Driving Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park!

Since we were in Charlottesville, VA, we were very close to Skyline Drive that runs along the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  We were still trying to avoid the wind, rain and thunderstorms of Hurricane Arthur.  Besides, we thought it would be nice to have a relaxing drive on a narrow two lane mountain road instead of the craziness of the freeways we'd been traveling on most days. The speed limit is 35 MPH!

So after the Scottsville 4^th of July, we drove up to Skyline Drive, and showed our “Old Person Card” aka Golden Age Pass to the National Park ranger at the Shenandoah National Park Rockfish Gap Entrance Station, 1500' elevation.  This is the southernmost entrance station and then Skyline Drive heads north for 105 miles to Front Royal, VA its northern terminus.

The Shenandoah National Park brochure states that “park planners called for Shenandoah's “greatest single feature” to be a sky-line drive on which motorists could enjoy a leisurely drive through the Blue Ridge and where they could experience the awe and inspiration of magnificent views.”  They certainly succeeded!  The Park was established in 1935 and President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Park in 1936.  When established, the Park was a combination of over a thousand parcels of privately owned land, orchards, farms, forests, homes and cabins, many taken by eminent domain, which at the time was very controversial.  Skyline Drive opened to the public in Summer 1939.  The Park is big at over 197,000 acres or approximately 300 square miles of the Blue Ridge Mountains!

President Franklin Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps worked in the Park between 1933-1942, even before the National Park was officially created! The first two CCC camps in the country were in Shenandoah when the depression era CCC program began!  There were 10 large CCC camps within the Park, housing 10,000 young men total!  The U.S. Army directed the camps and the Park Service created the projects that the men would work on like trails, fire roads, fire towers, picnic grounds, bathrooms and other buildings.  The CCC built the 75 overlooks in the parks and the stone walls seen at drop-offs and curves in the road.  They planted thousands upon thousands of trees along the Skyline Drive route that created the wonderful canopy we see today.  There are 500 miles of trails in the Park and the CCC built most of them over the years before World War II.  They also built most of the Park infrastructure. 

Shenandoah NP hosts an annual reunion for the CCC “boys” and in 2006, the Park dedicated a bronze lifesize sculpture of a CCC worker with his axe that stand outside the Byrd Visitor Center at Big Meadow.

Here's a few statistics about Shenandoah that will convey the size of the Park and its facilities.  There are two Visitor Centers:  Byrd at Big Meadows near the middle of the Park and Dickey Ridge near the northern end.  At least 3 films are shown including one telling the CCC history in the Park.  There are 7 picnic facilities and 3 lodging facilities, including Skyland, the pioneer facility that began hosting guests in the late 1800s, long before the Park's creation.  There are 4 campgrounds with a total of 619 sites for RVs and tent campers with water, showers, flush toilets and dump stations.  Camping fees in summer season run between $15-25.  There are 5 food service options at different parts of the park including the lodges and --Attention Shoppers!, there are 5 Gift Shops!

There are 4 different entrances into the Park and the entrance fee is $15 per vehicle for 7 days.  The highest point on Skyline Drive is 3680' just north of Skyland, although several nearby peaks are over 4000'.  101 miles of the Appalachian Trail system run through the Park out of its total of 2176 miles in 14 states, completed in 1937!  Skyland operates horse stables if you crave a horseback ride to see the sights of Shenandoah from a different perspective!

The natural world of Shenandoah is probably best seen when hiking as not much other than trees and geology is visible from the road, although Lin did see a black bear scurrying across the road behind us shortly after we left Loft Mountain Campground. Sorry, no photo!  Shenandah has one of the highest populations of black bears in the National Park system.  Signs and rangers stress bearproofing campsites, hanging food and leaving nothing out at night that would attract bears. 

There are 1100 species of flowering plants, including 18 varieties of orchids, and 100 species of trees, dominated by oak and hickory.  There are 270 species of plants in Big Meadows alone!  We saw lots of wildflowers and many ferns in our stops at overlooks and walking around the campground.  Many, many bees were busy pollinating flowering plants—no colony collapse evident here!  We didn't see as many birds as we expected although there was an abundance of turkey vultures circling over us--hmm!

As far as mammals, we saw live and flat groundhogs, very similar to our Western marmots, several rabbits and a deer.  The park brochure shows raccoons, bobcats, black bear and white-tailed deer.  Timber rattlesnakes and copperheads are the only venomous reptiles.

There is a good program of ranger talks and hikes during the summer but none coincided with our schedule.  The one we would have liked to go on didn't happen on the days of our visit—Rapidan Camp.  President Herbert Hoover liked the area of Shenandoah so much that he built a vacation cabin that he called Rapidan Camp near Big Meadows.  He came here to escape the pressures of Washington D.C., along with its summer heat and humidity.  When the Park opened, Hoover donated his camp for everyone to enjoy  The camp has been recently restored and is open for guided tours.  It's a good hike and we didn't realize that there were ranger tours by van 2-3 times a day on Sunday, Thursday and Saturday.  Reserve your spot at Byrd Visitor Center in advance.

Skyline Drive is in very good shape when compared to many roads outside the Park; in other words, very few potholes!  There is one automobile tunnel, Mary’s Rock Tunnel, through the mountain, south of the Thornton Gap Entrance Station.  It was fine at 12' 8” overhead clearance for our RV, but large 5^th wheels and Class A motorhomes need to check it out carefully!  And, if you really like driving on mountain tops, you could drive south on Skyline Drive, the Park road, and connect to the Blue Ridge Parkway for another 469 miles to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park! 

We enjoyed our 2 days in Shenandoah National Park seeing the scenery and especially the geology and masses of healthy forest.  It's a busy place in the summer, but there are many places to escape and slow down!