This time of year I love to see what's in bloom along the highway when I go on a road trip.
It's not always easy to photograph the flowers when the car is zooming past but it's fun to try.
I'm not sure what the white flowers are but there were a lot of them along the highway.
I think the red flowers below are poppies. I know there are a lot of poppies planted along the NC, VA and WV highways we were on.
The yellow ones may be coriopsis but I'd have to see them closer up.
There were a lot of mountain laurel and rhododendron on the forest trails we walked on in WV but only a few were in full bloom.
Especially deep in the forest with a lot of shade most of the mountain laurel were in the early bud stage.
It was nice to see some rhododendron already blooming for us. I'll admit sometimes I'm not sure which ones are mountain laurel and which are rhododendron.
There has been plenty of rain and it was noticeable in terms of how well the plants in the forest were doing.
Sometimes I like the way the flowers almost look painted when I shoot from the car, like the one below.
I saw a few clusters of asters when we were walking in the woods.
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On road trips I often notice how cluttered the sides of our highways are with the means to operate our civilization.
The shot above was taken near Winston Salem, NC. The rest of the shots were taken of the uncluttered rural scenery. I'm not positive which shots were in NC, VA, and WV but I think the shot below is VA and I think the last one is NC.
I hope we won't ever reach a time when all the highways are cluttered with bill boards and industrial containers. I took these shots on a vacation this week and fortunately most of the scenery from the road wasn't cluttered although as we approached towns the clutter increased.
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I have returned from a vacation and this will be a thrown together post. The first shot is of Pilot Mountain which is in NC and I shot this from the car.
The next shot is also from the car of the wildflowers along the side of the road. I think we had passed Virginia and were in West Virginia when I took this shot.
We stayed in Beckley, WV which is close to a number of state and national parks. The shot below was taken on a hike we did at New River Gorge.
The next shot is taken from the same spot as above but I turned in another direction.
On the trail down from the view above, I snapped the rhododendron and Bill who was patiently waiting for me.
After we finished that hike I got some shots of a stream that I believe feeds into the New River.
Then I caught the water trickling down the rocks beside the road.
The rest of the shots were taken in Babcock State Park, on another day during our vacation.
It's so great seeing everything so lush and green.
We've gone on vacations in the mountains during the spring when droughts were hurting the vegetation but that wasn't the case this time.
Everything seems so healthy and happy with plenty of nourishing water.
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UPDATE: This post was missing due to blogger being down but now it's back so I kind of have two missing posts for the missing theme. The post below this explains. Too funny that blogger made posts go missing on the missing theme week.
The photohunters word this week is an appropriate one for me because I was missing having a working digital camera for nine days. I missed being able to shoot the sunset.
I missed being able to photograph the robins.
I missed being able to get detailed shots of the flowers.
I missed being able to capture the bugs in the Queen Anne's lace.
The shots above were all taken on Wednesday while I was getting to know my brand new digital camera. The shot below was taken with my cell phone so you can see I'm not missing a digital camera anymore. That's my new baby. I'm still getting to know it but I'm sure I'll have many more shots in the near future of other things I would have missed shooting if I hadn't gotten a new camera.
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I may end up with another missing post reappearing since blogger lost several posts during the time they were down. I'm not re-creating the old post because it may pop back up but if it doesn't this will be my photohunters Missing post (appropriate that the theme this week would be "missing"). I shot the cardinal today with my new camera. I sure did miss having one the week or so that I didn't have one.
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