The Great channels in Virginia. I could not stand it any longer I had to go see for myself and I had Monday off. Dee and I have been best friends since the third grade. When we were young we explored every spot of woods we could find, caught crawdads in the creek, build tree houses, Sometimes we would take off on our bicycles early on a Saturday morning and not return till the street lights threated our existence if we did not get home before the dark thirty curfew.
We are no strangers to adventure. But still this trip to the Great Channels in Virginia seemed to be right out of some of the movies we watched as children.
From the ride through some of the most beautiful countryside in Virginia. Old barns set on rolling pastures, stately plantation style houses, country church’s, old victorian houses in varying states of disrepair. I would have been perfectly content riding all day photgraphing the counryside.
The walk up in the fog with all the wildflowers blooming was nothing short of magical.
Then the channels. we walked past the trail that goes up to the firetower. We came to a rock outcropping that we walked out on. We had a picnic relaxed as we watched the clouds clearing in front of us, one moment and a storm crawl over the ridge in front of us the next . We hopped around on these rock sometimes stepping over slits 3 foot wide and 30 feet deep.
The real adventure started we went down into another world. We explored various slots climbed over rock into chambers, slide into caves. Squeezed through places big men like me are not supposed to squeeze through.
Several people had passed us on the way up but we never saw any of them. We spoke a few times on this wondering how we missed them. We went past a tree that the roots framed a portal to the land before time I teased we should get a running leap into it ready to fight in what ever dimension we came out in!
One of the slots we tried to explore required us to climb over one rock on to a ledge and then slide around a bend. As I did this a flush of wind hit my face the sametime as I heard a commotion all I seen was large and black! Oh shit! Oh shit, don’t jump off this ledge! Gathering my bearings I saw it was a very large angry vulture. Waiting for us to die? No, it was to angry for that. It must have baby’s? I held my camera around the bend and snapped. Yes there was babys. We did not wish to upset mom any further do we backed away from that chamber.
Before we knew it was 4 o’clock we had better be heading home but still where were all the other people?
We made good time getting off of the mountain. At bottom I went over to take a picture of the map board. This is when we discovered we may not have seen all the channels it looked like the biggest part of them were under the fire tower! Maybe that was where all the people were?
The drive out was equally amazing. We stopped by Cootie Browns in Johnson city for beer and burgers. While we were there we looked at others peoples photos and sure enough we had missed the main channels. This was OK. The adventure we had was amazing! I will go back to see the rest another day!
Yes it was just like the movie’s! We were Indiana jones, Dora the Explorer, and land before time all rolled together. Thank you Dee for joining on another wicked fun adventure!
chasingperi 