On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter J R in WV.
This is a set of boulders around our home in the WV forest. Between the moss covered boulders and bedrock features and the forest floor with plantings, there is NO grass anywhere near the house. I did a lot of mowing as a kid, was allergic, hated it. So now I just don’t.
All these photos were taken with a Panasonic DMC–FZ1000 with a built-in Leica f/2.8 super zoom lens.
Big rock in front lawn
Taken on 2018-04-19
Front yard beside the steps.
This boulder is 10 or 12 feet wide, and rests beside the front steps up to the front door. It’s covered with various mosses, ferns, sedum etc. Some of the wildflowers bloom tho nothing was in bloom in April and March when these early spring photos were shot.
3/3.2 for 1/125th sec at 42mm.
Falling Rock
Taken on 2018-04-19
Hillside just above the front door porch.
This is a large piece of bedrock just a few yards from our front door. It’s currently held in place by a good sized black oak, without which it would immediately fall and roll onto the back of the previous boulder.
f /4.0 for 1/100th sec at 226mm
Fallen Stump by Falling Rock
Taken on 2018-04-19
Just south of Falling Rock, looking north at the stump and Falling Rock, which has been falling for at least 50 or 60 years now.
This is a very old stump, left when the farm was timbered, probably in the mid-1960s, 10 or 15 years before we bought it. It was a tree up just above the steep rock wall just west of the house, and a couple of years ago, with a pretty loud thump it rolled off the edge of the ridge top and landed where you see it. I’m thinking walnut because it’s lasted so long.
f/3.2 for 1/100th sec. at 44mm
Boulder with God of Winds
Taken on 2018-04-19
40 or 50 yards south from Falling Rock, in the side yard.
This giant rock has a holy presence, the God of Wind has an incarnation resting on the boulder. He is blowing NE out of the SW, which is how much of our weather comes to us. The rock is about 6 feet thick and 15 feet long, lying on the hillside where ti slid after breaking off the bedrock of the ridge west of the house.
f/3.6 for 1/100th sec. at 67mm
Eastern Boulder Outcrop
Taken on 2018-04-19
Of the back yard from the side yard.
This rock outcrop is the eastern side of the back yard, just across the tiny seasonal creek beside the house. These really big rocks are verrry slooowly sliding down towards the creek, and in another 200 years might pose a problem for drainage. This view is from the south of the outcrop.
F/4.0 for 1would/320th sec. at 260mm
East Backyard Boulders
Taken on 2018-04-19
Back porch
The backyard from the back porch, the same boulders as in the previous picture. They are bigger than they look here!
f/4.0 for 1/125th sec at 315mm
Froggy went A’Courtin’
Taken on 2018-04-19
Just below Falling Rock
The dancing brass frogs put a little whimsy on top of this big boulder. This is the top of one of the front yard boulders, which is maybe 20 feet high. Those are shitaki mushroom logs leaning against the rock.
f/3.6 for 1/250th sec at 66 mm
Updated, 14:58 EDT: J R was kind enough to send in a pic, since you asked!
“House in the Forest”
This is looking north at the south exposure of the house around which the boulders were photographed, along with wild flowers, pets, etc. The hillsides are steeper than they look, esp on the left (west) side of the house. Built in 1991-94 by friends and neighbors mostly, who did a better and more professional job than the actual contractors for specific jobs.
f/5.0 for 1/500th sec at 27mm taken with a Nikon D70s on April 6, 2008
Wowzers, that’s a house! I love how it nestles amongst the trees.
Thank you so much J R in WV, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
Schlemazel
Odd, I left a comment here earlier & there was no morning thread. Now there is a morning thread BEFORE this one & my comment is gone . . .
Love the pictures but I would be sleeping in the front of the house if I lever there! Thanks for the great shots
p.a.
Rocks: as a New Englander those shots seem like home (Cape Cod excepted for the most part.) Was cleaning out the phone files and saw a download on Eastern Broadleaf Forest (why? Don’t remember) and noticed WVa panhandle and the strip of WVa running south of it is ‘forestially’ the same as south and central New England. Most of the rest of WVa is different: woodlands like inland mid-Atlantic area.
MagdaInBlack
This reminds me of my childhood, “tromping” thru the woods with my mother.
Thank you ?
debbie
Love the contrast in textures in nature! I spent an entire semester photographing textures in my mom’s back yard for a photography class.
