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| New River Gorge Bridge |
In June I took road trip up to New England. I had a work trip in Massachusetts, but on either side of that I took leave and used the time to explore some areas and visit family and friends. While on the drive north I had several spots picked out to stop, the first being New River Gorge National Park.
This was one of the few national parks in eastern U.S. that I had not been to. All of these photos were taken with my cellphone, and the extensive smogginess you see in the landscape shots is from the wildfires in Canada that were still quite severe at the time.
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| green tunnel along the endless wall trail |
One of the trails I hiked was the Endless Wall Trail, which leads through some beautiful hemlock groves to the cliffs overlooking the river valley for stunning views.
Just like everywhere else in the southern Appalachians, hemlocks here have been hit hard with hemlock woolly adelgid. The NPS has chosen to combat it in select groves (tree-by-tree direct injected treatment is the only method). These hemlocks are stunning, and it's nice to see some groves relatively intact in the south. The only hemlocks I see in SC and NC are dead or dying saplings, with most or all of the canopy trees dead.
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| a beautiful view of the New River |
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| The historic mill at Babcock State Park, adjacent to the National Park |
