Adventure to Skyline Drive at Shenandoah National Park

We saw red trees, green trees, yellow and gold trees...but only one blue tree!

After our trip to Virginia Beach, we took it easy for a couple of weekends. The weather was cold and rainy so we made a couple kinds of chili, stayed in sweats all day, played board games, listened to records, read, and watched movies. Although we love a good adventure; a couple of weekends staying in and just hanging out weren't too shabby either.

This last weekend was supposed to be cold and rainy again...on Saturday that proved to be true, but on Sunday we woke up to blue skies and a warm fall day. Based on the recommendation of one of my co-workers, we hopped in the car and headed for Shenandoah National Park in Northern Virginia. There is a road that runs all the way through the park called Skyline Drive and we had heard that the colors and scenery this time of year are spectacular.

The park website says that from any of the four entrances into the park, it takes about an hour to get to an exit. We thought that sounded so nice, a leisurely drive through a National Park and then we'll head to dinner at Andrew's aunt and uncle's house...be to their place by probably 6:00 at the latest. Home in bed by 10:00. What a great day!

We were wrong.

Turns out, half of Maryland and all of Virginia had the same idea that we did when they woke up Sunday morning too! It was supposed to take us an hour and a half just to get to the park. We pulled in a little over 2 hours after we left our place. "Okay, no big deal. We hit some traffic on the way here, this will still be great!" we thought.

Wrong again.

We sat. In line. And we waited. And we waited some more. After 30 minutes in line (which probably should have been our first clue), we finally entered the park. Which, by the way, was beautiful. The views from the car weren't "spectacular" as I had heard...but it was a very pretty place. We especially enjoyed the view of the line of cars that stretched out ahead of us FOREVER. The park website talks about how the speed limit on Skyline Drive is 35mph because there is a lot of wildlife and 35 is fast enough to make it through and see everything but slow enough that you could stop if a deer or any other creature decided to cross the street in front of you.

The drive was painful. Our average speed the entire time was 4. Every "scenic overlook" (and there were like 50 of them) was PACKED. They had little "parking lots" set up at each one where there were probably 6 to 10 spots for people to pull their cars in to take pictures. There were at least 40 cars in each "parking lot" trying to inch their way into spots where a BMX bike couldn't fit. Which meant that the tail ends of their cars were sticking out into the road. Which meant the rest of us...were stopped. It was almost comical. Almost.

After we had been "driving" (not even sure it can be called that?) for close to two hours, we finally ended up sitting next to a park ranger standing on the side of the road. When we pulled up next to him, I asked Andrew to roll down his window to ask how far the closest exit was. The ranger gave us kind of a funny look and said "about 30 miles that way". Oh wow.

At the end of the day, a drive that was supposed to take us "about an hour" ended up taking us 3.5 hours. We had listened to 8 CD's, gotten into one small argument, turned a little slap happy at a few points, and burned through a half a tank of gas. We did see some pretty trees and some pretty colors, so that goal was met. But the momentum of the day unfortunately just never got going.

It was not all bad, I don't mean to make it sound that way. Spending the day in the car together in a beautiful place was very nice. We were both just ready to be out of the car much much sooner than we were able.

Andrew's aunt and uncle, Jim and Denise, were sweet enough to keep dinner warm until we got there, which we felt terrible about because we didn't arrive until 8:00pm. But they are two of the nicest people in the world and they said they didn't mind a bit. Dinner was very good, as was the glass of wine that we were definitely both ready for when we finally got there. We would have liked to have stayed and visited with them longer, but we were both pretty tired from our adventure so we headed home. Back in the car we went...for another 45 minute drive home.

An adventure we wanted and an adventure we received! Boy oh boy. I have a feeling it might be a while before we return to Skyline Drive.

We found out today that one of Andrew's co-workers also went to Skyline Drive yesterday with her husband and their two kids. A 4 year old and an 8 month old. Yikes.

Look! A Deer!

4 MPH

The line of cars behind us



Andrew got bored so he started taking random pictures

Side view

Pretty trees...pretty cars?

More colors...more cars