Hounds
Home > Travels in 2004 > Camping in Shenandoah National Park
Camping in Shenandoah National Park
Since we were planning on taking a long camping trip during the summer, we decided it would be a good idea to do a weekend of camping as a test run, so we chose to visit Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
Our trip did not start off well. When we let the dogs out of the van at a rest stop along the way, Deanna accidentally closed the van door on Tyler's tail. She couldn't stop the bleeding, and we were afraid his tail might be broken. We were able to get the number of a vet clinic that was still open in the last town we had passed, so we made an appointment and headed there. It was a busy night at that clinic, so it was almost 9pm by the time Tyler's tail was all cleaned and bandaged (fortunately, it was not broken). Since it was too late to get to the park (and too dark to set up camp anyway), we spent the night at a nearby motel.
We set off for the park the next morning and arrived without incident at the Big Meadows campground in the middle of the park. Once we established our site, we got our hiking gear together and drove to the hiking trail we wanted to take, the one that would take us to Jones Falls.
The trail was a long six-mile hike, a bit of a longer trek than we were used to. But we took our time and rested along the way, and we got to enjoy several waterfalls and the sight of a herd of deer along the way.
We got back to the van just as the sun was beginning to set, so we drove to a nearby lookout point along Skyline Drive (the main road through the park). Although the air turned out to be too hazy to get any clear sunset shots, we were treated to a close encounter with a large male deer who was grazing on the tall grasses just below the lookout wall. We then returned to the van and headed back to camp. We got to see more deer during the night, as the deer in that area of the park are apparently used to humans and weren't afraid to simply walk around the campsites.
The next day, we broke down our campsite, packed up the van, and headed to the trailhead for the Hawksbill Summit. Although it was another hike involving going up and down a mountainside, this time the hike back would be downhill. We reached the rocky summit and were treated to a nice view of the mountains and of the valley below. We then returned to the van and headed home.