Descriptions of Places

The Neversink Gorge is surrounded by the gently rolling terrain of the huge, plateau-like shale uplands of Sullivan County, NY. The river cuts steeply through about 600 feet of bedrock, forming a pretty large-scale landform, but it's tucked out of the way in this thinly-populated (except with lakeside cabins), forested area. Where we parked at the top of the gorge, the ground was pretty much flat all around. The forest was dry and open: pitch pines (and maybe red pines?) and scrubby oaks with a low tangle of mountain laurel. There was a lot of wintergreen on the ground. As we walked, the ground gradually began to slope towards the gorge. We dipped into a stream's ravine and saw some hemlocks. Descending into the gorge, things started to get a bit wetter and more diverse, with red and white oaks becoming common, and some other hardwoods mixed in. Towards the bottom, things got quite steep, and all of a sudden there was Rhododendron everywhere. Very near the river, there were s

Shenandoah National Park encompasses a long stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The ridge here is high and relatively flat-topped, with steep sides that rise several thousand feet from the fertile lowlands immediately on their east and west flank. The ridge reaches as high as 4,000 feet in a few places, while the valleys are below 1,000 feet. A section of the Crystalline Appalachian Mountains, the Blue Ridge has many rugged outcrops of  ancient gneiss bedrock on its slopes and summits. Jones Mountain ridge seen from Bluff Mountain The upland area surrounding the main ridgeline varies in thickness from a few miles to about 15 miles.  In general, the farther from the ridgeline, the steeper the slopes. Jones Mountain, where we were camping, is a long offshoot, trailing off to the east towards Graves Mill, VA. It rises steeply from the valleys to Bear Church Rock (3,000 ft) and Bluff Mountain (3,500 ft), and then mellows out into a wide rounded ridge that connects to t