Tag Archives: countryside

Places

One perfect foggy morning

Have you ever woken up to the perfect morning fog? I have. We were staying with relatives in a tiny little village in Moldova, Romania. Their house sat between several hills.

As I got out of the house on day, morning was just starting to break. The soft, diffuse light just barely illuminated the sleepy silhouettes of the trees.

Breaking light

A little while later, the sun started breaking through the fog. The empty country road lay out before me, beckoning.

On the road again

People started to wake up. Here, a man took out his horse to pasture as the sun literally burst onto the scene from top right.

Into the morning sun

The fog found itself overpowered by the sun, and retreated to the valleys between the hills. As far as the eye could see, little hill tops peered out from among the soft white fog, greeting the morning.

Hill top after hill top

I descended into a valley not yet touched by rays of light, and spotted the sun around the corner. A new day had begun, and there were many miles still to go.

Just around the corner

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Places

Sunset driving

The Maryland countryside is just beautiful, and we love to drive around whenever we can. Mostly, we go out in the evenings, looking for great spots where I can get photos of the sunsets. Here are a few I got recently in the rural areas around Poolesville:

Graze

Sun power

A good evening

As the light softly fades

Incidentally, we get around with our little sidekick, which we both love:

Sidekick

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Places

Sunburnt

This past weekend, Ligia and took a trip out to the countryside. Our favorite haunt is River Rd, way out in the fields hugging the Potomac hillsides. There are so many beautiful places out there, and trails galore. You can bring your bikes along, park your car, and push the pedals around all day, exploring the C&O canal trail or the country side roads.

On our way back home, I noticed this field and the reddish hue of its earth. I had to make a U-turn and photograph it. To help give you a sense of scale, that green line at the horizon is made of full-size trees.

Sunburnt

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Places

Biking on the Via Appia (part 2)

This is a two-part article. Here’s Part 1.

While in Rome, my brother kept dangling this promise of taking our bicycles out to Via Appia and making a day trip out of it. I wanted to see it because the Via Appia was the most important Roman road of its time. Roman bases, villas and famous tombs adorned its sides in its heyday, and their ruins can be seen even today. The road itself was a marvel of Roman engineering. It was so well-made that portions of it are still preserved, thousands of years later.

Well, I kept feeling like the horse that can’t reach the carrot, since my brother still buried his nose in books every day. But, I kept nagging him, and in my last week there, we managed to make a half-day trip out of it. It was a wonderful time!

We took our bikes and rode through the city till we reached the highway shown below (don’t ask me for the name, I forgot it), rode alongside it for a bit, then took a side street down a little hill that took us to the start of the Via Appia. From then on, it was an easy (and beautiful) ride out into the countryside.

Along the way, we stopped so I could take photos (of course), and also snuck into some pretty unsafe ruins, as you’ll see below. I’m still amazed the floors didn’t crumble under us as we climbed onto the second floor of a villa. I can only attribute it to good, old, solid Roman construction.

Toward the Via Appia

Roman highway

Time takes its toll

The way we came

Keeping up appearances

Greeting the visitors

Light at the end of the tunnel

Looking right through

You can also read more about the Via Appia over at Wikipedia. Stay tuned for my post on Florence.

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Places

White's Ferry and Edwards Ferry (part 2)

On 10/2, I wrote about our trip to these two sites along the C&O Canal here in Maryland. I couldn’t post the videos at that time. With the aid of YouTube, here they are, in chronological order, for your enjoyment.

I filmed this as the ferry pulled up to the Maryland side of the Potomac, and cars started to drive off:

This one shows the C&O Canal Trail near White’s Ferry. It’s a peaceful walk through the forest, with Ligia up ahead:

These next two show us driving through the Maryland countryside, on an unpaved road in a field somewhere between White’s Ferry and Edwards Ferry. I believe the road is River Road, although the map is unclear on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RveLWgm7I-0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agwonbEsTcE

This is the launch point at Edwards Ferry, which has no ferry any more, but it’s a nice and peaceful place to visit. The fact that is has no ferry is actually a plus, since there are no crowds there. You can park your car and hike around, taking lots of photos. What’s also interesting about Edwards Ferry is that the C&O Canal’s water stops right there. The canal wasn’t maintained between it and White’s Ferry. So it’s kind of cool to see water on one side of the lock gate, and grass on the other. This isn’t depicted in the video.

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