Ooh, hiking pics! And mushrooms! And you're back on LJ! Yay! :D

I remember how much it blew my mind to learn how the Appalachians (and other east coast mountain systems) used to be so much larger than they are today--even bigger than the Himalayas, apparently. There are scratch marks on top of my local mountains (not Appalachians, but still) that give a hint at how insane some of the glaciers during the ice age were, and then it makes you wonder at how incomprehensibly old things are...