From Washington, D.C. we traveled to Shenandoah National Park. Shenandoah starts at the northern most point of the Blueridge Parkway, and continues for 105 miles along the Blueridge Mountains. The main road, Skyline Dr goes all the way through the park, north to south, with various waysides, visitor centers, campgrounds, and entrance stations spurring off of the main road. There are tons of overlooks to pull over and look at the view. The Appalachian Trail also parallels Skyline Dr for most of the park. High season for this park is in October because the leaves start changing colors. Even though it’s high season, we didn’t have a huge problem getting campground reservations with only a week advanced notice. Even still, there were plenty of campsites available during our stay until Wednesday when apparently lots of campers come into the park and stay through the weekend.
Our first couple days of our stay, the clouds were so low to the ground that it was hard to tell even what we were looking at. Driving felt a bit hazardous. We tried to make the best of the damp and foggy weather and do some hiking anyway. We stayed at Big Meadows campground so we had a decent amount of hiking trails near our campsite in addition to other amenities like a lodge, restaurant, taproom, wayside (with grill), and one of the main visitor centers. Very close by, was Dark Hollow Falls trail that we hiked on our first full day. The trail and parking lot were quite crowded. Most people were not wearing masks despite having to come quite close to others on the trail. The trail is fairly steep with slippery mud and rocks along the way, but the kids were troopers. We were rewarded with an awesome cascading waterfall view.
The next day, based on a 3 day old weather forecast, we drove a bit north to Skyland and the Stony Man hike in the hopes of having a great view of the valley at the end. Unfortunately, we were still very much in a cloud. Our view of the valley was obscured by a completely white cloud. It was a rewarding hike, nevertheless, hiking along part of the Appalachian Trail, and seeing the diversity of the trees, moss, ferns, and mushrooms.
Finally on our 3rd day the cloud level raised and we were able to see the full colors and views of Shenandoah. We hiked from our campground to the visitor center via the Story of the Forest trail to receive the Jr Ranger badges the kids had earned, and then drove around a bit to see some of the views on a clear sky day.
On our 4th day, we packed up and left, taking Skyline Dr all the way to the southern entrance station and continued for 46 miles (of 469) on the Blueridge Parkway. We stopped at various overlooks to look at the view and take a picture or two. The fall colors are already pretty stunning with bright pops of red in a forest of green. Another week or so and the park will look like it’s on fire.
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