So that morning we had to get breakfast, and not only had the pool not been open on Sunday nights, the restaurant there is not open on Monday mornings. So in some ways our timing was not good that morning, but in other ways it was fine because this prompted us to go to Steamy's, the hole-in-the-wall bagel place down the street, where I had a Main Event bagel/egg/bacon sandwich (their bagels are more like rolls) and a Gunpowder Green tea, my only good tea of the week. Another bit of serendipity is that they had a Grateful Dead-style bear painted on their window and a vintage picture of the band hung inside. Jim happened to wear his GD shirt that day and Sarah was wearing a Phil & Friends shirt!
We also took the opportunity to do more strategizing about how to approach Shenandoah. I had done a lot of research into what trails to hike, but there were an abundance of factors to consider, such as max/min physical fitness of the group, time, location, rating of the trail, altitude change involved, scenic-ness as opposed to climbi-ness, and waterfall-ality, etc. Jim has had knee problems (as have I, to say the least) and he and Sally wanted to approach hiking a little cautiously, which we were more than ready to agree with. We decided that we'd go to the visitor center and ask a Ranger to recommend trails based on all of these considerations ... they're used to this.
The consensus was also that we should bring lunch, as we had no idea if lunch would be available in the Park. Luckily found a place way down the pedestrian mall (the Hideaway Cafe) that could make an acceptable sandwich, though I got a Cobb salad take-out.
The pedestrian mall area of Winchester was perhaps more charming in daylight than it had been in the evening, though we were in a hurry. I was particularly taken by an ornate, classic Mason's Lodge, which ... by the visual evidence ... had originally been one building that took up much of a block and was now only half a building, and just the upstairs at that, over a notions shop. But it was still active and the mysterious Mason's iconography was emblazoned in the brick and concrete. And the Patsy Cline house was nearby!
SarahP commented on walkways and balconies. She and Jim were taken by the "Southern" look of the small city's architecture. They were also a bit freaked out by the presence of another face of the United States, even this little bit South: that of the rebel states. There were streets, buildings, and squares named after Confederate figures. It's hard for people from another country (including New England) to understand the meaning of Southern heritage, but it's unmistakably there.
I think that "Southern heritage" is a variant of the American conceit that a spirit of rebellion/pushing the borders is essential to character. I feel this way; it's a vital part of my self awareness that there's no one quite like me, and I feel that a spirit of individualism is an essential part of the self. But it's dismaying when this spirit is expressed through toadyism, racism, and pack behavior.
Back to the room quickly and packed, checked out, and loaded the car. As with any vacation, the previous activities took much longer on out first road morning, but we got very used to and adept at this.
We were finally on our way, wove through town out to Interstate 81 again, and then took Interstate 66 to Route 340 (the old main road through the Shenandoah Valley before they built 81) and through Front Royal. Shenandoah National Park (SNP) starts just South of Front Royal and we drove the first 5 miles down the Park road, the Skyline Drive (which is an extension of the Blue Ridge Parkway), to the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center (VC), suddenly surrounded by beautiful trees and possible bears.
The Ranger there was very helpful and seemed to appreciate being asked a coherent question, as long winded as our request for information was. She grabbed a few trail maps and outlined some recommendations, and SarahP picked up a great expandable hiking stick. We decided that what we were going to try to do was go for a fairly short, easy walk first, eat lunch, and then go for a longer walk after that.
But as often happens in a huge place like SNP, the scale was an unexpected factor. After driving another 20 miles or so amidst the awesome scenery at the speed limit of 35, we decided it was lunchtime now. So we pulled over at a nice overlook with a few other groups in it (including a car from Washington with a sleeping hippie and cockatoo), and ate and talked. It was a beautiful, blue day with lines of very high clouds scattered across the sky and great visibility. We decided to drive on to mile marker 45 (SNP features iconic concrete mile and trail markers) and tackle a longer hike right off the bat, the Hawksbill Summit loop.
