Heh... Thurmond's always a great spot to visit, regardless of the weather.
I grew up just a few miles from Thurmond, and I still live just about 5-6 air mile from the town and the New River Gorge in general. Growing up as a kid in the 1950s and 1960s, June was always a hot month and it also the month when the older "family" members would come to visit. This usually meant meeting them at the train depot at Prince. The next day our visiting relatives always "demanded" a visit to Thurmond. Thurmond was their "Mecca", the place where they paid their respects to what remained of the town and its ancient railroad infrastructure. They'd all lived in Thurmond during the early 1900s through the 1920s, as spouses or children of C&O railroad workers stationed in or working out Thurmond. To them, railroading @ Thurmond hadn't been just a family occupation, it was a spiritual experience.
Down in the gorge, the morning fog usually burned off fairly early in the morning and by 9 a.m. or so, they'd turned into low, thin strips of "clouds" that floated a few hundred few above the bottom of gorge, a few hundred feet below the top of the surrounding mountains. By 10 a.m. all traces of the morning's fog were gone, and the sky had turned a beautiful shade of deep blue. Usually, by 11 a.m. or so you could feel the temps and humidity growing, and notice a few clouds forming above directly above the gorge, and typically after noon, you'd experience a brief, light rain that lasted only a few minutes. Often times, Mother Nature would repeat this cycle of "tension and release" throughout the day.
At any rate, does this hazy shot from Thurmond looks more hot and "summery" and the 2nd one looks "colder" (due to lack of haze?) Dunno...
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