Valley Forge National Park and other miscellany

Yesterday Arun and I spent an unusually long time deliberating what to do. Then again, it wasn't really unusual because we hardly ever do anything before noon on weekends. Maybe we had too many options yesterday- back-to-back movies, Valley Forge National Park, Strawberry Mansion Bridge, Ricketts Glen State Park, shopping, lazing around, watching TV at our respective homes etc. We finally went to Valley Forge National Park, watched He's Just Not That Into You and Taken back-to-back and went shopping for a gorgeous black formal dress! I get to go on stage wearing it to introduce The Wharton Follies, the B-school's annual musical for which I am a Producer! I will let Arun write his customary one line reviews about the movies on his blog. In all, it was a Saturday(or half a Saturday technically) well-utilized.

I would describe Valley Forge as a beautiful silhouette. A silhouette it will be, if you go there at 5pm on a winter day when all the historical buildings in the park are closed and you are left to chase a rapidly setting sun and take pictures of lonesome dry trees. However, it was a beautiful day, much warmer than the past week. And the snow, yet to melt, covered the place in glittering white sheets.

The sun setting behind the National Memorial Arch. Picture: Arun (obviously...)

Lonesome tree. Picture: Arun of course

Sunset... Picture: Arun again!

The place is great to get uninterrupted views of sunset. There are vast expanses of plain land set against clear blue skies painted in shades of orange, red and pink for an hour or so before the sun goes down. Unfortunately, there are not many elevated points and the sun disappeared a little too fast for Arun to get as many good pictures as he would have liked. There was a resplendent full moon which kept weaving in and out of soft moving clouds. The light was not good enough for us to get a good picture with all the colors visible. But even Arun admitted that no picture could really capture the beauty in its entirety. It was a package deal- the moon, shining snow, twilight blue, Spring approaching!

In other attractions, we did catch sight of many white-tailed deer. Every time we stopped the car to get a close shot, the deer would nimbly prance away at the sound of the window being lowered. So we got many pictures of vacant grass (with a smiling deer that just dashed past) instead. Arun spotted a red fox too when I was busy examining a map.

We might go to Valley Forge once more to check out a couple of the hiking trails and to do some biking. Of course we've promised ourselves that we will get there earlier in the day when there is enough light to get good pictures. A second trip should be completely worth it, for I suspect that the place will be unrecognizable in Spring when the trees are in bloom again!