Oh Shenandoah

(I long to hear you)

There is nothing quite like camping to make you appreciate the miracle of hot running water. This, more than anything else, is what separates our era from the ones that came before. The Etruscans may have had their bread, the Spartans their soldiers, the Greeks their philosophies, but goddammit I can take a hot shower whenever I want.

Jess and I had never been to Shenandoah National Park before. It's a shade under two hours from Northern Virginia, and talk about an escape! You endure Interstate 66 south for 20 miles, hop on 29 south for a few minutes, and then disappear west onto 211, past winery after winery, until finally you begin your 2,400ft ascent into "Skyland," aptly named because the single road through the park, Skyline Drive, is literally something out of Gulliver's Travels. Around every bend is a breathtaking view, with blue mountains and yellow valleys and gray mountains even further in the distance.

Our campground (curiously named "Matthew's Arm" for unknown, hopefully lurid reasons) was about 10 miles from the entrance at Thornton's Gate. The park itself is enormous, stretching over 100 miles from north to south, and the two-lane Skyline Drive has a speed limit of 35mph that you exceed at your careening-off-the-mountain peril. The two conspire to make the place seem very, very big. Which is exactly, as it turns out, the kind of place for a soul beleaguered by modernity to vanish for the night.

The campground was clean and well-organized, although the sites were very close together. I could, for instance, follow the plot of an otherwise convoluted ghost story being told across the street and four sites up. We had a site next to the restroom, which to its credit had cold running water and toilets not beset upon by spiders, but which made for a rather noisy night of flushes and blow-dried hands. Of course it figures that the one time I'm camping with a bathroom conveniently nearby, I don't awaken having to go at all.

Tooch and Jeep brought the dogs along, and shortly after we arrived Jess and Tooch set the picnic table with foodstuffs while Jeep and I endeavored to start a fire. I actually remembered to bring a lighter this time, and Tooch had ingeniously decided to pick up some fire sticks at the general store in the park along with the cold beer and makeshift-Gerber multi-tool that I later used to hack open a can of apple pie filling.

Jeep and I wielded all our fire-making know-how, which is to say that we tried every assemblage of wood - the A-frame, the Log Cabin, the Awkward Catamaran - that we could think of before finally deciding to dump all the fire sticks and wood in a pile and light it at the same time, using the air-pump from the air-mattress to feed that sucker oxygen until the wood could boil off enough moisture to stay lit.

The "Awkward Catamaran"

It was decidedly the least inspiring camp fire I've ever been party to, but it was akin to making a fire out of wet bathing suits, and by the only meaningful measure - we got it hot enough to make s'mores and hot dogs and mountain pies - it all went well enough.

That night I slept like a baby on our brand new shiny air mattress.

In the morning we took down the tents, packed the cars, had a breakfast of granola bars, bananas, and water (sound familiar?), and found a trail that looked promising to hike. The "Meadow Springs Trail," at mile-marker 33.1, had a couple of things going for it. For starters, it wasn't the 6.1-mile trail that was listed as "strenuous" and eventually led to a waterfall that "may or may not have any water, depending on if it has been a dry summer." Second, it passed the site of an abandoned cabin, where only the stone chimney remained after a mysterious fire burned it down in 1946. Third, it promised a spectacular view at the top. The three combined were enough to lure us into trying it, and with the exception of the trail involving neither meadows nor springs, it was awesome.

The Mysterious Chimney

The top of the trail actually met up with the Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Maine to Georgia, so we walked along that for a little over half a mile until we got to Mary's Rock, which is this unbelievable stone structure on the very top of one of the highest hills in Shenandoah. We climbed to the top of the rocks and could see for miles and miles in every direction. In any military endeavor where the high-ground mattered, you would want to be the first to capture Mary's Rock. I was convinced you could see DC if you had the right telescope. Breathtaking.

The View from Mary's Rock

We hiked back down the mountain and rode east on 211 until we got to Warrenton, VA, where we stopped for a char-burger at Foster's Grille, which was actually really tasty and had great french fries. After that it was home for a shower (with stunning, amazing, miraculous hot running water) and a nap and a lazy dinner of wild-caught Alaskan salmon with teriyaki sauce and Asian rice, followed by more lounging and reading, and now, mercifully, sleep in a soft bed...