I arrived at Shenandoah National Park at dawn this morning and set up my tripod and camera with a 70-200mm lens to capture the sky and mountains before the sun appeared.  There were lots of White-tailed Deer along Skyline Drive. Most of the deer don’t mind cars pulling up alongside of them, they just continue eating their breakfast.  Even though I had a large telephoto lens with me, the deer were so close I just left the 70-200mm lens on to take this deer’s photo.

I was here at the park a couple of weeks ago trying to visit Rose River Falls but was diverted to Whiteoak Canyon Falls. Today, I was able to get to the Rose River Falls after a nice hike down from Skyline Drive and used a 24-70mm lens to capture part of the 67′ falls.

It was a very warm day (75 degrees) with sunny skies and a lot of folks were in the park hiking around.  Along the trail I found a couple of early flowers in bloom, including the Hepaticas below.

Before leaving the park, I decided to walk up to the summit of Hawksbill Mountain. I had not made this hike before. Hawksbill is the highest peak in Shenandoah National Park at 4,050′.  The views are great from the stone observation platform, which was filled with park visitors today.  The photograph below shows the rock at the summit which is called greenstone, created from ancient lava flows.