This is a retrospective blog of my seven-week exploration of Virginia along with a journey through the Shenandoah National Park and on down the Blue Ridge Parkway to Cherokee, North Carolina. 'Retrospective' means simply that it wasn't written during the trip, but is being written in hindsight a little over a year later. Baaswell Sheep accompanied me and is writing the blog in the way he's done my later blogs, since he's so good with the color commentary. Unfortunately, since I didn't plan for this blog back them, my pictures are limited to the major attractions, but I'll try to make those galleries a little bigger than I do in my later blogs.
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After a fried chicken lunch at the Big Meadows wayside (my companion had the chicken, while I partook of the collards and mac-and-cheese), we went just down the road a mile to a parking area beside the Appalachian Trail and hiked for about 2.75 miles to another parking area, then enjoyed a snack and some water before returning to the first parking area. Along the way back, we came across a rabbit on the trail, munching on leaves, so we stopped and got down on the ground, staying very quiet, and were able to watch him (or her) for nearly twenty minutes.
Zoomed Pictures of the Rabbit
The rest of the day we enjoyed back at Big Meadows, just sitting around and relaxing and enjoying the lovely afternoon. This was our last night in the park, as we couldn't get a room for the fourth of July (no big surprise). Still we're planning on spending the whole day in the park tomorrow before we head out to our next destination. Just for fun, we did an after-dark walk down the "nature trail" which runs from the lodge up to the Big Meadows Wayside near Skyline Drive. My companion was hoping to see a fox he'd spotted the previous two nights while driving in, but just our luck the fox didn't show up even though we hung around up there for about twenty minutes. Even though that was a bust, we got some interesting views of deer out grazing in the dark.
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