The Rest of the Trip

Below this post you will find two of the musings I composed while traveling and before that is the travel diary for my road trip through visiting Tim in DC. I haven't gotten as far as posting pictures yet, but I will soon. Anyways....

I left DC on Thursday heading towards Shennandoah National Park via the REI and Target in Fairfax. The north entrance of the park is a little over an hour's drive from the city due west by freeway. For those unfamiliar with the park, it runs for 104 miles from Front Royal, VA south along the ridgeline of the Shennandoah Valley and was one of the first parks designed with auto touring in mind and thus centers on Skyline Drive which becomes the Blue Ridge Parkway upon leaving the park in the south. My trip there lasted from Thursday through Saturday morning.

Where did I sleep? In a tent, of course. It was not all that rustic as I stayed in the drive-in campground at Big Meadows which is about midway through the park. From here it was pretty easy to do some good hiking. Overall I hiked about 10 miles with a total elevation change in that time in the neighborhood of 6000 feet (up and down or 3000 feet of each). I was that happy post-hike sore when I left to the point of feeling almost immobilized. Some of the sights I saw (in order) were:

Hawksbill Summit: This is the highest point in the park at 4,050 feet. The view was awesome and the breeze felt really good after the hike to get up there. A Peregrine Falcon reestablishment project is currently in process at this site with the goal of reintroducing a viable population back into the area. It was awesome to see the birds soaring in the thermals and to hear their scream as they dove.

Lewis Falls: One of the many falls in the park, actually the third tallest at 81 feet. The hike was all downhill to get there which was great, returning was less fun. Finding the actual overlook for the falls was not exactly easy to do. No mention is made on the sign that you need to cross the creek above the falls to get to the viewpoint which is a really nice platform with flagstone walls.

Rapidian Camp: Camp David was built by FDR as Shangri-La. Before that presidents found their own retreats. Rapidian Camp was built at the orders of Herbert Hoover using Marine labor with materials he paid for. The standard for selecting the site was that it needed to be above 2500 feet (no mosquitos), within 100 miles of DC, and have at least two trout streams nearby. He did the majority of the design and engineering for the site which eventually included 13 buildings. Only 3 now stand including the Brown House where he stayed. It is not very easy to get to and was actually fairly cool.

Blackrock Summit: This is in the southern part of the park and is actually a fairly short hike to the summit. The last part of the way to the peak is a scramble up a pile of granite boulders. Sitting up on top was one of the most relaxing views I found in the park and it was a fun scramble.

The animals of the park were way too docile, especially the deer. One spent more that ten minutes watching me attempt to start a fire (I did succeed in time). Another buck in velvet was walking the roads of the campground being stalked by a 9 or 10 year old boy. I also saw two baby black bears crossing the road.

The part of the park most people see is from the numerous overlooks on Skyline Drive. They're pretty, but the mountains all start looking the same eventually.

I left the park on Saturday heading to Beckley, WV and New River Gorge. I stopped at President Wilson's library and museum. It was underwhelming.

New River Gorge is one of the deeper gorges in the country and has the largest single span arch bridge in the world over it. I stopped at both visitors center and did a short hike at one of the overviews. It was nice, but I was rather tired and decided not to hang around much on Sunday after visiting the bridge so I headed to Cleveland early.

While in Cleveland I visited Cuyahoga National Park which is in the south suburbs between Cleveland and Akron and is a relatively new park where no camping is allowed. There are some pretty cool falls that I stopped to see. Also on the itinerary was the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. It is not cheap to visit here, but I enjoyed it greatly and spent 5 hours there going through all of the exhibits and watching a lot of the video presentations. I actually found what I learned in my History of Rock and Roll class in college useful in going through the museum. If you like Rock, this should be on your visit list.

From here I went home and visited family and friends and spent some time relaxing. I got back to Sheboygan late on Saturday after a total of 2540 miles of driving.