American Redstart at nest
Here is one last photo from the Sugarloaf hike. Very early in the hike, we stumbled across the nest of an American Redstart. It was right next to the trail, but since the trail does not get much traffic, I suspect that the few people who get near the nest just walk on by, not even noticing it. We lingered for a few minutes, a respectable distance away, while I attempted to get a picture of an adult feeding a nestling. The adults, however, did not give me much time to take a photo (I imagine their priorities were a tad different from mine). They would bring in some tasty morsel, quickly give it to one of the nestlings, and then be off again in search of more food. The photo below is the best I could muster under the circumstances, factoring in that I did not want to linger too long for fear of distressing the adults.
Dark Hollow Rose River Loop
Yesterday, Tammy and I took advantage of the weather and hiked another loop within Shenandoah National Park. For this outing we combined a couple of well known hikes to waterfalls into a loop that was just under 6 miles long.
Near the Big Meadows Campground and Byrd Visitor Center [pdf], the Dark Hollow Falls hike is one of the more popular hikes in the park. It is short, but steep, and gets you to a series of three waterfalls (depending on how far down the hill you want to hike). Even further north of Big Meadows is the Rose River Loop Trail, that gets you to another set of falls.
When you hike down to the very bottom of the Dark Hollow Falls trail, you intersect with the Rose River Falls loop. So we combined the two into one hike. We started at the Byrd Visitor Center, hiked over to, and down, the Dark Hollow Falls trail. At the bottom of the Dark Hollow Falls Trail, we picked up the Rose River Loop Trail and hiked that until we got back to the Skyline Drive near Fisher's Gap, a few miles north of the visitor center. Finally, we took the Skyland-Big Meadows Horse Trail from Fishers Gap back to the visitor center.
If you would prefer to see that route on a map, then go here for just that, courtesy of my GPS.
Of course, I got lots of pictures on the way, especially of waterfalls. In the near future, my favorite pictures from this hike will be showing up in this blog. This one is of Dark Hollow Falls.
Near the Big Meadows Campground and Byrd Visitor Center [pdf], the Dark Hollow Falls hike is one of the more popular hikes in the park. It is short, but steep, and gets you to a series of three waterfalls (depending on how far down the hill you want to hike). Even further north of Big Meadows is the Rose River Loop Trail, that gets you to another set of falls.
When you hike down to the very bottom of the Dark Hollow Falls trail, you intersect with the Rose River Falls loop. So we combined the two into one hike. We started at the Byrd Visitor Center, hiked over to, and down, the Dark Hollow Falls trail. At the bottom of the Dark Hollow Falls Trail, we picked up the Rose River Loop Trail and hiked that until we got back to the Skyline Drive near Fisher's Gap, a few miles north of the visitor center. Finally, we took the Skyland-Big Meadows Horse Trail from Fishers Gap back to the visitor center.
If you would prefer to see that route on a map, then go here for just that, courtesy of my GPS.
Of course, I got lots of pictures on the way, especially of waterfalls. In the near future, my favorite pictures from this hike will be showing up in this blog. This one is of Dark Hollow Falls.
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