Pinnacles Dedication, Spring Flowers and Wonder

There are a few random things I wanted to post about, but none of them really warranted their own post.

Saturday, we went to the re-dedication of Pinnacles Research and Stewardship Center in Shenandoah National Park. Old Rag Mountain Stewards have had training there a few times. The building is one of the original Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) buildings in the park and was in pretty rough shape the last time we did training there. The restoration effort was recently completed and it is a pretty amazing transformation. 

 

 The outside of the renovated Pinnacles. You can see the condition before the renovation here.

Inside the center. The pictures are of the CCC camp that was on the site of Pinnacles.

After the dedication, we intended to do a little bit of hiking, but the weather was pretty terrible. I took a few photos of flowers and we decided to head home.

Trillium grandiflorum (Giant Trillium)

The Appalachian Trail in the clouds near Pinnacles Picnic Area

Dogwoods along the Drive

 Clematis occidentalis (Purple Virgins Bower)

Asarum canadense (Wild Ginger)

And now for something completely different:  We went to see Wonder, an exhibit at the Renwick Gallery near the White House a couple of weeks ago. The exhibit had about 10 large scale sculptures and was just fantastic. 

This sculpture was made by casting a living hemlock in plaster. Then the artist used the cast to recreate the tree with small chips of cedar. It was suspended horizontally from the ceiling. This is looking down the length of it.

A rainbow made from colored string.

 This one reminded me of rock formations out west. It is made from styrofoam cups and index cards. I think this was my favorite, but they were all pretty cool.