Night Sky over the Fenton Inn

Being in the mountains at 2000 ft elevation we can enjoy beautiful views of the night sky. Just another night  we had a very clear night sky  with a new moon, the stars, Jupiter and its four moons that were on display for our guests that brought with them a high powered telescope and knowledge of the night sky.

Jupiter was up directly over head as the night sky slowly darkened.  As much fun as the telescope was, the reclining chairs and the high powered binoculars were ever better.  I was surprised how many different satellites were passing over head each night, invisible with out the binoculars.  Most of the suburban and urban world has too much light pollution to see many stars and most days people are so busy with life to take the time to look up from their phones to take in the night sky.

The telescope set up to view the moons of Jupiter.  Being at medieval village, I couldn't help but think about the first views of the universe with the discovery of curved lenses.  Suddenly the inventions of the telescope and microscope showed the universe was vast beyond our grasp, and made up of parts smaller than we could imagine. 

Even in our high tech age, the light from a distant star, that traveled for a million years to get to this spot, is still exciting to see.

Natural Bridge

The journey to the Natural Bridge from the Fenton Inn.

Considered one of the natural wonders of Virginia, the aptly named Natural Bridge is just a hour drive from the Fenton Inn.  Two centuries ago, when the Blue Ridge Mountains were the frontier of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson bought the land with this unusual stone pass through.  It was about a two days journey from his Lynchburg estate, Poplar Forest.  The Natural Bridge would remain in private hands until just last year, when the park service bought the land.  Earlier attempts as a profitable roadside attraction had struggled in recent decades, in spite of laser light shows and even a wax museum.  All that is gone, leaving the short walk through the woods to a rocky canyon and the pathway to the natural bridge, a bit more natural than before.

A Monacan Indian village has been built upstream from the Natural Bridge, and helps visitors to see the wigwams and farming that would have been in this area.  The Monacans believed the Natural Bridge formed after they were cornered by their enemies and the rocks opened up to allow their escape, much like the parting of the Red Sea. 

The Monacan long house using Tulip Poplar bark and bent saplings for the frame.  With a single fire inside, the entire village could keep warm in winter.

 A view of the waterfall at the end of the canyon and where our pathway ends. 

Back in the days of black powder muskets and cannons, the success of a battle might hinge on having a good supply of bat poo.  Though technically it is from the bat urine.  Bats eat insects and have a very high protein diet, putting more nitrogen in their waste.  These salts when mixed with carbon from charcoal and sulfur make black powder.  Original recipes in the middle ages for black powder used human waste, preferably from a wine drinking monk.  So compared to this, the switch to bat droppings was down right sanitary as well as significantly more powerful for your cannons.

An unnatural bridge at Natural Bridge, that takes you to the bat caves.