Down the road to Harrisburg -- there are three ridges ahead, each one covered in mist, and each one getting lighter and lighter as they are more distant. Loving the Susquehanna River. Gas prices are getting less. $2.49 on the mountain top, @1.99 here. Hmmm. What is Dubya up to?

Shenandoah Valley is incredibly lush, farms and cows and goats, a lot of goats. On either side of this broad glowing productive valley the terrain slides up into a ridge. There are battlefields everywhere. The reason for the trip going through the Shenandoah was to find the community I worked so hard to help establish there in the 70's. Our ideals were high, involving personal development, a spiritual life and organic carrots (maybe even goats). We lost the farm in the late 70's and I have been in Miami ever since. I never did find the property. I saw what looked like our entry-way allee of trees, but I never recognized a house. I found myself crying. It occurs to me that I never worked this portion of my life, never fully experienced the grief and the loss. I did so today.

I can't seem to get my new card reader to read the camera card, so there will be no pics until that gets solved.

Next leg of today's adventure is the Skyline Drive. It is in Shenandoah National Park, so I am totally pleased to pull out my lifetime golden age passport to all national parks, something I acquired in Denver in May at Ellie's wedding. Little car does her very best in each climb. I need to get her a reward. There will be many mountains to climb before this is over. The road winds and climbs and provides many outlook places where the road juts out over huge views across immense valleys to high mountains. I discover "driving meditation". At the end of the drive, coming out onto commercial streets, I am dazed and surfeited.

Highway 26 from below the Skyline Drive to just north of Asheville has got to be one of the most beautiful stretches in the world. I am unable to reach my brother so I head for Cherokee, NC.