Monday June 27 - Tuesday July 19, 2022: On Our Way to Shenandoah National Park

 Our plans to leave our daughter's residence in Grand Junction and visit Jane's sister in Kansas were thwarted by CoViD. Jane's brother-in-law contracted CoViD shortly before our planned arrival. After various discussions it was decided to skip the visit and leave Grand Junction on June 27 instead of June 24. The appropriateness of that decision was reinforced when we heard that Jane's sister also contracted CoViD.

We left Grand Junction for Jane's other sister's residence outside Nasville TN in Thompson's Station. All three sisters were planning on gathering at the Kansas sister's residence so stopping by to visit the Tennessee sister on our way to Virginia seemed apropos. We stopped overnight on June 27 at the I-70 Grainfield rest area in western Kansas. Our next stop on June 28 was the I-57 Rend Lake rest area in southern Illinois. This rest area reminded us more of a campground. It had walking trails, a playground and was right on the shore of Rend Lake (https://foursquare.com/v/rend-lake-rest-area--southbound/4c3e262fca012d7fe0142fbe). Rend Lake was created by an Army Corps of Engineer dam.

Prior to our stop at the southbound Rend Lake rest area we saw signs for a National Quilt Museum that is located in Hendron Kentucky. Due to Jane's interest in quilting and our traveling being ahead of schedule, we decided to stop so Jane could check out the museum the following day. We were glad we stopped even though the museum unexpectedly focused on modern quilts. After leaving the museum we completed our drive to Thompson's Station. We stopped by the local Kroger's to stock up on some groceries before parking the camper at Jane's sister's on June 29.

Jane's sister works at a local farm store so Jane worked alongside her sister on Thursday afternoon (June 30) and Saturday (July 2). I got in some bike rides and helped Jane's brother-in-law with a few chores. Sunday (July 3) was casual with plans to watch fireworks in the evening. They were scheduled for 9 PM but when they hadn't started by 9:30 PM we decided to abandon those plans. As we headed to the camper which was located by the barn on the other side of the property the fireworks began in earnest. At that point our view wasn't the best, and we didn't feel like making any effort to change that, so we just ended up hearing the fireworks instead of watching them as we bedded down for the night. We planned on leaving early Monday morning (July 4) to begin our drive to Tappahannock Virginia. We rented an VRBO house there to spend the week with my sister, our children and their families.

We left early on July 4th expecting to hit holiday traffic along the way at which point we would just stop assuming it would be sometime in the afternoon. We never hit any traffic so we ended up making it to a rest area near Charlottesville Virginia. We stayed the night there and planned to stop by the Richmond area on Tuesday (July 5) to see my daughter and shop at Costco for the week. We got up from the Charlottesville rest area and drove to the Goochland rest area where we did some stretching and had breakfast. We still had some time before we planned to meet my daughter at Costco so we found a park nearby and just hung out there.

Our week (July 5 - 12) in Tappahannock was quite pleasurable. The older grand kids did some crabbing and fishing. One crab met the size requirement and therefore ended up being part of dinner. There was paddle boating and kayaking and swimming even though I would say the Rappahannock River is not known for swimming. We visited the nearby widlife refuge, a non-swimming state park beach (Fossil Beach along the Potomac River in Westmoreland State Park) and a private disc golf course.

Our next family event after Tappahannock is in Ellijay Georgia around July 21 -23. So we decided to camp in Shenandoah National Park in the interim. As a teenager and young adult my family had made the drive from Louisiana to the northeast many times. I always thought it would be nice to check out and travel the Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah National Park someday instead of just passing though as quickly as possible along I-81. So after staying the night at my daughter's in Richmond on July 12 we headed to the grocery store, then to a blood donation appointment I made, before arriving at Shenandoah National Park on July 13. We planned on staying at the Loft Mountain campground. Since all the reservable sites were taken, we opted for the first come first serve site (FCFS) approach and kept our fingers crossed there would be some available. There wasn't much risk of a FCFS site not being available since we were arriving mid-week and there were plenty of reservable sites open during the week.

We found a fairly level, fairly private site that had some shade and some sun. Since there was thick vegetation on both sides of the camper I opted for front and rear views instead of left and right.

There were plenty of sites available for us to choose from. The only downside was the cell service was not the best at the site we picked. Better but not good service could be found at other FCFS sites in the campground. We thought about moving at one point but decided against it. As an aside, my Grand Junction son-in-law told me he was ordering the portable Starlink terminal when we were in Tappahannock. I had planned on getting a terminal also, but was dragging my feet. My son-in-law's purchase was the impetus I needed, so after he ordered his, I ordered mine. I wasn't sure how long it would take to ship, so to be safe, I sent it to one of my son's residences in NH. We plan on being there in early autumn so hopefully that provides plenty of time for it to ship. However, it would have been nice to try the terminal out in Shenandoah N.P.

There is no biking on trails or fire roads in Shenandoah N.P. which I consider a negative. Biking is allowed on the paved roads. However, the paved roads essentially have no shoulder including Skyline Drive, the main road through the park. So instead of biking for exercise we decided on doing some hiking as a substitute. One of the hikes we made included a couple of waterfalls.

Part of our hikes included the Appalachian Trail (AT). Although there are Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) huts in Shenandoah N.P., one of our hikes included a visit to a cabin that did not appear to be open to the public like AMC huts are.

The road through Shenandoah National Park is called Skyline Drive and there is a park entrance fee required to travel that part of the road. At the southern end, the road becomes the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The Blue Ridge Parkway is managed by the National Park Service but doesn't require an entrance fee. The parkway speed limit is 45 MPH.

We traveled Skyline Drive from our entrance to the park at Swift Run Gap (there are four) to the Loft Mountain Campground and then on our day of departure from the campground to the southern end. The speed limit in the park was 35 MPH. Like many mountain roads it was windy and required speeds below the limit a significant amount of time. There were numerous overlooks to stop at and you could often get picturesque views of the valley just looking to the side while driving. The valley views were very similar to that we experienced when we were hiking in George Washington National Forest while staying in Virginia at the Wolf Gap Campground earlier in March of 2022. When we reached the southern end of Skyline Drive we continued onto the Blue Ridge Parkway. The ride was very similar to that we experienced on Skyline Drive but less picturesque and with fewer overlooks. According to information available on the internet, the parkway was closed in the Roanoke area. So we planned on getting off the parkway before Roanoke near Buchanan VA. We also found we weren't able to travel the parkway speed limit for most of the time so between that and the similarity to the Skyline Drive experience we decided to get off the parkway a little sooner. We did have somewhat of a schedule to keep and I felt I had satisfied my earlier life urge to drive the parkway.

After leaving the parkway and entering I-81 we stopped at a rest area to have breakfast. After breakfast, we drove about an hour to a Walmart to buy groceries and then walked to a nearby liquor store to buy supplies for our stay in Ellijay GA. After getting back on the road, we made it to a rest area in Athens Tennessee and stayed there overnight.