I never did find that perfectly pleasant spot--chiefly because it was so blasted GLOOMY. Though it threatened rain all day long and never got aroung to it, it still delivered a thick mist (that crept over everything I felt INCLINED to paint as soon as the notion popped into my little head). However, I DID find some interesting wildlife (with some variation regarding the term "wild"). The first one I found was, ironically, a large snail, sitting rather stupidly in the middle of the parking lot. While in the exhausting process of saving its life, I took the opportunity to snag a lot of pictures of it. Here are a few:
You might think I'm mental for taking pictures of a snail, but I LIKE them! I think they're CUTE. I even have a pet aquatic one. (His name is Ned Schneebly; he's tank mates with my goldfish, Dewey Finn, haha.)
The second one kind of gave me the creeps. I was gingerly tiptoing out to the edge of one of the outlooks along the Blue Ridge Parkway when I happened to look down. This is what I saw:
Needless to say, it did NOT give me the warm fuzzies on the inside. As soon as I had snapped a few wary shots of it, its brother/sister/mother/whatever suddenly showed up right next to it, and I dashed back to the safety of my car. As Falstaff (and my mother) would say, "Discretion is the better part of valour."
The last and I think most exciting thing I saw today were a couple of butterflies flitting across a grassy median. A large bemused-looking guy was mowing the median at the time (cutting down all the butterflies' flowers), so in between passes of the machine I skipped out there and got pictures of one of them. I thought at the time that they must be Viceroys, because I didn't know Monarchs came over the Easterly way at all, but then I saw a sign discussing the Monarchs' migratory habits so I realized this was the "real" thing! I was pretty pumped.
This butterfly here must have been used to the camera; it was quite patient with me as I (unnecessarily) sweet-talked it into staying on its flower:
