Blue Ridge--let's get going

This picture shows Loretta, mostly hidden, along the Green Rock Trail, the only trail we actually walked on the whole trip. (One thing we want to do the next time is walk several more trails.) This one runs less than a mile, but does get steep toward the end. We enjoyed all but the stair-step part, which got to Loretta's arthritis.

I feel a need to speed this story along somewhat. These pictures give an idea of what we drove though on most of the first day on the Parkway.

I'll put in one more picture here.

We spent the night at Otter Creek Campground, one of the nicest parts of the Parkway for us. A restaurant sits beside the Parkway, with the campground behind it. One section accommodates RVs, the other tent campers. We enjoyed our site; it had quiet, a nice tent section, good picnic table, plenty of room for a camp fire, and easy-to-use parking and access. Here's a picture of Loretta on our site.

Blue Ridge--finally on the Parkway

So we woke up in the morning pretty well rested. We decided to take a look at the "history of farming" museum before finally tackling the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The museum is located next to the freeway (I-81) about half a mile from the exit. They have a couple of kennels for dogs; this came in handy, because Lil (or any dog) is not allowed in the farm part. We noticed the sound (and sometimes the sight) of the traffic during the first part of the tour. Once we turned away from the freeway, the rest of the museum gave us interesting, quiet sights. I particularly liked the Irish farm.

At one point, a little stone bridge crosses a tiny creek. We took each other's picture on the bridge.

Having seen enough history of farming, we headed back to Waynesboro and the beginning of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Parkway strikes me as being like a great Sunday drive in the country that goes on for 469 miles. It includes plenty of scenic overlooks, and we stopped at several of them until we realized that we just did not have enough time for all of them. Even with a little restraint, we probably took the time for at least forty of the overlooks, taking pictures at most of them.

Blue Ridge--back to the fun part

So we took a nice long break and several pictures at the West Virginia/Virginia state line, which has a turnout.



We headed down the grade rested and in a better mood. Based on the map, I felt certain that we had no more than five miles left to drive in the steep grades. Actually, we had only one more long downhill of about three miles, not as twisty and probably at no more than 6%. That morning, a 6% grade would have intimidated me. After the previous thirty or forty miles, I felt relief at the relative ease of that last run. Once we reached the bottom of that ridge, we found more familiar terrain similar to western West Virginia. That is, we had not left the mountains but we had crossed the crest and reached less hostile terrain.

Route 33 runs smoothly to Harrisonburg, Virginia, where we stopped for food, fuel and a choice. We decided that we had seen enough of US 33 and that we could skip 40 miles of Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park to which it leads. Instead, we took I-64 to Waynesboro and visited the trailhead of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We asked about local campgrounds at the visitor information stand, and the nice lady there referred us to the 340 Campground at Staunton. We found it clean, comfortable and quiet. When I find my notes, I'll edit this to add the price. I think it might have cost $22, a good rate.

We noticed four separate parties with motorcycles in the campground. The number of motorcyclists on all parts of the Parkway provided one of the suprises of this trip.

Unable to use the bed frame, we decided to use the plywood and mattress in the tent and simply pile it all on top of everything else when we left, leaving everything else except the pottie in the minivan except when we were using it. That worked very well, and we slept well that night.