Doughton Park

by

Beautiful Doughton Park on The Blue Ridge Parkway and Mountain Man


Liatrisflowers

Liatris Flowers at Doughton Park             30″x40″     $2425.00

Prints available on paper or canvas  at             KENDALL KESSLER ART

540-257-3437

My Artwork

Another beautiful park in the Blue Ridge Parkway is Doughton Park which is a 6,000-acre landscape of lovely meadows and pioneer cabins near Sparta, North Carolina.

My husband really gets around on his journeys to study birds and butterflies and I especially liked our excursion to this site.  The Liatris flowers are stunning and I really took off with the colors for this painting!

The park has 30 miles of hiking trails through pastures, valleys, and along streams.  It is one of the best places on the parkway to view wildlife including white-tailed deer, raccoons, red and gray foxes and bobcats.

In addition to the gorgeous Liatris flowers, flame azalea and rhododendron bloom in the late spring.  Guided nature walks and craft demonstrations are offered in the summer season.

The two pioneer cabins are the Brinegar Cabin(ca.1885) and the one-room Caudill Cabin(ca.1985).  Other structures were lost in the great flood of 1916.

 

BRswirlcopyrightBlue Ridge Swirl      Original Painting has been sold

Prints on paper or canvas available at       KENDALL KESSLER ART

Life with the Bird and Word Man – Clyde Kessler

My husband is from Franklin County which is famous for moon shine and a creek that is named after all the fighting among the mountain people.  The first time I traveled the road along Shooting Creek I thought the named referred to the flowing water down the mountain.

Clyde Kessler is one of the most knowledgeable people I have ever known.  He is well-educated and read an entire set of encyclopedias when he was a child.  His great-great uncle George Kessler is one of the three founders of Ferrum College.

Still, he is technically a mountain man and has a beard and a moustache.  On one of his excursions to study bird and butterfly populations with friends from Blacksburg, VA  he had gone off a little ways from the group and someone came up to one of his friends to say he had seen a real mountain man!  I’m sure he meant someone that lived in a cabin with a gun.   What else could the friend say but yes you did!