Shenandoah National Park: Day Three

For our final day in Shenandoah, we hiked the Snead Farm Trail Loop. The weather here has been less than ideal, and we've stayed a couple of extra days to wait out the sunshine. Yesterday's weather was so beautiful, it made us glad we stayed. It's very cold this morning, and we believe the pipe that feeds our water has frozen. The hose is heated, but still, it's 25 degrees and no water for us this morning...at least until the sun comes up. Smitty knows how to stay warm on a cold morning:

As for yesterday's hike...wow. The views from Skyline Drive were incredible.

The image above was taken of the east side of the ridge where I was shooting directly into the sun. The image below was taken on the west side of the ridge where the clouds were casting shadows on the landscape below.

It was hard to stop taking pictures, except it was also windy and cold. The hike took us into the trees, and so that was comfortable, if cold. There was an icy wind blowing at the more exposed overlooks, and so lingering wasn't encouraged. Here are a few more, taken from various overlooks in the north section of the park.

In my usual photographic peeping Tom style, I zoomed in on some of the structures to get a closer look.

The Snead Farm Trail took us to buildings used by the Snead family when they homesteaded in the area. It was active between the 1850's and the 1960's when the final land owners sold the farm to the park. Our hiking book instructed us to park either at the visitor's center or a picnic area to its left. We knew the trailhead was near the picnic area, so we parked there. It took some figuring, but we determined that we need to walk down the main road just a bit. From there, we took a "Service Road" where we read how we were going to die that day.

So, put away those berries, wouldja?

And we walked some distance with me asking Mike, "Are you sure we're on the right path?" Finally, we came to the cement post giving us directions.

We walked on just a bit farther when we came to a fork in the road with this sign. Ahhhhhhhh.....always good to know you're going the right way.

It's a little like a trip back in time. The original owners worked this 200-acre parcel as farmland and as an apple orchard. The park bought the land in 1962. The barn still stands, and it's in good condition. We surmised that the park service might have used it to shelter horses or equipment, and it appeared to have a fresh coat of paint.

It was possible to peer inside through those little holes in the three doors below, but it was quite dark inside. Our eyes were accustomed to the bright sunshine, and we couldn't see a thing.

With a little clever manipulation of the settings on my little Nikon Point and Shoot Camera, we were able to see what was inside. I set it on its preset "scene" setting of "Night Landscape," and then balanced it on the frame of the door to hold it steady. With that setting, I was able to take pictures of the interior at each of the three doors.

To the left of the barn was a small root cellar.

Just the stone foundation of the house remained.

From here, we had the option of turning around and going back the way we came, or we could join the Dickey Ridge Trail and take the Snead Farm Loop Trail...a total distance of about 3.2 miles.

That was our choice, and so we looked for the blue blaze.

Speaking of the "blue blaze," my friend Gail asked an interesting question after yesterday's post. Is this where the idiom "Where in the blue blazes..." or "What in the blue blazes..." comes from? Well, don't you know I consulted my friend Google about this. As it turns out, there are several ideas about the origin of the phrase and what it means, but the third one makes it sound like a possibility. It's an interesting analysis, and you can read it right here.

As for our hike, the remainder looked a lot like this most of the way.

There was a lovely golden canopy overhead.

After a while our shadow selves starting whining they were hungry and tired. They can be such a pain sometimes.

We appeased them by sitting on a rock and eating our Clif bars. We hoped the bears weren't fond of Clif bars.

It would have been easy to get lost here, and I kept remembering Stephen King's book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, a novel about just such a nightmare. It was easy enough to find the trail.

Still, it was reassuring to come upon the blue blazes occasionally.

Eventually, we had to make another decision about which way to go. We went in the direction that took us back to Skyline Drive, an additional 1.2 miles. As it turns out, this was the most arduous part of the hike.

Our hiking book informed us that the elevation gain on this hike was 500 feet, but we're fairly certain it was more. My Fitbit gave me credit for 67 flights of stairs, and it gives me a floor for every 12 feet of elevation gain. There were up and down portions on the trail, and so no doubt, I got credit for the same level at several points. It was all worth it to reach a summit of sorts and to see this view.

I was standing under a tree to give me something in the foreground. When I walked over to where Mike was sitting on a rock, it looked like this.

When we got back to the truck, we decided to exit the park at its northernmost tip and drive the additional five miles to Front Royal...a historic little town where we had some lunch. From there, we took the lowland US highway back to the RV park. Before leaving the park, however, we stopped at our final overlook. From there, we could see the Shenandoah River. You can see it near the center of the image below.

So ends our journey to Shenandoah National Park. From here, we'll drive south to the southern tip of the national park, where we'll hook up with the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Blue Ridge Parkway has ferried motorists from the Appalachians to the Great Smoky Mountains for over 80 years. Mile marker zero is located in Virginia's Rockfish Gap at the southern terminus of Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive. It ends at US Hwy 441 at Oconaluftee in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, near Cherokee, North Carolina. Altogether, it covers 469 miles of highway, and our plan is to travel from one end to the other. We expect it will take us a couple of days to reach the end, and we'll leave the parkway for free overnight camping at various points along the way. Depending on internet access, I'll tell you about it as we go along.