I can still feel and smell the way the air was hitting me when I took this photo, as well as from the whole trip that lead up to this point.
Taken along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park in November of 2020, this photo perfectly encapsulates the feeling of freedom and escape that this trip represented.
I spent the first few months of COVID alone in Tampa barely leaving my apartment. Something needed to change so My aunt worked it out for me to come live with her and my Uncle in Washington D.C. I immediately figured out how to send all of my stuff that wasn't going to fit in my mustang and get out of Tampa as quickly as possible. It took me less than 3 days.
I got to D.C. in early August, and my mental health instantly improved just being around family. It was so nice spending time with them and having actual interaction in person. We got out of the house as much as we could and tried to make life as normal as possible while being safe about COVID, but it was still nowhere near the same. That's why this trip felt like as big of an escape as it did.
My Aunt and Uncles timeshare on the western edge of northern Virginia out mostly in the middle of nowhere, where we could mostly not have to worry about crowds or COVID and just have an escape from everything for a while. We had the place for a week and spent it exploring nature and golfing at the course on the property and mostly just hanging out and relaxing. We got to the last couple days of the trip and decided we weren't ready to go home yet so we started looking at options to stay for another week. We were able to find another cabin that was open for the following week and booked it right away.
The other cabin was part of the same property but we had to check out of the one we were in about 5 hours before we were able to check in to the new place. We found a distillery in central Virginia and decided it would be a good way to kill some time and visit a new distillery that we would never have visited otherwise. The distillery was in a valley surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, covered in trees and had a small creek running along the back of the property. It was so incredibly picturesque it almost didn't feel real after all of the difficulties of COVID.
I had been talking about maybe driving to Shenandoah National Park from Washington D.C. for a while but never made the commitment to actually do it. So while we were sitting at the distillery and noticed that Skyline Drive ran almost perfectly back in the direction of the timeshare it was a really easy decision to make to take that route back.
We drove the whole length of the scenic road and stopped at all of the overlooks so that I could take photos. The fall air was cool and crisp and the colors were bright and vibrant. It made for amazing photo opportunities as well as just being a gorgeous drive on a beautiful day. I took hundreds of photos that day at the distillery and along Skyline Drive and was feeling really good about how pretty they were. We pulled into one of the overlooks and my Aunt pointed out a Turkey Vulture soaring high above the valley below, but at just about our eye level from the overlook. I ran out of the car, camera in hand, and went to snap some photos before realizing that my sensor on my camera was dirty. I scrambled back to the car and grabbed my cleaning kit, nervous the whole time that the bird was going to leave before I had a chance to get back out there. Luckily I was able to get the dust off simply with the air blower and it was simple and quick. I put my lens back on and went back out to take more photos.
The bird was still there soaring and patrolling the skies right in front of us. I took so many photos of the bird hoping that a few of them would be good pics. I stopped taking photos and made sure to take some time to take in everything that was happening. From the cool fall air to the colors of the leaves in the valley below and the mountains surrounding us, it couldn't have gotten more serene and beautiful. Everything came together that day to create an experience I'm probably never going to forget and almost 4 years later I can still vividly remember everything I was feeling at the time of the photo.
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