Sky Meadows is a beautiful state park, about 20 miles west of us and just south of Paris (Virginia). This is a great place for hiking and for seeing beautiful things, so we've spent a lot of time here. There are trails that go up a big hill and my favorite trail is the one that goes straight up the hill without going through the woods. It gives you a vantage point on some really beautiful scenery. And did I mention that Sky Meadows uses organic, self-propelled lawn mowers to maintain the grass in their fields?

What's different this time is that I'm not carrying a camera bag with one of my many digital cameras. Instead, I'm carrying my tiny DMC-ZS20 in a belt pouch, in quick-draw mode. The ZS20 makes an ideal camera for hikers -- it's tiny, it has a 20X zoom lens, starting at 24mm equiv, and it takes very high quality images.

What's also different is the unusual lighting of this day. It's sunny and foggy at the same time. And it's also a beautiful day at the end of autumn, with plenty of fall colors still waiting to be photographed.

So let's trek up the hill at Sky Meadows and see what we can find..

Some technical notes: All shots were taken with my Panasonic DMC-ZS20. They're all JPEGs. Post processing was done with LightZone 3.