What does the word “Shenandoah” mean? Well there is a well known American folk song, that at least Douglas claims to never have heard of (“Oh, Shenandoah, how I long to hear you, Far away, you rolling river”). It could be the long running Civil War campaign in the Shenandoah valley running north and south thru Virginia. Or it could be the country music band that formed and took the name in 1984. Or it could be the National Park by said name. There are some word experts who believe the word “Shenandoah” means “spruce river” because the waters of the river run through great forests of spruce trees.
Since we love road food, along the 5-6 hour drive, we stopped for lunch at Wright’s Dairy Rite that was founded in 1952 in Staunton, Va. It started out as a frozen custard store and grew into a full drive-in. Now days, the drive-in car service is gone, but when you go inside and sit at a table, you reach over and pick-up the phone and dial 79 and place your order. If you like a Big Mac, order the Super Burger. Story has it, the Super Burger existed 3 years before McDonalds started to franchise.
We entered the Shenandoah National Park from the south entrance onto Skyline Drive which runs 105 miles north and south along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was a creepy abandoned Howard Johnson’s with plants growing inside.
The next morning, after seeing our first bear! “oh my” ( the park has the greatest concentration of black bears in the US) we went on a hike to Jones Run Waterfall. It was just us and nature since we got an early start…ahem, 10 a.m. The seasonal rains had made the forest lush and small runs of water where everywhere along the hike down.
After the hike, we headed to a campground that was much more popular and further north called Big Meadows. For some reason, Big Meadows was a much busier campground. Maybe it was due to the closeness to Washington DC, or it was a Thursday night and people were starting early for a long weekend of camping, or the community of Quakers, that was having some type of celebration there (btw, we are guessing that they were Quakers). Who knows?
The Appalachian Trail runs 100 miles thru Shenandoah National Park so we were able to see long distance backpackers from our campsite. We should have planned on 3 nights in this beautiful park- there are so many different hikes to experience. The Traveler Blues van is back on the road headed to Mill Run, PA to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
