June_5

Northeast '06 June, p.5

Monday, June 18

Moving down the Parkway to the end today. At the end, we crossed over to the Shenandoah National Park Skyline Drive to another Park campground for the night. The Skyline Drive is about 105 miles long; the Blue Ridge Parkway was about 470 miles long.

During the day, we stopped for a hike to the Johnson Farm. It was a working farm until about 1955, and supplied vegetables and flowers to Mons hotel, a resort hotel in the Shenandoah's about 1 mile away, advertising cooler temperatures than those found in the valleys below. We enjoyed looking at these old structures.

Two more pictures today. The first Ed took of a panel on the roadside explaining the lock system of the James river that allowed boats to be used from tidewater (bay leading to the ocean) to the Shenandoah's (Roanoke and Lynchburg, specifically). Imagine sitting on a chair on top of a cargo boat!

The second is of a bird we can't identify. Any takers?

Tuesday, June 19.

The Shenandoah overlooks are different than those of the Blue Ridge Parkway because you are lower in elevation (2000-3000 feet) and the surrounding countryside is populated. Lots of old farm communities with interesting homes and barns.

When we came off the mountain, it was hot: over 90 degrees !. These are pictures of the North Fork of the Shenandoah river where we stopped for the afternoon and evening at a campground resort. We had fun walking in the cool water which was no more than calf or knee height for most of it.

Wednesday, June 20

Today was an interesting day (aren't they all?) when we drove towards Newark, Delaware to see some friends we hadn't seen in three years. Instead of taking the Interstates and major roads, we took towards Frederick, Maryland, then drove the Maryland Scenic Byway which skirts the top of the state close to Pennsylvania, but consists of about 10 roads. We got lost twice! The fun one was when we entered a road that said "end county maintenance" then got narrower and narrower before a fairly sharp drop into an intersection with no route signs. Fortunately, we found a resident who gave us directions to get back on the road, and we went off just to get lost again!

Thursday, June 21

Stopped at Harper's Ferry, the site of John Brown's battle over Black rights during the Civil War. It has been rebuilt as a National Park. The first picture is of the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, the reason for its importance.

Here are two buildings, and guess what? A plaque showing that Meriwether Lewis stopped here for supplies before his famous expedition. Our travels in the last few weeks have been at the start and end of Lewis' travels (see Natchez Trace Pkwy earlier this month).

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