Wide Angle Wednesday ~ Landscape

Bit tricky finding a suitable spot at our place for a landscape photo to meet this week's WidWed challenge. In the Summer we are ringed by heavily leafed trees and can't see the view for them. The Winter is another story - in the Winter we can watch cars going by on the road below us. Anyhoo - I went down to the bottom of the driveway where I knew there actually would be something of a wide view. This is facing west. The blue mountain just peeking up over that green ridge is part of the - yes! - Blue Ridge Mountains. I guess they're actually part of the Appalachians? Whatever. If you hike the Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine, well over 2000 miles, you would hike along the tops of those mountains over there, sort of. #2 Son, actually, did the whole trail in 1997, when he was not yet quite 19 - in under three months (the usual is at least six). The Husband did the Georgia to Virginia stretch in... 2000? I don't remember exactly. He was gone for about two and a half months. And in both cases, I was the one at home sending boxes of food to various Post Offices the hikers could easily access from the trail to resupply themselves. Some people just buy food along the way, which is perfectly doable but perhaps more time consuming, involving getting off the trail and going shopping instead of just to the nearby Post Office. But anyway - that has nothing much to do with this view. The place where I'm standing is the bottom of our property. Across the street is our neighbors' much fancier and bigger place. They actually live in some lovely Northern California town (Los Gatos maybe? I don't remember), but bought this place a number of years ago and appear basically every Spring and every Fall for a few weeks to enjoy the truly lovely weather we often have then, and then run back to their California life when it gets too hot, or too cold for them. Must be nice. Meanwhile, there is *staff* that keeps this place mowed and the fences mended and the hay baled, etc. I heard the sound of the riding mower down there today, so I think it's been tidied in honor of its being immortalized on Blip. HA! I do have to say that one of the nicest things about their enormous house up there on the hill - built by someone three owners back if I remember correctly - is that we can't see it from our house, even when the leaves are off the trees! Brilliant. Now that I think about it, I should probably have climbed their fence and plodded all the way up there for my landscape shot. They have some amazing 360 degree views... Oh well. Maybe another time!