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Published: November 19th 2007
Obfuscator writes: Shenandoah National Park remained as wonderful in the morning. The snow that had fallen was really just a light dusting, so pretty much all of our gear remained nicely dry. The campsite had treated us well through the night, aside from being far, far, too cold, but had little to see by the time we were up. We packed our gear and started the long drive out of the park. As I discussed in the previous entry, the park is long and runs along a ridge. Our campground was about ¾ of the way up the park. Since we intended to head south anyway, and didn't have anywhere else we urgently wanted to see, we took the Skyline drive through the length of the park that wasn't to our north.
The Skyline Drive is a winding and sometimes fairly steep road, where you can't really go much faster than 35 miles per hour. Of course, since we've largely been seeing big ugly cities, we wanted to get some good nature and landscape photos, so we were happy to take overlook turnouts whenever they came up. What I don't think we appreciated when we embarked on this stopping for
photos endeavor, was just how many overlook turnouts there were between our campground and the southern exit of the park. I think we must have stopped at approximately 73 different overlooks. Now, remember that the previous night, it was below 20 degrees. By morning, it was still very cold. I didn't look at a thermometer or anything, but it was very cold. It was also still snowing at parts, and quite windy. Many of you who know me probably know that I don't like the cold. Some of you may even think that I am oversensitive to the cold. I don't know if that's true. What I do know is that every time we stopped to take pictures, I hopped out of the car, and Onaxthiel stayed inside. Yeah, that's right. The guy who doesn't even put on a coat when it's snowing stayed in the car.
Shenandoah was lovely, and we considered ourselves quite lucky to see it in the fall. The day cleared up pretty fast, and so we got really great views of some very colorful mountain slopes and valleys. Apparently there isn't much to do in Shenandoah though, other than drive it or hike it.
Lacking the time to go back country camping at that juncture, we just had to cruise. Perhaps after Thanksgiving we'll find the time to do more hiking there.
We blew past Charlottesville, where you can find Monticello (Thomas Jefferson's home) and Ash Lawn (the “Highland Home of James Monroe). We arrived in Richmond, and were going to try to find the Statehouse and some other things, but the traffic was bad, and we realized that the only things we really thought sounded interesting were some museums. In case you haven't heard it before, we can't go into museums and spend less than several hours in them. Checking the time, we realized that if we wanted to make it to Fayetteville and actually be able to have much of an evening there, we needed to keep driving, rather than stop for museums.
We arrived in Fayetteville in the early evening, which was good, since I was able to pick up my contact lenses. We met up with one of Onaxthiel's army buddies, E, and several of his army friends, and headed out on the town.
The following day, Onaxthiel and I hit up some of the highlights of
Fayetteville that he got to know when he was stationed there. That's right. We hit the game store and played board games, before going to the cheap theater to catch a matinée. When we were done with that, we (including E) headed up to Raleigh to meet up with my former roommate A. We managed to find some decent food and drink in various establishment in downtown Raleigh before retiring to A's for the night.
All in all, a good couple of nights with friends and drinks.
The trip thus far
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Kipx
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Tree
Now THAT'S a tree spirit! At least it makes me think of the Ents the way it's framed and so erratic in its near trunkless shape. Very cool! So sad I did not have my sh!1 together to join you in Shenandoah:( Happy belated Thanksgiving to you both, and your families all the same. Hope you're both well.