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail (AT) runs along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains and many of the trails in SNP coincide with part of it. We sprayed our legs with insect repellent (didn't know how worried about ticks we needed to be), started on a little spur from the Hawksbill Gap parking area that runs down to the AT, and then hiked more or less West along it, which was a pretty level warm-up. Eventually we turned South and then East up the winding and steeper Salamander Trail, switchbacking up to the summit. We ran into 20 or so other groups on this hike, and by the time we got up to the shelter just below the summit and then to the platform built at the summit itself, we had to wait our turn to take it over.
But it was glorious when we did and everyone was in high spirits. The scenery was just incredible as we could see the mountains of the Appalachian chain marching in ridges to our left and right, both near (the Blue Ridge itself), and farther and farther away (the Masanuttens and Alleghenies). The platform has a couple of compass pointers in it, that could be used to identify the mountains and gaps all around us. We'd already been on the trail for a few hours and I for one was incredibly glad of the wind up on the summit after a hot and humid trudge through the woods. Hawksbill is the highest peak in the Park at 4051 feet and the wind up there was steady from the Northeast.
We eventually marched on, and found the Lower Hawksbill Trail, which led at a steeper rate than we expected back down to the gap. This showed us another side of the diversity all around us, one of the most treasured things to me about an incredible natural place like SNP. There had been tall poplars and oaks on the West and South sides of the mountain, but down this North slope the mix of trees was subtly but noticeably different, with shorter and sturdier oaks and maples, and with several pine trees mixed in. We even saw a few spruces at higher elevations. As similar to New England flora as this is, these were different varieties: the oaks were taller and more twisty than our gray and white oaks, and the pines were less majestic and more lightly colored. There was also sumac scattered around, many varieties of laurel and rhododendron, and bushes that looked almost like the manzanita we'd seen in California, twisting and with vertical striations.
Didn't see any animals of note on that hike besides crows, squirrels, butterflies (the monarchs seemed to be visiting the Park on their annual migration), chipmunks, and other omnipresent birds. Perhaps we didn't have our dials turned up to the right frequency yet to notice more animals, but this hike was a great leap towards getting there. The woods can cast a spell over you and the light through the trees was intoxicating us.
Yikes! It was already getting kind of late in the afternoon and we had a few more questions for the Rangers and many more miles to go. We had reservations at a hotel in Elkton that night and we decided that our next step should be to roll on down the Skyline Drive to the Byrd Visitor Center at Big Meadows to get some more traveling advice, and then to head for the exit at Route 33 (the Swift Run Gap Entrance Station). The VC was closed by the time we got there, but the bathrooms weren't. And when we exited we saw a quartet of mature deer nibbling on a few bushes and then dashing across the road down to the meadow for dinner.
We were almost ready for dinner too, but had another scenic 20 miles to go before we could exit to Elkton. We decided to do that, and then to come back up to the Byrd VC in the morning to ask our questions.
This plan went well, but when we got to the Country View Motel we realized that, though it was no Bates Motel or Days Inn, it was far, far from the George Washington Grand. They were friendly people but the hotel seemed to be kind of a hobby for them, that they weren't doing really well. The floors of rooms 10 and 11 were covered with sticky linoleum tiles that weren't that well adhered to the sub-floor, I had to duck when I entered the bathroom attached to our room, the guest amenities were minimal (plastic soap and a combo "shave lotion" and shampoo that seemed to have a little turpentine in it as well), our air conditioner wouldn't turn off(!?), and the closet had no hangars. They told us proudly that local calls were free, but we didn't know anyone there to call. And when we asked at the desk for recommendations for dinner we were told that there was a Mexican restaurant in town but it was closed on Mondays, and that the only other one was an Italian place that we might find if we went past town on the highway and looked for it.
So we did that, found the restaurant, and had a perfectly good American-Italian meal there (they had one non-American lager and it was an acceptable locally made Vienna lager). I had the chicken cacciatore. Back to Elkton and soon to bed after that. It had been an exhausting day and though I bad-mouth the Country View, it was fine and I ended up having one of my best sleeps of the vacation there.
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