Blogs from Front Royal, Virginia, United States, North America

On Tuesday, October 19, 2010, we crossed the Potomac River on US 340 en route to North Fork Resort in Front Royal VA. Front Royal was selected for its location at the northern entrance to the Shenandoah National Park. Skyline Drive, Shenandoah’s scenic roadway, follows the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains southward for 105 miles. There it joins the Blue Ridge Parkway which stretches 469 miles to the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Our plan was to migrate south as the leaves changed and to enjoy the colors of fall for the entire trip to northern GA - erroneously believing that the turning of the leaves was mostly latitude-dependent. In fact, leaf color changes are much more altitude-dependent! I didn’t want to drag the Pilgrim along 574 miles of ridgeline and to ... read more

Wednesday, Sept. 25 Breakfast was at Sutton Country Store and Cafe - boy, did they had the bottles of jelly, jam, syrup, soups and anything else you can put in a bottle and Halloween candy bags. We drove along the interstate for the first couple of hours, around Albany. Then we crossed the Hudson to drive down the east river bank through Hyde Park. The route was more commercial than I had expected. We did not stop to tour any of the huge homes along that section. We crossed back over to the west bank at Beacon-Newburgh, NY. We followed Highway 94 down through the countryside toward Allentown, PA. We really did not do anything special on this day. We ate lunch at Martina's Diner in Florida, NY. We stopped in Reading, PA where the first ... read more

OD All equipment was packed by 11AM and our ride arrived to shuttle us up to the trail. The owner of Weasel Creek Outfitters got tied up and he sent his assistant. Driving up to the park we chatted, turns out she was also from my home county in CA. What a small world. We hit the trail at 12:30PM and headed south again. It was nice to feel the straps bite into my shoulders and the trail crunch under the soles of my boots. We made very good time and finished at the Gravel Spring Hut, 8.4mi in 5.5 hours. CC was a real trooper, her feet were giving her a bit of trouble. The wind started to pickup just before sunset. There was a family on Spring break at the shelter when we ... read more