now and when I got to the exit and started down the road, I had to call him again twice. I couldn't even see the signs they had on marking the directions as it was pitch black and the road was a winding mountain trail. But I stopped and got out and located signs with my flashlight. I had to turn around a couple of times, a difficult task to do with a trailer and darkness and a very narrow mountain road, but the patient caretaker of the campground helped me find the place. I think I must have said a prayer because I arrived and woke up the next day to see I was in a wonderful campground and would highly recommend it to everyone.
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I
recently took a trip to the southern mountains through West Virginia, Virginia,
and North Carolina calling it my "Almost Heaven" expedition after the John
Denver song I never really liked anyway. My goal was to try and capture
photographically some autumn color in the region and my timing couldn't have
been any better. 
The
Smoky Mountains draws a lot of people for the fall color, and I would have to
say the park was packed. The north end of the park at Gatlinburg, Tennessee is
more crowded than the south area around Cherokee, North Carolina, but they both
can have traffic jams and large crowds at the scenic places as well as all the
tourist attractions in the towns. I only went to Gatlinburg once, I wanted to
get to the east end of the park and that was the only way. But with all the
traffic, I turned around and stayed with the areas I knew. Having been to Smoky
Mountain National Park once before, I knew what was in the Gatlinburg area and
so decided to skip it. The rivers were all very low and so the waterfalls and
rapids I have seen up there wouldn't be as good.
All
the photos I have here were shot with my digital camera, the Nikon D70 which is
a fun camera for me. Next month I will try to have some of the serious stuff I
took with my Mamiya as the slides are returned to me. I can then talk about some
of the scenic highlights of my trip.