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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Today we had to say goodbye to Shenandoah, but you might say we went out kicking and screaming. Okay, not literally, I promise, but we did stay in the park until nearly 10 PM before heading out to Harrisonburg, our next destination in this extended Virginia adventure. More about that tomorrow, but for now, let's recap all fun we had with our remaining twelve hours in the park.
As we did the last two times we visited Shenandoah, we checked out and headed south about twenty-eight miles to the Loft Mountain Wayside, which was our home base for much of the rest of the day. We started out with a BBQ sandwich lunch, then we headed south another five miles for one last waterfall hike.
My companion hiked Jones River Falls the last time he visited Shenandoah (on his ten night immersion experience), but he really wanted to do it again knowing it was one of those rare waterfalls where you can get close to the plunge basin, and thus get great views and pictures of the falls. Yes, some people are crazy enough to even go into the plunge basin, and frankly with a lack of signage, I'm not sure what the park officials think about that, but we played it safe and stayed out of the water. It was a little hot today, but it was a great hike, though my companion wanted to push things and continue on to the Doyles River Falls via the connecting trail. That was rougher than he imagined, though he made it to the lower falls and got a few pictures, but he finally used his noodle and accepted that if he was going to make it back to the van, he'd have to turn around there and not try to get on up to the upper Doyles River Falls. Ah well, maybe next time we can see the upper falls via the direct trail and add them to our life list. All in all, though he did about 6.4 miles of hiking to wrap up this Shenandoah visit.
Hike from Jones River Falls to Lower Doyles River Falls and Back
Tired and hot, we returned to the wayside and got a nice, cold drink, enjoying it slowly as we waited out a rainstorm. We finally left as they were closing up the place and found a nice, quiet overlook where we parked and just enjoyed the view for an hour while resting up some more.
Not wanting to call it quits, we worked our way up to the Hensley Hollow Overlook, just south of the South River Picnic Area where we started our Shenandoah adventure four days ago. We stayed here through sunset and then watched some Independence Day fireworks far off in the distance over one of the towns in the western valley. Kind of nice to see them looking like tiny little dots and not having to hear all of the noise. We finally gave in and left just before 10 PM, heading west on US 33 to Harrisonburg, where we'll be killing a few days before starting our next back-to-nature adventure: a drive all the way down the Blue Ridge Parkway from Waynesboro, Virginia to Cherokee, North Carolina (with detours, unfortunately, as a chunk of the Parkway in northern North Carolina is closed for repaving and the replacement of the Laurel Forks bridge.
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