Our 5-day, 4-night sojourn at James River State Park is now regretfully over. It was a very nice trip.

The park sign is always a thrilling sight. The drive took around 3 hours even with some detours for gas, a cash machine, and lunch. (There are no cash machines in Rougemont or Southern Roxboro, apparently.)

The cabin was very much like the one we stayed at in Occoneechee, with a couple of minor improvements. Same nice back porch with rocking chairs:

and great view from the back:

But this cabin had a massive 4-burner-wide gas grill and keyless entry (you typed in part of your reservation number into a keypad to unlock the door). This meant no exciting shoeless lockouts like we experienced at Fairy Stone.

The cabin circle was more treeless and subdivisiony than others we’ve been to. This is a very new park, so a certain immaturity of the landscaping is to be expected, but once our neighbors showed up on Friday afternoon, we could no longer leave the side window blinds open without worrying about whether we were properly attired for public view.

The cabins are all along an oval road with a huge raised grassy area in the middle. There’s a walking path along the outside of the grass dotted with picnic tables and charcoal grills, and part of the center has this neat little gravel garden.

The cabin interior was exactly like the Occoneechee cabin. Well-furnished and comfortable.

We did a lot of hiking. The trails are all multi-use, for hiking, mountain biking, and equestrian use. This park is clearly extremely popular with the horsey crowd. The trails were often churned up quite a bit by hooves, and I have never stepped over, around and in so much horse poop in my life. It actually wasn’t that awful, but I was beginning to wonder if the park had recently been visited by the Incontinent Horse Fanciers Association of America (the horses being incontinent, not the fanciers). We did not spot any bike poop, so I cannot say how popular the trails are with mountain bikers.

Despite the horse leavings, the trails were very nice, by and large. There are 3 large ponds in the park, as well as a trail along the James River, and we tried to hit all the interesting spots.

The park map scale was a bit off and the trails weren’t always well-blazed, so we spent a fair amount of time like this, saying, “Where the heck are we again???”

There were lots of flowers.

And an amazing number of butterflies. I think this is a zebra swallowtail.

The best view was the famous Tye River Overlook, from which you can see the Tye River flowing into the James. (The Tye is the river in the center middle here, and the James is flowing horizonally, mostly hidden by trees). Apparently the view is so popular, people get married up here.

Here we are after our hike to the overlook.

If we look tired, it’s from lack of sleep. Miranda handled the trip extremely well in most respects. She was quiet on the drives to and from the park aside from the occasional indignant meow, and she adjusted very well to the cabin; after around four hours she was out and about, trying to climb up on the fireplace mantel and exploring her new domain. However, around midnight every night (sometimes earlier), she would begin howling disconsolately in the living room. We would call her to the bedroom for snuggles, thinking she was lonely, and about 5 minutes later she’d jump off the bed and start wandering around, caterwauling again. It got to the point where we had to lock her in the spare bedroom (with her food, litterbox, and bed), close our bedroom door, and run the bathroom fan, just to drown out the noise enough to get some sleep. Arg. At least she ate well. And the pet fee was cheaper than vet boarding.

Aside from hiking, we hung out and read, played Scrabble (Jag won, boohoo), and I knitted and spun. It was mostly overcast and often very windy, but it never rained til Sunday.

The wind was so fierce it blew some of my roving right off the back of the chair where I thought I had it tied securely. Luckily it stuck to the door frame and didn’t float off into the woods. NONE SHALL PASS THE MAGIC WOOL BARRICADE.

On vacation I started a cardigan from Wendy Bernard’s new book, Custom Knits. After 3+ years of knitting, my first cables! I don’t know how I’ve managed to avoid them this long, but I’m pretty happy with how this sweater is going. I guess fair isle is the last big knitting skill I have yet to try.