Shenendoah National Park

                 

The next stop on our West Virginia weekend trip took us up into Virginia to Shenendoah National Park.  This stop was incredibly spontaneous and is perhaps one of my favorites for this reason. Initially, we had planned on staying the night somewhere, and then heading up towards the panhandle and Berkeley Springs State Park, but then that night at dinner, I was checking the map for unique things to do, and I realized just how close I was to Shenendoah.  If you have spent much time here on this blog or know me, you realize just how much I love National Parks.  It is actually on my bucket list to travel to every national park in the country.  So when I realized that I was only an hour or so from a park that I had never been to before, we immediately set to work in changing our plans.  We stayed the night in the nearby town of Stockton, and then that morning got up and headed towards Shenendoah.  

Usually, when I head to a park, I like to research and find out the best things to see, but with this trip it was all incredibly spontaneous and we just decided to see where we ended up.  For this reason, when we arrived, we weren't exactly sure what to do.  We drove until we saw that we were in the park and happened upon a visitor center entrance.  We got my passport cancellation stamp and asked the ranger there which way we should go, and she instructed us to just drive.  It is called the Skyline Drive, and you just drive through these mountains and this breathtaking scenery.  There are little overlooks and areas to get out and look around all up and down the drive, as well as several trail heads that we saw.  We drove about halfway up and then visited a visitor center before you could exit off of the drive and onto a main road.  

It was such an amazing experience and I am so glad that we got to do this together. 

A tip for driving the skyline drive is to make sure that you have drinks and plenty of gas in your car before you head out.  There are very very few places to stop.  I also would love to go back and hike a few trails if anyone knows of any good ones.  I think that this would also be a great place to ride bikes, I would love to do it from one end to the other.