Shenandoah was our first east coast park! The first park that we did not have to fly to, though we did have a very long drive from our home in Boston. This was Cami’s first time to the park, but I’ve spent a good amount of time here years ago. Cat (wife) went to school at Sweet Briar College in southwestern Virginia. Most of the times when I would drive down to see her I’d go through the park. So I had some experience navigating around the area.
Shenandoah is one of the handful of East Coast National Parks. It spans the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The main road in the park is the 105 mile Skyline Drive that later becomes the Blue Ridge Parkway. After you leave the southern exit of the park and Skyline Drive turns into the Blue Ridge Parkway it runs all the way down into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. All in, from the start of the road in Shenandoah to the end in the Smoky Mountains, the road extends 469 miles.
The Blue Ridge Mountains rise 4,000 feet above sea level and almost 3,000 feet from the Shenandoah valley below. Some of the rocks exposed in the park date to over one billion years in age, making them among the oldest in Virginia.
The park has a very interesting history (and too much to write in depth about here). Most of the land was once privately owned. Starting in 1925 Congress started to acquire the land needed to create the park. For the next ten years the commonwealth of Virginia slowly acquired the land and then gave it to the Federal Government to create the park. Some families were happy to sell and move on to other things, others were forced from their land. Once enough land was given to the NPS the Civilian Conservation Corps started to work on the park’s infrastructure. Including creating the skyline drive, cutting down dead trees for the view points, restoring some buildings, while burning down other homes of people who were forced to leave. Shenandoah National Park would finally open on July 3, 1936.
I’ve always had a really tough time creating great photos in Shenandoah, it’s a really challenging park for me to create something unique. I’ve seen others who have created wonderful works from here and am inspired by what they have been able to do. Since the park runs mostly near the top of the blue ridge, the majority of the locations look down to a valley below. Finding great foreground subjects can be really hard in this park.
To this end I planned a trip for early November, the thinking was this should be the peak of fall foliage and give me some great colors for photos. I also thought Cami would love to see this place just engulfed with vivid color. As luck would have it, when we arrived into Front Royal we were looking at amazing color. As we started down the Skyline drive and dove up into the park, the higher we got the worse it became. By the time we were around the top of the Blue Ridge – all the leaves had already fallen. Speaking with some people later that day it turns out that the “peak” color was about a week before we arrived. We still had a blast in the park, but it was not exactly what I was hoping for.
We wanted to stay somewhere inside the park and avoid what can become a long drive into the park each day. We chose to stay at the Skyland Resort, that has a really amazing history and we had a lot of fun there. Skyland is located almost right in the middle of the park, so it’s rather easy to get to any of the trails or overviews. We had an amazing view from our room and really enjoyed the setting. There are two restaurants as well as a store within Skyland and we had many of our meals here.
George Pollock first opened the Skyland Resort or The Stony Man Camp as it was known then in the late 1800s. Skyland Resort became the core of the new Shenandoah National Park and the resort was repaired and upgraded in the late 1930s. Lodging accommodations range from premium rooms to detached small cabins, preferred and traditional rooms, suites, and pet friendly rooms – located in 28 separate buildings along the ridge and in the wooded areas on over 27 acres of Shenandoah National Park.
Your other two choices for lodging in the park at the Big Meadows Lodge or the Lewis Mountain Cabins. I don’t have any real experience with staying at either of the other two lodges other than eating at the Big Meadows one day for lunch.
We had enough time to explore most of the park, stopping at the different overlooks. We hiked a number of the trails as well. The 3.7 mile Stony Man Loop was likely the most amazing of all of them. It’s parking lot is almost next to Skyland and brings you to possibly the best view in the park. On the hike up you leave the trees of the forest behind and end up on a rock ledge 3,000 feet over the Shenandoah Valley.
Dark Hollow Falls is the most popular hiking trail in the park. We did this one afternoon and really enjoyed it though in early November there was not much water coming down the falls at all. It was still worth the time to go and explore the area.
All in all it was a very trip, the park was not too crowded but that may be due to how late in the season it was. I would like to go back again and see if I can’t capture some of the amazing fall colors of the Blue Ridge.
