Shenandoah National Park 6/11/08

What a wonderful day we had in the Shenandoahs! We camped at the Big Meadows campground and woke up too early to get breakfast from the lodge or wayside, so we ate granola bars and Pecan Sandie cookies in the parking lot of Milam Gap. Then we began our hike down the Appalachian Trail about 7:30am. It was a beautiful trail of green as we headed uphill (I really don’t like uphills!). We finally came to the top where we saw a beautiful overlook. From here on out it was pretty much downhill to Rapidan Camp which is also Camp Hoover. When we reached the intersection, we turned left onto Laurel Prong Trail which was a little steep and rocky but at least it was downhill. On both sides of the trail, the mountain laurel bushes were almost in full bloom and it was a wonderful sight to see. We also so flowers like fly poison, beardtongue, and columbine. As we came to sharp curves, or thickets, Don would start singing (using lyrics that he made up) or we would start having loud conversations so we wouldn’t startle any bears. It must have worked because we never came across any.

When we arrived at Rapidan, the park workers were gathered to work on trail maintenance and the caretaker of the camp, who was off duty, offered to open the President’s house for us and gave us a tour of it and the prime minister’s cabin. I was thrilled because we had been here many times and only peaked in the windows. It was amazing how simple The Brown House was. They called it this because they lived in the White House in Washington DC and had a Red House in London so we were told this was a little “Hoover humor.” They couldn’t put down any of the Native American rugs though because the mice would chew them up. There were only 8 original pieces of furniture in the house but the others were either made or bought at flea markets or ebay as replicas of what was shown in pictures. After eating a little lunch of triscuits and cheese, we headed back to our car. Luckily it was only about a 2 mile uphill walk.

When we arrived back to our camp we made a snack of Ramen noodles and rested for about an hour before deciding to do a little more hiking. We ended up doing the Limberlost Trail and the Stony Man Nature Trail which brought our daily mileage to about 12 miles. I was truly ready for our hamburger dinners at the Wayside by 6pm. On the way back to our campsite, we saw a bear on the side of the road. I wondered if it would wander into the campground and noticed that the ranger kept driving through the campground every 15 minutes. It was all I could do to stay away for darkness to hit (I didn’t want to look like an old woman and go to bed while it was still night out!) so we finally went to bed as soon as it got dark. About 3am though, I did hear a barred owl hooting until it finally got an answer from another one. It was kind of magical to fall asleep to that.