A visit from Young George and another dose of ailurophilia

Dwight Peck's personal website

Winter 2024-2025

A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

A visit from Young George (& mom), a Montgomery Hall exploration,
and a big dose of ailurophilia

Mid-April 2025

Melvin patiently awaits the evening's Telly Time, but . . .

. . . Choupette always has her own Telly Time in her head.

But in the a.m., when it's time for breakfast, they think alike.

Emily and precocious son George ('Buddy') have just arrived from Chicago, and Margaret has joined us for dinner.

Margaret lives downstairs (alternating with a northern Virginia farm) and is our best friend here.

Cats are always friendly with little Buddy, but careful.

(George is the close friend of two of Choupette's half-siblings back in Chi-Town, and speaks the same language.)

Choupette loves kids (we think) but believes that 'discretion is the better part of valor'.

Melvin is sometimes even more chary of unpredictable youngsters.

Cats are dutifully playing out the young guest's wishes.

Thankfully, though, it's almost time for bed.

Night night

A walk in the Park

Everybody's out for a brief pram-walk in the park.

Our accompanying photographer will be sitting on a chilly bench nearby, alert to catch the best photos possible.

It is, however, an Extremely Chilly Day for 14 April. 'Global Warming'! No, sorry, 'Climate Crisis'.

Rehabilitation works are going on all along the main creek (the Gummy) passing down through the park, collecting tributaries. The bridge has had to be reinforced, with so much else, since the awful flood of August 2020.

Young George is getting an enjoyable pram-walk round the far side of the Duck Pond {officially, 'Lake Tams'}. Unfortunately, we left our super-telescopic lens behind today.

Now they've come round this side: the young master is more interested in the ducks and geese than in the inspired restoration works in progress for the creek.

Emily is frequently involved in work conferences round the US, and Kristin when possible meets her there to perform the babysitting duties in hotels, etc.

But in just this short visit, the Young Prince has already got to visit the Richmond Zoo (good by all accounts) and Staunton's Frontier Culture Museum. And got his French Fries at the Remedy Burger restaurant downtown.

Our guests have departed now, and the cats, having performed well, can relax.

A couple of views of Staunton's interesting architecture

On W Frederick St a few blocks up from our Old Y

Both cats have taken heartily to the Cat Tower (scary to watch them climbing up onto it).

Choupette, of course, will be pleased to sit on top of anything and lord it over everybody.

The Montgomery Hall jungle from the north end (for a change)

Normally we park at the southern end of Montgomery Hall Park and follow various mix-and-match routes of our own invention [note the rudimentary trails map below], but today is a day for some simple explorations from the north end. (19 April 2025)

We walked up from this end a few times when we first discovered the possibilities at the park, but there a few questions still to be answered. Like 'how far is the Fern Gulley from the north end carpark'? A good answer to that might open up boundless new combinations.

We park up near the Montgomery Hall per se (below the original manor house, now the city's Parks and Recreations administration building) and come round a large baseball field down to here -- the entrance to the Expressway is on the left, the Scout Trail on the right.

The liaison between the two trails

So off we go -- a solo walk this time, the rest of our party is otherwise engaged.

The Scout Trail is the blue-tagged one. (The Expressway is yellow, the Yulee is red. Always good to keep that in mind.)

The trail is very nice along here, but very flat. And why not, since . . .

. . . it's cleaving closely along the Amtrak railroad track (between New York and Chicago).

Soon, however, it begins to throw in some slight ups and downs, for the fun of it.

A blue marker -- we're still on course!

A few pleasant little uphills -- the path can't presume on too much altitude because the other trails are laid out just above us up the hill.

The Fern Gulley (or, as it might be, Gully) -- only 15 minutes out, that's disappointing. It's about 35 minutes down from the southern parking lot.

Up Fern Gulley, with genuine ferns beginning to peek out. (A week later they'd arrived in force.)

Topping out of the official Fern Gulley at the Expressway, which . . .

. . . passes by this way on its way home. The gulley itself continues, without authorization, farther up the hill to top out at the Expressway looping round in the other direction, but that part definitely needs some work. Broken glass, some old metal junk, negotiable but less fun.

Yellow, good. Straight ahead

We're turning north into the maze of well-planned convolutions and corkscrews of the trails that will juggle us back to the baseball field and carpark (in much more than 15 minutes).

-- Mind your head!

Coming up to another major U-turn . . .

. . . wisely circumventing this ghastly tree, and . . .

. . . getting on with things in good order.

Another U-turn

And another U-turn

That old tree never had a chance.

The track is leveling out now.

-- Mind your head. (This is a bit of a war zone from here on. The Kiwanis 18-'hole' Disc Golf Course runs in a kind of complicated parallel to the Expressway along this part of it.

But there's always time for another U-turn.

A lonely disc golf 'hole' . . .

. . . and a more regal one.

Back to the ball field, and the overly electronified Toyota Crown Signia awaiting us up on the parking lot

(We're still contemplating appropriate nicknames for it -- our old VW's 'Dieter' was an easy one, as was the Volvo's 'Sven'.)

The Montgomery Hall Park woodland trails

This is a smoothed out map of the three main trails in the Montgomery Hall Park -- the trails in real life wind all about in squiggly loops and ups and downs that enliven the experience charmingly. The 'official' crossover points are roughly where we've marked them in red, between the shorter Yulee trail with the Scout trail on left side and with the convoluted Expressway trail on the right. We've marked where we think the Fern Gulley probably is with the blue dots near the top, as well as a newer offpath to the southern carpark at the bottom.

Next up: Just a few more casual forest walks as we pack up for WI

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