Our day trip and hike in the Shenandoah National Park

 Our first stop was at the Skyview Lodge for breakfast

 This is a beautiful structure with vaulted ceilings and a huge stone fireplace. The food was great and so reasonably priced. Portland prices are so high in comparison.

 I loved spending time in the gift shop & could have easily done all my Christmas shopping there if we had room to bring everything back!

After breakfast we drove down to the Little Stony Man Trailhead trail to hike off those calories.

 The hike was about a mile and the view from the top was gorgeous!

 


Even though we were a bit before peak color season it was super great to get to see this part of the country. I kept thinking of John Denver's song Country Roads "...Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River…" Beautiful!

Rainy day fun at the zoo :0)

We had a date Rain or Shine

 I called as asked if Garrett had rain gear to wear so we could go to the zoo. If he didn't we'd have gone to the Children's Museum today.

I love it up at the zoo in the rain!

 We did have rain and it was glorious :0)

 We pretty much had the place to ourselves. There were a few groups of high school aged students there but the stroller brigade was noticeably absent.

Snack stop

 It's been a long time since we've sat in the Africafe dining room. They have a cute little elephant statue in there now. Garrett shared a cheeto with him ;0)

He "fed" the papa lion a leaf. Looks like he's choking on it.

I know that the fall colors would have absolutely glowed if the sun was shining but I've always liked the look of the vibrant colors against a grey sky… or a grey sidewalk... or some grey river rocks.

All along our walk we were noticing all of the preparations for ZooLights that start on the 28th of this month. This spider web is going to look so cool!

Garrett was posing for pictures left and right. He's pretty much a hambone.

 We stopped for the traditional photos of the wingspan and the stamping of the hand.

I told him that we'd visit the museum on our next trip up there. These leaves will probably be down by then so I took this picture so I'd remember how pretty they were on this rainy day in Portland.