Virginia

SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK
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Shenandoah National Park: Virginia
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Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

	Leaving the city behind, we headed for the Blue Ridge Mountains, John Denver wafting from the stereo.  When we arrived at Shenandoah National Park, the sunset had cast purple, pink and blue hues and shadows over the otherwise forest green capped mountains and valleys.   We camped about 50 miles south of the Front Royal Entrance Station to the Park, on Skyline Drive at Matthews Arm Campground – a very remote and woodsy campground.  One would think it would be nice and quiet and still; well it was, sort of.  Every evening, from sun-down until first light, the Virginia woods are alive with crickets and frogs chirping and singing their little heads off at surprisingly loud decibels for such tiny critters.  We would not say they create a deafening roar, as that would be exaggerating a bit, but they certainly do make quite a racket unless and until you get used to them.   And, then there are the mosquitoes and black flies, which are constantly buzzing around you.  

But, the bugs aside, Shenandoah National Park is very beautiful.   Only about 2 1/2 hours West of D.C. and an hour ½ from Richmond, it provides the perfect weekend getaway and has since it became a national park in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  Prior to it becoming a park, in the 1700s and 1800s, quite a few homesteaders made their homes and livelihood on farms throughout the mountains, having been pushed out of the ever-crowding valleys below on either side (and before them, Native Americans had made the mountains their home).  Then there were a few entrepreneurial folks, like Mr. Pollack, who built the Skyland Resort, hoping to attract middle-class vacationers.  

Although Skyland and a number of other historical sites have been preserved in the park, most of the farms were abandoned either before (due to harsh weather and soil conditions which made it hard to survive on the farms) or at the time that the park was designated as part of the National Park System.  By this point, deer, bears and many other wild animals had been virtually driven out of the area.  So, in 1936, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched an experiment, the first of its kind, where he ordered the park service to let nature reclaim nearly all of the farms and buildings that had been built on the land in the prior years (as you drive and hike through the park, you can see the remains of fences and houses from old homesteads poking up through the trees).  This experiment was so successful, that the whitetail deer, black bears, and many other wild animals now roam free and plentiful in the park.  In fact, a few parts of the park have since been designated National Wildnerness areas, which are even more protected than parks.

After spending our first night at Matthews Arm, we decided to backpack in the second night.  We chose a 9.8 mile circuit in the Southern end of the park (just about 15 miles north of the Southern entrance) – Riprap Trail to Chimney Rock to Wild Cat Ridge to the Appalachian Trail.  We obtained a free backcountry permit from a ranger at the Big Meadows Visitor Center (you can get these from any of the visitor centers, park headquarters and/or the ranger and entrance stations) and got underway.   We hiked for almost 2 hours and nearly four miles, had some great views from the ridge, and found a great camping site by a swimming hole and a small stream down in the hollow – Riprap Hollow to be exact (Riprap apparently means broken rock, which there was a lot of on the hike).  Although we could not have a campfire, we did some much needed (grin) reading and relaxing, followed by what Mike would refer to as a delicious Mountain House dinner of chicken and rice, had some tea, set camp, and went to bed and got some much needed sleep for what proved to be a three hour, 5.8 mile hike nearly all up hill the following morning.  Our only distraction along the way, other than the beautiful scenery, was the black bear Mike spied through the trees.  Although this occupied our thoughts for a while, we were back to thinking about the steep uphill in no time.  Needless to say, we were exhausted and hungry when we got off the trail, and we were about an hour and a half drive from Richmond.
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