Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park gets a lot of visitors every year, in large part due to the fact that it is only 70 miles away from DC and the large population centers around there. This is especially seen in their weekend visitors, since it's a pretty easy weekend trip down. Even though we were there off season, when we arrived on Sunday evening the park was swamped.

The main "attraction" in the park is Skyline Drive, a beautiful winding 105 mile road down a ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had always thought that the Blue Ridge Mountains were a specific mountain range, but it is, in fact, an entire region of Appalachia. Or as wikipedia terms it: a physiographic province. Also - John Denver led us astray, they are predominantly in Virginia, not West Virginia. As is the Shenandoah River.

Nicerthannew.com

The views down Skyline Drive is stunning and there are tons of look out along the road to take in the sprawling views in either direction.

There are over 75 overlooks down the length of the road to stop and take in the view, which is amazing in both directions. 

There were also more hikes than we could possibly do, but we did do a sampling of the variety. The Appalachian Trail runs the entire length of the hike so we did a few miles on that. There were also tons of great hikes up to peaks with great 360 degree views. 

We also did a really nice hike down to look at some waterfalls. The waterfalls were not the most impressive that we've seen but it was a really nice hike through the woods and along a stream. 

 

Our main constraint on this park was where to stay. There are a lot of lodging options within the park, but unfortunately most of the camp grounds were closed for the season, leaving the more expensive lodge as the main option. The one campground that was open was a fairly reasonable $20 a night, but we decided to pass and drive out of the park for a free spot. We did Make use of their coin ops showers and laundry though. They were great facilities that apparently often used by AT through-hikers. So far this has been one of our favorite parks, largely because of the variety of things to do and see here.