Yesterday was another sunny late-summer day; we drove down to a scenic loop that goes around the plains. The scenery is incredible, and it changes every hour as you drive, one landscape after another: first rolling green hills with groves of trees, then a deep evergreen forest, then the pines give way to tall oaks, then you’re on curvy mountain roads, then you reach a plateu of wild grass with exotic sword-leaf bushes, then green hills again - this time covered with sunlit sheep. And in the background: Mount Doom. Definitely the best drive I’ve been on.