The View from SNP's Big Meadows

On my vacation I took in a couple of those easy day hikes around the Big Meadows lodge up in Shenandoah National Park.  I freelanced a combination of two of them, as a matter of fact, with the transition happening on a little outcropping near the lodge that is called Blackrock (not to be confused with the other Blackrock in the Park, which includes a little rock scramble).

I was out early enough that the haze that sometimes comes out midday hadn't appeared yet, so I was lucky to have these incredible views.  The first one here actually looks out to the northwest, towards Stanley and Luray.  Our neighborhood is just at the line of the hill in the foreground - I know it's hard to make out.

Click on the photo and you can just make out the purple roof of the barn at Wisteria Vineyards, and the lodge of the closed Jordan Hollow Farm Inn.  We'd be just to the left/south of them in the patch of woods.  In fact, when our house was first built, you could see the Big Meadows Lodge - but the trees have all grown up and we have a forest view now.

Also here is a view to the southwest, to Tanner's Ridge.  Here the SNP boundary swings out to the west along the ridgeline, making this one of the widest sections of the Park.