Blue Ridge Parkway to Shenandoah National Park

As you enter Virginia you will see a small sign informing you of a little known regulation which requires you to begin singing "Country Roads" by John Denver.  But wait, you say, that's West Virginia.  Is it really?  Or, is he referring to the western portion of Virginia or perhaps the town of West, Virginia?  These are the type of arguments you have with your spouse when he insists you stop singing about the Blue Ridge Mountains and mountain mamas over and over again.

The best way to experience the Parkway is to relax, enjoy the vistas, go slow and stop every 15 miles to recover from the nausea inducing back and forth turns that never end.  Henceforth, I shall fondly refer to this road as the Barfway.

Some nice, misty, mountain views

About 50 tunnels, all filled with zombies

Lucky for me we had reservations halfway through the parkway at a little place called Meadows of Dan.  Based on the name alone I should have known it was gonna be a little odd.  Sure enough, we find the place we were looking for and there was no one there, not a single soul which was creepy/wonderful depending on which of us you asked.

So, we just made ourselves at home and opened the Bambi door and turned up the music and started dinner.  As we sat down to have a glass of wine inside, these two, young, blonde women show up outta nowhere holding two bottles of wine.  In broken, giggly english/german they somehow got across to us that they needed a corkscrew.  Hmm, well all I can say is this may or may not have resulted in an international incident but Fred was more than willing to help them for some reason.  He opened their wine and they went on their way happy as could be.

The winds howled all night and the next morning the German girls were gone and these invasion of the body snatcher pods were surrounding the Bambi.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I was happy to leave.

Back on the Barfway, we dodged our share of bicyclists, deer, wild turkeys, tourists taking dogwood pictures and drop offs to eventually arrive at Shenandoah National Park.

Shenandoah National Park has more plant species than all of Europe.  I'll give you a minute to absorb that tidbit.  Talk about almost heaven.

Doggy woods were out in force

Wildflowers Galore (wasn't she a dancer?)

But for sheer variety and alien weirdness, I personally believe you can not beat a nice patch of fungi and Shenandoah has lots.

Fun Guy points out some Fungi

After settling in, we took a short hike on the Appalachian Trail.  Like, really short but technically we can now brag that we have, in fact hiked the Appalachian Trail.  We should have done this in our misspent youth because now the spirit is willing, but the flesh, not so much.

This part of the trail ends at section where all those hikers who should have known better end up

The museum at the visitor center had these boots that were donated by a woman who did the trail in 1978.

Later in the day I offered to donate mine, but they declined

The aptly named Big Meadows camping area where we were staying

A few of our campground companions, Eastern Towhee, a Raven on the nest with three chicks and a cat bird

Stony Man Mountain

Life is full of compromises, I listen to Grateful Dead on Sirius radio and Fred let's me practice my roadside interpretive dance routines

On our last hike of the last day, it started raining like a cow pissin' on a flat rock and our computer basically began having an epileptic fit so we took that as a sign that it was time to head on down the road to Cape May, New Jersey.

Next stop, home state of Tony Soprano.