25 and 26 September 2024

When I told my friend Sarah that we were planning to drive up to Washington DC via the Shenandoah National Park I expected her, like us, to have never heard of it before. Instead she broke into beautiful song, singing

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you, Look away, you rolling river

It seemed as incredible that she should have been taught the song in her secondary school in Leeds, West Yorkshire, as it was that she remembered it so clearly all these years later! It made us all the more determined to see this mythical place.

Leaving Pintail happily tucked in at Fishing Bay Marina, we took Joan on her first proper road trip and headed west towards the Blue Ridge Mountains. It turns out though that the weather can play havoc with road travel too.

As we climbed higher into the mountains we disappeared into thick cloud. Having paid for our seven day permit, we started out on the Skyline Drive which traverses the ridge but we knew we were not going to see very much. In a brief gap in the cloud we managed just a glimpse of what we were missing.

The creation of the Shenandoah National Park in the 1930s was a project of the Great Depression, creating jobs for 1,000s of men and boys of the Civilian Conservation Corps who worked on the building of Skyline Drive. 105 miles of road and the legendary Appalachian Trail wind through the mountain tops which climb up to over 4,000 feet.

We’ve learnt to roll with the punches of the weather gods but decided against stopping for a hike to a scenic spot which wouldn’t offer much scenery. The drive was certainly atmospheric. We didn’t mind much. We had Miriam Margolyes’ audiobook to entertain us!

About half way along the drive we turned off and headed down into the foothills. We had booked a cabin in the woods for the night so we stopped at the nearby town of Stanardsville for a quick look around and a coffee. The architecture was different up here in the mountains – a terrace of red brick rather than wooden houses lined the very short Main Street. A mural gave us an impression of the views we were missing in the cloud.

In Stanardsville we learnt that there had been a price to pay for the development of the new National Park. 3,000 people had called the area home but were forcibly evicted to create the park. Many were unable to prove ownership of the land their families had lived on for more than 100 years and received no compensation. A memorial chimney stands in the town to remember their sacrifice.

We found our cosy cabin well equipped with survival guides and warnings about the bears that share the woods. We lay watching for any sign of them through the picture windows but saw nothing but squirrels.

After a loud thunderstorm overnight, leaving the cabin the next morning we knew immediately that day two in the park wasn’t going to bring many views and, as the cloud had been joined by rain, we vetoed our plans for a hike to a waterfall

in favour of a stop at the Big Meadow Visitor’s Centre. There, in the dry, we watched a film of all the views we could have seen, soundtracked by another version of O Shenandoah! We learnt some more about the history of the park including a reminder that the Park was also not free from the segregation which divided public spaces in American society in the 1930s and 40s.

Something miraculous happened when we left the Visitor’s Centre. The rain stopped and the cloud lifted and as we continued our drive north we could actually stop at some of the many viewpoints and see something!

The weather was dry enough to stop for a cup of tea. We were careful to guard our caramel waffles from any lurking bears and although the hiking trail looked tempting we had decided to make an early exit from the Skyline Drive to head into the valley and out of the cloud instead.

From the valley floor, across the farmland, we could see the Blue Ridge Mountains we had descended peeking out of the cloud.

We headed into the Shenandoah River State Park where we were finally able to take hike up to a viewpoint above the river and get our first glimpse of the famous rolling river.

Despite all the warnings, the only bear we saw was a stuffed one in the visitors’ centre along with a bobcat and other more familiar beasts.

After a picnic in the trees, we got down to the banks of the river and watched it rolling away very gently.

Our onward journey north to Meredith’s house saw us criss-crossing the Shenandoah River a number of times as we crossed the borders from Virginia into West Virginia and then into Maryland.

Three States in just one day. We are certainly ticking them off…