When we left New Orleans, we drove up to Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Mountains of Virginia. I read about Shenandoah in Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, where he said it’s one of the most beautiful places on the Appalachian Trail.
Here’s Dan at the campsite:
The weather was mostly perfect, except for some rain the second night we were there. We hid in the car for the worst of it, but that didn’t even last an hour. We had just made jiffy pop, so we just watched it come down.
From a walk:
We did get to meet a through-hiker, who was on his way walking from Maine’s Mt. Katahdin down to Springer Mountain in Georgia. He hoped to finish by the end of October.
Shenandoah is shaped like a long strip. It was intended as a motorist’s destination when they designed the park, so there’s a hundred-mile long road with over 70 viewpoints to stop at.
Of course, we prefer to walk, so we drove to a couple spots for hikes while we were there.
One of the spots, surprisingly, had a fast electric vehicle charging station. When we pulled up, a bride walked up with her bridesmaids, all lining up to walk into the wedding ceremony.
On that walk, one of the first things we saw was a little hobbit house.
(We actually could hear some kind of water pump inside)
We walked up a trail to the “Little Stony Man” and the “Big Stony Man,” with rocky promenades for viewing pastoral Virginia.
Back at our campsite, this is me cooking a luxurious breakfast of eggs, hashbrowns, and pork chops. We had to use it up!
What a great park.
- stephen