Walking around my neighborhood, I see moss on stone walls and tufts of grass growing out of volcanic rocks marking the edges of a driveway. What I wouldn’t give to have my old OM-1 back again!
satby
Love the whimsical little touches on your boulder garden J W, but this flatlander agrees with @Schlemazel: that I’d be nervous about all that
crashing through the house at some point.
Mary G
I wanted to get a big-ish rock to give some interest to my yard, but they are expensive. I like your dancing frogs.
rikyrah
Love the nature shots?
JPL
Beautiful pics!
stinger
As soon as I saw the first pic in Cole’s Twitter feed, I knew today would be J R in WV! Great photos of great rocks! Love the moss.
Not to be too nosy, but as a person surrounded by lawn, I’d love to see the house in context of these sloping hillsides, trees, and rocks.
Mr. Prosser
These are great pics. The verdant growth around the rocks is marvelous. Also a shrine to the well being of a good sized black oak may be in order.
MomSense
I’m in love with moss.
J R in WV
@p.a.:
Yes, WV has two similar ecological areas, based upon altitude rather than latitude. We are in the lower SW part of the state, nearer to east KY than to west Virginia as is the high ridge mountains, the Allegheny Front of the eastern part of WV.
Our topography is more fractal than the NNE to SSW giant ridges in the east. Ridge tops around here may reach 1200 feet although our ridge just north of the house is more like 950 feet. The home is at about 750 feet, so the ridge is quite a climb. The dogs love it!
We do groom the mossy boulders right by the house, Wife will gently pluck weeds off the rock face, and I will blow leaves off so the moss isn’t mulched away under them, and water the moss during a hard dry spell to keep it healthy and green… but no mowing. A little weed wacking with an electric gadget.
scav
Absolute respect for mossy rocks. We had a few non-mossy dishwasher-sized ones in the front yard growing up, but a friend’s house had a yard of nothing but non-mossy granitic boulders, at least three of which were more than RV sized. We each had our own that we knew the tricks to scale to the top. These mossy ones would provide interesting alternatives to just essentially sitting on top of a non-tree-house-substitutes and yelling at each other across the yard (talk about being easily amused . . . . )
Elizabelle
Love your photos, JR. You have a life with both lichens and cactus.
Spent a few weeks near Chimney Rock State Park in NC (near Rutherford). Had a lot of rocks and moss and liken and steps — lots and lots of steps. Highly recommend it — beautiful area and topography.
Can see why you are so taken with that environment.
J R in WV
@stinger:
The house is surrounded by relatively steep ravine walls, open to the south. Falling Rock is on the west wall, and is actually south of the south end of the house, so not a real threat to the structure.
The rocks east of the house are across the bottom of the ravine from the house and haven’t moved a perceptible distance since the house was built, but they are not attached to bedrock any more, instead they lie on clay soil and crushed rock they smashed as they slid deeper into the soil. But water trickles out from under them in rainy spells. So I know they are moving, very slowly. I don’t expect them to be an issue for hundreds of years, tho.
The house was built from 1991-1994, we moved in the spring of ’94. I worked on it every waking moment I wasn’t “at work” doing computer stuff in town for 3 years, beside the crew of neighbors I hired.
It was quite a bit of work, but I was younger then and quite enjoyed the learning experience. Apprentice architect who drew the house and blueprints is is now principle architect for one of the largest and most enjoyable/experimental architectural firms in the state. He drew 4 different houses and presented them to us, the built home was his favorite design, and way the most experimental/modern design.
I’ll send a house photo to Alain to include somewhere since folks are interested.
Mart
Nice pics. For some reason I feel like getting stoned…
stinger
@J R in WV: Interesting!
Janet Strange
@J R in WV:
Yes, please!
J R in WV
Folks,
Alain will be adding a photo of the house after he finishes lunch, so you can check it out then.
JR
Another Scott
@J R in WV: Neato! Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
kattails
Nice rocks, interesting geology. I can see layers, do you know if it’s a metamorphic terrain or sedimentary? It looks like stuff slowly being eroded off of not-too-consolidated, possibly folded bedrock or “country rock”. Lovely mosses and I love the God of the Wind tucked discreetly among the boulders! Someone (p.a.) commented on the similarity to parts of New England which would be true if you’re in the folded Appalachian bits. But where I live it’s been glaciated so that messes up everything, it’s either overlain with glacial deposits or scraped clean with just a foot and a half of topsoil. Fun gardening.
What’s in the “turret” part of the house? Wonderful architecture, would be happy to see more views sometime.