We started the day with a trip north to Front Royal, VA and a couple of ‘errand’ stops at WalMart and Lowe’s. One thing I’ve realized with the RV…when you walk out of a big box store, there’s no wondering “where did I park”…the RV is instantly visible. Think of the time we’ll save not having to wander around looking for our vehicle!
Then we headed into Shenandoah via the Front Royal entrance. We immediately noticed that the park was much busier – partly because it’s Saturday, and partly because today is the first day of National Parks Week which means entry is free for ALL National Parks. And, because this entrance to the park is only about 75 miles from Washington DC, it’s an easy trip for people in that area to make for the day. As we arrived at the overlooks, we definitely found more people there than we had seen on Thursday or Friday, and the parking lot at the visitor center in the northern section of the park was packed. Not easy to find a spot for our big rig, but we did! The views from that visitor center were some of the best in the entire park – definitely a wow!
The Northern section of the park is at a lower elevation, so there was a clear difference in the arrival of Spring – many more trees in bloom and the Eastern Redbud which sports pinkish/purplish flowers was everywhere! Just beautiful! There were a couple of particularly spectacular overlooks in this section of the park, and the Blue Ridge Mountains had an especially blue color to them – very different than we’d seen elsewhere in the park. Not sure if it was the lighting, the location, or a combination of both – but incredible!
We were only in the park for a few hours, there wasn’t as much to see, and we decided to forego a hike today (Mark was especially tired and wasn’t feeling motivated to handle an elevation change of several hundred feet required by all of the hikes!). We exited at Thornton Gap where we finally captured our obligatory photo with a park sign!
We headed back towards Luray. The weather was beautiful and I was itching for some exercise; we had seen a Greenway Trail along Hawksbill Creek in town, so Mark parked the RV, settled in for a nap, and I ventured out for a 1.5 mile walk. It was delightful – almost a mini arboretum setting, with a wide variety of trees in full bloom. It was also a bit fragrant in parts, as the trail passed along a cow farm. Lots of families out enjoying the weather…just a really nice walk!
Back to the KOA for a quiet evening…except when the cows in the neighboring field were all mooing in unison about 20 yards from our RV. Gotta love rural America! The KOA was packed at this point – every single site was full (probably 100 or more sites). I guess RVing really is popular! It’s so interesting to see the variety of fifth wheels, trailers, and motorhomes that people have – every size and shape imaginable. We had a small teardrop trailer at the site next to ours (so small…not sure how two people sleep in there!), and there were at least two or three Airstream trailers in the park which are always fun to see (the silver ‘bullet’ shaped ones that have been around for years).
