Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: A Day in the Life of Dawn

Recently I spent the day with one of my besties. We both have such busy schedules (her mostly) that we have to plan well in advance in order to “save the date”. And then all our plans changed. But really that’s okay because we just want to hang out, anything else is just icing on the cake.

I picked her up and we headed to the George Washington National Forest, a beautiful drive in the fall.

We drove through Fort Valley and then headed to Woodstock Virginia.

Coming out of George Washington National Forest I had to stop for a picture at Burnside Bridge. I was disappointed that the river was so muddy and I wasn’t able to get a reflection in the still water.

In Woodstock my primary goal was to get pictures of the Pumpkin Heads, something I had planned for the day before but then got called in to work. In the mean time a torrential downpour had occurred and several of the “art pieces” were affected.

For instance, the “woman”in this set up has lost her “head” and all that is left is a pipe.

Right next to the bakery with the “headless woman” is the art gallery, We couldn’t resist stepping inside. I loved this watercolor by local artist (who I do not know) Gary Grant.

The volunteers there that day shared a special project with us in the back of the gallery. I am very excited about The Woodstock Community Mosaic Build Plans, even though at first I was confused as to what I was looking at. Finally my friend said “Picture Charlestown”, and then I got it. I was so glad she was with me that day too.

This is the plans for the finished mosaic scheduled to complete in “3-4 years”.

They have begun the first part and everyone is urged to help with the progress.
MOSAIC PROJECT -RSVP required to attend. Email VECCArts@gmail.com in order to sign up for a specific time/day you would like to help build our community mosaic.

Just to be clear this mosaic is laid out on a table and would require a drone (practically) to photograph it in its entirety. So I photographed parts of it and then flipped them to be more easily understood. This is one of several images.

Then it was back to the Pumpkin Heads. My friend loved this Pooh display.

But I was distracted by this autumn carpet.

There was a man on the porch and I hesitated to get too close so as not to get caught trespassing but then he asked “Isn’t it beautiful?” And I answered “it really is”. “It’s like this every year”, he said “these beautiful leaves that create this beautiful carpet”. I’m glad he didn’t mind sharing his JoY.

And then we were off to find more Pumpkin Heads.
One of my favorites was at the Farm Bureau. If you don’t live in a rural area you might not get this but if you do…well there’s some good advice!

I was really just driving down the road to turn around when I spotted this Ranger Pumpkin Head at the sign for our new county park. While I was out taking pictures someone pulled up behind me and I thought “See I’m not weird, someone else is taking pictures of the Pumpkin Heads” but as it turns out it was a friend I had not seen in several years. She recognized the crazy lady (me) on the side of the road taking pictures of the Pumpkin Heads. I got a really good hug, and then we caught up really fast, as she had someone in her car, and I had someone in mine, and it was cold out there.

We were getting to the point where we were kind of over the pumpkin heads and drove further south down the road. We got to Meems Bottom Covered Bridge but I didn’t take pictures of the bridge I only wanted the road going in.

We drove further south still until we reached New Market Virginia where we stopped at the Jon Henry General Store. There is lots of cool stuff in there like beautiful produce and unique gifts.

I love seeing things repurposed so I thought this “Artomatic” vending machine was pretty cool.

After coming to the conclusion there wouldn’t be any restaurants open in this neighborhood on a Sunday evening we turned around and headed back north.

We got back to Woodstock and laughed at the Beetlejuice pumpkin head who had truly suffered effects of the storm before going into The Spring House for burgers.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: A Day of My Week