Summer of 21 - #8 - Shenandoah National Park

May 4th, 2021

Today we were going to Shenandoah National Park. The link gives you more information on the park. 

We started at the Front Royal North Entrance and were going to drive as much of the Skyline Drive as we had time to do, allowing for stops along the way.  I anticipated we would get about half of the drive accomplished today. The website says "The Skyline Drive runs 105 miles north and south along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park and is the only public road through the park.  It takes about 3 hours to travel the entire length of the park on a clear day."  It would take us 40 minutes to get to the entrance to the park from the campground and at least the same amount of time to get back from wherever we decided to exit the park.  There were only 3 entrances/exits in the 105 miles.

This map shows the length of the drive.  We are starting at the top.

There are 75 scenic overlooks along the drive. I had done some research and found out which ones were the best, although we ended up just stopping wherever we thought was a good place.

As we got higher it got cloudier but the view was still amazing.

Some of the wildlife that is here.

We reached Thornton Gap Entrance/Exit Station, it's 107 miles to Washington D.C. It's on our bucket list and was going to be this year, but with the virus and volatility in the country at the moment we are postponing until things settle down.  We'd covered 32 miles.  There are caverns you can explore nearby at Luray but as we just explored a cave recently we continued on. 

We're going to stay on Skyline Drive

Ah-ha, a tunnel ahead, we knew it was there as we had seen height restriction warnings.

It wasn't very long.

Marys Rock Tunnel

We stopped at an overlook after going through the tunnel to take some pictures. This was one of my favourite stops, although it was just a few rocks. I guess the child came out in me as we had been in the car for a while and I just wanted to climb!!! I know you can't really call this climbing but you know what I mean!!

There's the tunnel we just drove through.

Gorgeous views

That was an interesting 15 minutes but we had more driving to do. We decided to stop and have our lunch, there was a picnic area but we drove past as we wanted to avoid people!! We found Stony Man Overlook which had a large parking area and good views. We sat and ate our lunch and then took some pictures.  It was cloudy up here but some patches of blue sky were trying to peek through.

There was a restroom through the trees but a sign said it was closed.

We continued with our drive.  I wanted to get to Big Meadows Visitor Centre which was about halfway through the drive.  We were both getting tired and the scenery, although beautiful, was much of the same. I had read that there was a field of lovely spring flowers at the visitor centre which reviews said were lovely. The picture below shows what was the field of spring flowers!!! I guess we were too late. I didn't feel too bad as there was another couple standing looking at this "naked" expanse and they too had been looking forward to the flowers.

We decided we had seen enough and continued the drive to the Swift Run Gap Entrance/Exit Station.  This was just past the 65 mile marker. We left the park and started the drive home.  

To be fair to the park, there are many trails that you can do, some to waterfalls, some up mountains, but our main aim was to do as much of the drive as possible, and the waterfall hikes were probably to strenuous for us anyway. 

The clouds came in fast and there was a severe weather warning for potential flooding. 

It was bumper to bumper traffic for a long while as everyone was driving very slowly(crawling) due to the torrential rain. We must have been in that mess for an hour!!! Eventually the road cleared as if nothing had happened. We stopped to get Burger King and they were out of everything!! Oh boy, we will figure something out when we get home, ha!!ha!!

Thankfully the rain stopped, we wondered what our site would look like when we got back as the creek is right behind us and we had read they sometimes have flash flooding!!!

There was an interesting bank of cloud low on the mountains in the distance.

I'm not sure why but the cloud fascinated me!!

We got home safe and sound.  The campground wasn't flooded thankfully but there were a few big puddles!!

Here is a map showing our route for today.  It shows 190 miles and estimated time 4 hours 34 minutes. That was a lot of driving and remember it took a lot longer because of the many stops we made along the way and the traffic delay on the way home because of the torrential rain. It was an exhausting day, especially for Bryan who did all the driving.